Q&A: Parameters of a Sukkah
Parameters of a Sukkah
Question
Hello Rabbi, regarding the commandment of sukkah, I heard a common halakhic claim that one should relate to the sukkah as if it were one's home. The implications, of course, are that I should eat there, sleep there, and generally try to do there whatever I normally do at home. But if that’s really the way I relate to it, then why, when I go out to a café or restaurant, do I need to look for one with a sukkah? After all, I’m at a café, which is something you always do outside the home.
Answer
In principle, that is correct. In my opinion there is no obligation to do so in a sukkah. But the custom is to be stringent and do so, and perhaps the reasoning is that the restaurant too is a kind of house that has to be replaced by a sukkah (unlike travelers on the road). If you can eat a salad or something like that and not establish it as a formal meal, that is of course preferable.
That same Rabbi Eliezer who maintains (in the name of Beit Shammai) that we require a permanent dwelling also holds that it is forbidden to move from one sukkah to another. According to the other view, that what is required is a temporary dwelling, one could say that even going out to a café—despite the fact that you do not live there, since in any case you are not living in any permanent place during the week of Sukkot—would require you to sit in a sukkah.