Q&A: Some Thoughts on Tractate Sukkah – Daf Yomi, from the Recent Pages
Some Thoughts on Tractate Sukkah – Daf Yomi, from the Recent Pages
Question
Questions from the recent pages:
A stolen sukkah, a stolen lulav, a stolen willow branch, fields of gentiles who are considered robbers. What is the deal with all these thefts? Why did the issue of robbery suddenly take up so much space דווקא around the festival of Sukkot? Is there some historical aspect here, of there being many robbers, or is this a purely theoretical, almost laboratory-style discussion meant to clarify some point in the laws of the holiday? But what exactly is that point?
The chapter opens with the festive declaration that a commandment that comes through a transgression is invalid. But afterward there is a major retreat from this nice principle. Why do the Sages go easy on “sukkah hooliganism”? How can throwing a person out of his sukkah and taking it over not be considered a commandment that comes through a transgression, and invalid from the outset? And on that same topic, it is hard to make peace with the technical workaround that allows one to buy myrtle branches from a gentile’s field that is considered stolen.
A note about the story of the screaming grandmother—when that grandmother comes to present her claim, she does not latch onto her poverty and misery and from that ask that her stolen property be returned to her. She takes the opposite route: she hints at her pedigree as a daughter of Abraham our Patriarch, who was honored and wealthy, and from that demands respectful treatment. Does this teach us something about Rabbi Nahman? In her intuition she understood that misery would not work with him, but pedigree and wealth were the way to get him to listen? In the end, he insults her anyway. He does not answer her directly and calls her a screamer. So is this a story brought to undermine or to build? Is the Talmud bringing it to validate the Jewish law, or on the contrary, paving a channel of hidden criticism against this whole line of thought?
Can one find here an essential connection to the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the Sages regarding the character of the sukkah and the question of ownership over it? Rabbi Eliezer emphasizes the personal and proprietary aspect, “you shall make for yourself,” while they want a sukkah in which “all Israel can sit.” Something abstract, spiritual, that should not deal with questions of ownership—but in the end they validate robbers.
Answer
It is the way of the Talmud to place a principled discussion in a topic where it is convenient to discuss it. This has to be a commandment that involves an object that is supposed to be yours, and there are not many such cases.
The law of a commandment that comes through a transgression does not deal with the question of whether it is okay. Theft is always not okay. The question is whether the theft invalidates the commandment, and that applies only if the theft is direct in the performance of the commandment, not when it merely serves as a prior backdrop. Otherwise, a person who once stumbled in theft (even unintentionally) could not build on any commandment for the rest of his life. That is not reasonable.
As for Rabbi Nahman, perhaps there really is criticism here of relating to people according to their status.
I do not see a connection to the tannaitic dispute. I do not think there is a dispute about a commandment that comes through a transgression, and certainly not a dispute that specifically concerns the commandment of sukkah. There is nothing special about sukkah here; it is like any other commandment with respect to a commandment that comes through a transgression.
Discussion on Answer
The Talmud explains that the dispute about someone who overpowered another person and removed him from his sukkah is rooted in the dispute about land theft. So I do not see a difference between the explanation for land theft and this case.
As for the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the Sages, I explained why it is not connected to the principled discussion of a commandment that comes through a transgression. Their dispute deals with the laws of sukkah or with land theft, whereas the law of a commandment that comes through a transgression is a general law not specifically related to sukkah. Go and see that this tannaitic dispute is not brought in any other context of discussing a commandment that comes through a transgression (see Bava Kamma 94a and Berakhot 47b, and in the medieval authorities in many other places). And from this too you can see that there are additional contexts, so it is not specifically connected to sukkah.
How is sukkah different from the Passover offering, or kiddush wine, or the objects used for circumcision? There too, the offering or the object or the food cannot be stolen, ostensibly, and yet we do not hear all this pilpul about it.
It is no different, and the same pilpul exists. Not in the Talmudic text (although it appears there too in other contexts), but as I wrote, it is the Talmud’s way not to repeat the entire discussion in every topic, but to conduct it once. And in the medieval and later authorities you will find it in many contexts.
You answered regarding land. Not regarding the thug who throws a person out of his sukkah.
And regarding the tannaitic dispute, Rabbi Eliezer emphasizes the proprietary aspect and the Sages do not. It actually fits pretty well.
That dispute about the conception of sukkah is interesting from several angles.
In addition, regarding the extensive focus on thefts and my suspicion that there may be something historical there, someone in the “Yomi” group referred me to an article by the historian Gafni about the nationalization of land because of failure to pay land taxes being fairly common in Babylonia. (Isaiah Gafni, The Jews of Babylonia in the Talmudic Period, p. 133.) The person added that “when we are dealing with a phenomenon of nationalizations, the government tends to nationalize very easily and transfer the assets to private individuals close to the regime. You have to be a great believer in the law of the kingdom is law to accept that with equanimity.”