Q&A: Talmud
Talmud
Question
Tractate Sukkah 6b. It discusses deriving the number of walls a sukkah must have from the number of times the word “sukkah” appears in the biblical verses. I know this is a general phenomenon in the Talmud, but I brought a specific example anyway. Sometimes it seems that the Talmud builds an extremely sophisticated logical argument on a completely bizarre foundational assumption. On that page, what connection is there between the number of times the word “sukkah” is mentioned and the number of its walls? Why would we derive it from there at all? This is a common phenomenon in the Talmud, and so far I haven’t found any explanation for it that is really satisfying.
Answer
The Talmud implies that these are superfluous occurrences of the word (available for exposition), and therefore they have to be interpreted. So one occurrence is needed for the basic law itself. Now one has to decide what exactly to derive from the others. By logic, they understood that a number connected to sukkot is presumably the number of walls.