Q&A: An Airplane Above the Sukkah
An Airplane Above the Sukkah
Question
Happy festival days, Rabbi.
A giant helicopter is hovering above the sukkah at a height of 3 kilometers. It sounds strange to say that it invalidates the sukkah. Does it not invalidate it? And why?
Thank you.
Answer
It seems to me that at such a height, the fact that something is above the sukkah has no significance. It is hard to define, and certainly to discern, something like that and determine whether it is above the sukkah or not. And here it is simply not correct to define it as being above the sukkah in such a situation. I do not have a clear proof for this; on the contrary, people have already written about an airplane overshadowing a grave and the like. But in my opinion this reasoning is correct. In short, the rationale is what you wrote: that it sounds strange to say that it invalidates. Something similar underlies the leniency regarding even the slightest amount of leavened food on Passover when we are speaking about a crumb, as Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul wrote, that even “the slightest amount” has a minimum measure too (that is, not every crumb counts as “the slightest amount”).
Discussion on Answer
Lev, and if there were a surface one hundred kilometers by one hundred kilometers at a height of three kilometers, in your opinion that also would not interpose? Intuitively it seems like it would.
Anav, not sure (and I’m also not sure that would be the intuition in this imaginary case). Clouds too sometimes cover the whole sky and still are not an interposition (though one could distinguish between a cloud and a surface). Since it is very high, perhaps one can view it as a surface located in the sky that does not interpose, because beneath it there is a patch of “sky” without any interposition.
From your line of reasoning, the “sky” argument really would mean that such a ceiling also does not interfere.
Clouds, or the air itself, do not interpose, and clearly they are the very sky under which the sukkah must stand; it is hard to compare that to other objects just because of the height. If someone makes his sukkah on a mountain and the cloud is close by and visible, would the cloud interpose?
As for the height, perhaps the matter does not depend on the objective truth as can be discovered by telescopes and measurements, but on what a reasonable person sees. The ceiling everyone sees and understands is above the sukkah. But a helicopter—who can really measure and assess whether it is exactly above the sukkah or not? Therefore, even if it is known to be above the sukkah, we would not care.
I thought of a formulation that convinces me: sekhakh means something that creates shade. Sekhakh that does not block the sun is not sekhakh. It has to be above the sukkah (otherwise remove Ishtar with her horns), and it has to create shade. If one of those conditions is missing, then it is not sekhakh—not for purposes of validity and not for purposes of invalidation. Therefore a helicopter does not invalidate. But a ceiling like the one I described would invalidate. What do you think?
As for a grave, the reason is known: impurity bursts upward and downward. Is that the case for a sukkah too? I don’t think so.
Anav, from what I understood, the “giant helicopter” in the question is something theoretical, similar to your ceiling.
Obviously real airplanes, however large they may be, at a height of 3 kilometers are nothing, because they are no more than a line of a few millimeters above a person’s head (the same is true of the International Space Station, whose width is 109 meters, yet above the sekhakh it is just a dot). By contrast, the discussion in the question is apparently about a theoretical giant helicopter whose shadow covers three handbreadths or more of the sekhakh’s area (if the sun is at a 90% angle, directly above it).
Hello Rabbi,
You wrote: “Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul wrote that even ‘the slightest amount’ has a minimum measure too (that is, not every crumb counts as ‘the slightest amount’).”
What is the source for Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul’s statement?
Thank you very much.
Hello Rabbi,
You wrote: “Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul wrote that even ‘the slightest amount’ has a minimum measure too (that is, not every crumb counts as ‘the slightest amount’).”
What is the source for Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul’s statement?
Thank you very much.
Common sense. Otherwise you’ll start checking signs of ritual purity in bacteria.
Rabbi, you didn’t understand me.
I asked where Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul’s words are written, in which work of his.
Rabbi, you didn’t understand me.
What I meant to ask was: in which work did Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul write this?
The Rabbi’s answer also answers that question… Why does it matter where he wrote it? Even if he never wrote it anywhere, it’s still true 😉
I don’t know. I heard it quoted in his name.
Dvir, if it is true regardless of who said it, then you can just as well quote this saying in the name of Shaike Ophir, Julius Caesar, or Og king of Bashan.
Another possible reasoning: not because it is not above the sukkah, but because it is considered to be in the “sky” (and not between heaven and earth), and so it does not interpose between the sukkah and the sky. Even an eagle gliding above the sukkah does not interpose—“the way of an eagle in the sky”—just as a cloud does not interpose either. From what height does the sky begin? That is a question with no clear criterion. But a height of kilometers is certainly sky.