Sleeping in the sukkah

/I heard that since when you sleep you are 1/16 dead that it is wrong to be in a holy place like a sukkah in that position, another reason why not everone sleeps there..

.

plus sometimes it rains or snows…..

Shopping – Certain parts of the Beis Hamikdash were allowed to have dead people in, and the parts that weren’t was because of the Tumah, and we are all tomei meis anyway. So I don’t really understand that pshat.

It makes lots of sense, by the way, that the rm”a was lechatchila – it isn’t called ???? ???? ????? if you are not doing whatever you would do at home in the ????.

In the times of the gemara, people did not necesarily ever sleep in the same hut as their wives. A separate tent for wife or for each wife. Sleeping in the succah changed nothing.

In the times of the gemara there wasnt much difference between a house and a succah. Or in house vs succah matresses 🙂

Calm down. You don’t want her to learn Gemara so don’t be surprised when she doesn’t.

Calm. Down. I wrote I heard, I never said it was right, personally we do sleep in the sukka, but I know that many chabadniks hold not to. Plus, I dont learn gemara.

squeak, I think you’re off by 1500 years or so. Avraham and Sarah had separate tents, but I don’t think people lived in tents in the times of the Gemara.

To encourage positive fulfillment of this:

All Rabbinical sermons should be given in the Sukkah!!!

Is there any limud zchus for non-married guys who r’l don’t sleep in the Succah?

Regarding married men, the discussion above got zapped. What’s the basis for the limud zchus and when is it applicable? What excuse is there for those it isn’t applicable for?

It says בסוכות תשבו – תשבו כעין תדורו a man lives with his wife which he cannot do in the sukkah. Also, he is metzaer as it is cold outside.

The other concerns are the issue of safety; it might be a sakanah for people to sleep in vulnerable sukkos inbetween houses; while we never hear of break ins or chas veshalom worse, I understand people who are choshesh that they might be in danger in such a circumstance. That would not permit people who have backyard, terrace sukkos, or the like.

Ujm – in bavel they used to make their sukkos on their rooftops; also, in very concentrated jewish areas like ghettos, or new square, kiryas yoel, or even bnei brak and parts of yerushalayim, there’s really no concern, but living among goyim can make people nervous if they’re in such a precarious situation. Like i said above, this heter would not apply to many people who are able to have sukkos in their backyards or terraces, which i would say is about 40% of Yiddishe families

I Think maybe I can suggesting a proper solution for this: ASK YOUR LOCAL ORTHODOX HASSIDICK RABBI!!

Nochum, saying that kabalistic reasons (of which there aren’t any) can dismiss a mitzvah deoraysoh is bordering on if not fully apikorsus. As has been discussed, the miteler rebbe had halachik reasons for not sleeping in a sukkah. Being mitzrayer that you’re not mitztayer like he was or whatever garbled reasons they give to be poretz geder in eretz yisroel and not sleep in a sukkah there, is purim torah. Mitztayer has gedorim; halacha does not incorporate how you supposedly feel the need to sense the ohr makif bina, but you don’t so you’re Mitztayer about it, and thus patur…

We can defend established minhagim of not sleeping in chutz laaretz, but ever since the first yishuv not one community in eretz yisroel has ever not slept in a sukkah. It’s a chief reason for rav shach”s opposition, as it represented a vital breach of halacha.

Characteristic of chabad is to speak of far off things and dismiss opposition by saying that they are enlightened(they’re not) and understand kabalah (they don’t) and all questions on them are just from us lowly jews who only know shas and poskim, but if we were exposed to the light of chasidis(for some reason they insist on pronouncing it such) we definitely would delete shalosh seudos, not sleep in a sukkah ever, carry around pictures of a deceased rabbi for protection and ask him for help, believing he can hear you no matter where you are.

I’ll take my tanya, nefesh hachaim, shas and poskim (not in that order) and try my best to be a good jew without kabalistic shabsai-tzvi-esque innovation.

Rav Gevornlik, Zl, has paskind that if your sukkah is cantilevered out a distance of greater than arbah amos from the edge of your upper floor apartment deck (even if supported from below by some rented scaffolding), BOTH husband and wife should not sleep in such a structure and spend only as much time inside as necessary to be yotzeh the mitzvah for one to be permitted to say the bracha of “leishev baSukkah” and swallow the minimum of a kibeitza of food.

dealie: “that’s true chabad doesn’t sleep in the sukkah and if you ask them how it makes sense with Halacha they don’t really have an answer and they say that their rebbi didn’t sleep the whole succos in order to avoid this problem. Which I don’t believe because the Gemara says its impossible to stay awake that long.”

You don’t quite seem like the type of guy that has spoken to enough Lubavitchers to be able to say that “they” don’t have an answer – something which I don’t find very believable considering that the Rebbe offered a long sicha as well as many letters on the subject. The only one who didn’t have an answer on this subject was Rabbi Tzvi Kahana, who was left wordless when the Rebbe launched on a 20 minute (!) disciplinary speech during sunday dollars about why Yidden ought to stop complaining about this minhag when the greatest Gedolei Yisroel from the times of the Mitteler Rebbe [1773-1827] who were close with Chabad, such as R’ Chaim and Itche Volozhin, said absolutely nothing of the matter although they were obviously fully aware of this minhag (which, by the way, is also prevalent in Belz as well as other circles).

