Last night's shiur contained a review of the first shiur, emphasizing the parallelism between our mishna and the mishna of מבוי. In both mishnayot, there is a machloket between Tanna Kamma nd R. Yehuda, and in both, the former is is strict and the latter is lenient. But in the former, Tanna Kamma says that the Succah is pasul while in the case of מבוי, the מבוי must be lowered (namely: the beam, joining the extremities of the open wall, must be lowered)
Why, asks the Gemara, is the concept of "takantah"/fixing used by TK in מבוי ?
A1: Succah is d'oraita, while מבוי is d'rabanan
Now what does this mean? In other words, how does saying Succah is d'oraita explain the terminology "psula" while saying that מבוי is d'rabanan explain why the term ימעט is used?
(we ruled out the idea that there was some sort of inherent distinction - ie that you COULDN'T lower a very high Succah...so it must be that the terminology of psula was more appropriate by Succah, and the term ימעט was more appropriate by מבוי)
Rashi, in a cryptic message, says earlier that the shiurim of Succah were conveyed prior to the mishna being written. This Rashi is key to understanding the later Rashis, where he says that re: Succah, the term psula was used to convey that "this succah was not made in accordance with Torah and Halacha" while, later, Rashi says in מבוי - that this is תחילת הוראתו - this is the first time מבוי has been taught.
We explained it this way: However the halacha is derived from the Torah, the d'oraita exists before the Rabanan came and wrote down the mishna. There is a concept of a halachic Succah, m'doraita, that preceded the Rabanan. Regarding d'oraita halachot, it is appropriate to present the case of a Succah that does not measure up to the standard that the Torah has set for a halachic Succah. Hence פסולה - the 20 ama high succah doesn't make the grade!
With a din d'rabanan, however, the rabbis themselves are the ones that are initiating the new halacha of a beam on a מבוי, (all of מבוי's dinim are d'rabanan!). Re: this topic, the mishna should function as an instruction manual, to tell us how to apply/use the dinim that the rabbis are מחדש. It's a pragmatic guide to fulfilling the dinim d'rabanan. Therefore, the term פסולה is not used, but rather ימעט - lower the מבוי so that it is halachically functional.....
I have a lot of questions about this, some more philosphical than others.
ReplyDeleteSay there is a d'oraita obligation for sukka before this mishna. How do people know if they've fulfilled this obligation?
One answer is socially/there was some kind of oral tradition.
Last night we suggested they had in their minds the idea of an "ideal sukkah" and they would know if their sukkah resembled this one or not. I think this suggestion was connected to the one above, that they had learned it somewhere.
(I for a moment, as we kept on saying the phrase "ideal sukkah" thought we were discussing some kind of platonic ideal of sukkah. Meaning we all have the perfect sukkah in our mind, and whether or not we think something is a sukkah has to do with how well that physical thing resembles the ideal in our mind.)
I like all of this, but I am not sure that the rabbis weren't extending the d'oraita in the first case. In other words, maybe people had the idea of what a sukkah was like, which obviously has some height, and then this mishna laid out the physical requirement.
It's a wash. I can't see it making a difference here, but I do think this question is interesting:
whether the rabbis could give voice to a new standard and say it was a d'oraita because the obligation to do the action to which they are applying the standard is a d'oraita obligation.
It seems to me the answer to this is yes.
Sorry if that was cryptic; see you in shiur.
--Shayna
I'm unclear why the Torah couldn't have used the loshon of "takantah" for succah. For example the Torah has the notion of Pesach Shenei as a "teekun" of sorts for someone who was tamei on Pesach and couldn't offer the Korban Pesach. The Torah could theoretically have done the same thing with the shiurim of Succah.
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