Reply To: Warning: Sukkah Alert–Sakanas Nefashos!

Mindoverheart, the sukkah is 8×10. The 8 foot beams certainly won’t work on the 10 foot wall.

SaysWho, I first went back to the store before I posted, and I was told that everybody is getting this size, and there is nothing they can do. Your store may have been nice and given you a set of boards for the next bigger size sukkah which they didn’t think they would need.

Note that in my family a few years back somebody bought a 6×8 Easelock sukkah and I also had to run to Home Depot. In that case, not only was there no overlap, but the boards were flimsy 1x2s which could barely support the schach mat. That one had metal clips whose purpose was to flip the boards up on edge, ostensibly so that it would be more secure. It also seemd to have some kind of nail and a hole which possibly was to nail the board into the clip. I wasn’t happy with any of that, so I bought long 2x4s.

This time there is a plastic clip which also serves to flip the boards on edge, but it doesn’t solve the problem of the boards being too short in the first place.

In general I am not sure what the purpose of flipping the boards on edge is to begin with. Is it for halachic reasons? I remember somewhere in Sukkah the gemara asks Hafchan al tzideihen mahu, in reference to gezeiras tikrah, but I don’t remember the maskanah, or if this is brought down lhalacha that it is better.

I do remember the M”B says we should not use boards bigger than a tefach. Note that 2×4 boards are really about 1.5 x 3. I thing that most people say a tefach is about 4″, so it seems that even if you lie the 2×4 boards flat, it should be kosher.

Nevertheless, this is all irrelevant to the main concern, which is that the boards are not long enough to begin with.