And before you start quoting the medical statements from the Gemara, it would do you well to know that certain health related statements mentioned in Rambam and Gemara do not apply in a physical sense, due to the change in human nature. Ironically, the Rebbe has a long sicha on this idea which you wouldn’t regret studying.

PS. I don’t know if coffee or anything of the sort was around in the times of the gemara, but I may be wrong….

Just adding that if the weather is harsh, it can be המצטער פטור.

AviraDeara,

You’re not just ignorant; you’re misinformed. To say that the Chabad Rebbes and their hundreds of thousands of Chassidim did not sleep in the Sukka due to the Russian cold is just preposterous.
Don’t you know the Miteler Rebbe’s popular saying “Vi ken ich shlufen in makiffim d’bina – How can I sleep in the lofty spiritual levels of Makifim D’bina?”. And don’t you know that this was the reason that the Chabad Rebbes and their respective Chassidim all refrained from sleeping in the sukkah, all to to the complete silence of every Gadol around at the time? Have you bothered, at least once, to read up on the subject in Chabad texts or asked about it from Chabadniks before concocting your own narrative?

It would certainly due you well to watch the dialogue between the Rebbe and R’ Tzvi Kahana during Sunday dollars, available to view on RebbeDrive or Youtube, where the Rebbe effectively removes all doubt on the matter. This is Chabad’s (and Belz’s) established minhag. It’s been around since the early 1800s. Not ONE gadol (until Rav Shach, of course) got up to say a word about it. NOBODY, not even CR participants, can contest this sacred minhag, and if they do, they should know that they’re contesting the Mitteler Rebbe, Tzemach Tzedek, Maharash, Rashab, Rayatz, the Rebbe, who all refrained from eating in the sukkah, and instructed their chassidim to do likewise, not because of weather considerations (!), but due to their holy kabbalistic intentions backed up with the proper halachic support presented at great length in Likkutei Sichos and other sources.

As far as i remember, the rebbe mentions that most tzadikim can handle whatever the ohr makif bina is, and most people aren’t masig it at all, and that the miteler was unique in that he was masig it, but couldn’t handle sleeping in the sukkah with it.

To say that the chasidim are all farbunden with (one of) the chabad rebbes so that whatever heter he supposedly have would apply to them is halachikally laughable… I’m aware of such explanation when discussion davening late, or copying other established chasidish practices. Yet chasidish poskim go to great lengths to try and substantiate these practices as halachikally valid, not using kabalah to dismiss halacha. One of the best defenses is that a rebbe and his chasidim will spend a lot of time lreparing for davening, be it learning, mikvah, etc, and that’s considered as if they started davening on time.

Yet if he (the miteler) had no halachik, torah laav bashomayim hi heter, he would have been moser nefesh and done what he had to do, of this i am sure. Moshe rabbeinu brought the Torah to Earth, and no longer could it be niskayam according to the specific avodah and middos of a given tzadik as before; yaakov avinu married two sisters, because he understood the ratzon Hashem in that specific situation was such that he was permitted to and even obligated to do so.

After matan torah no such vehicle exists; ain lonu shiur rak hatorah hazos; hanistaros lashem elokeinu vehaniglos lonu…our job is to fulfill dvar Hashem zu halacha.

It should also be addressed that it is common among chabad to believe themselves to be at present and historically much more significant than they were and are in population and influence. Not to say that they were not significant before the war, but they were dwarfed by the enormous numbers of kotzk-school polish chasidim; Aleksander, Ger, and others were far more numerous, as were belz, klosenberg etc and Hungarian chasidim such as munkatch and sihgit. Even in russia, breslov was active, and the largest number were in Chernobyl-school chasidim, Chabad was and is not part of agudas yisroel, which made up the vast overwhelming majority of non-hungarian charedi jewry in all of Europe. Chabad made up perhaps 8% of charedi jewry as a liberal estimate.

They also link every rabbinic family – especially brisk, for some reason, to chabad, though in my experience they often conflate rav chaim with the brisker rov, and assume that rabbi yoshe ber has the same status in the yeshiva world as the former. In my yeshiva, whenever the missionaries would show up on yat kislev to share their “chasidis” with us (we weren’t interested and we’d often show them exactly where the doors were and threaten to call the police for trespassing), they would often talk of the one or two rebbeim who were chabad in the many years of the yeshiva; the whole world revolved around chabad – only their Judaism mattered and only their constituents were full “fulfilled” or “whole” Jews (sound familiar? Jews for J anyone?).

Rav chaim volozhiner was not “close” with chabad, or any other chasidim. He worked together with the baal hatanya briefly on klal matters. His sefer nefesh hachaim shows that he was not exposed to mainstream chasidic thought, due of course to no fault of his own (many achronim were critical of kabalah, because they were not exposed to it in full). Take for instance shaar 4 in the beginning where he says that chasidim think that Torah lishma means to think about Hashem the whole time – I’m sure there were chasidim who spoke like that, but that is not the way the rebbes actually held.

To say they were close is completely false. To say that rav Moshe feinstein and rav hutner were “close” with the lubavitcher rebbe is also false. There is no end to the amount of attempted association that goes on in chabad; they think that literally everyone in the Torah world is just shy of being a chabad chossid – everyone has some relative, talmid, rebbe or neighbor’s son’s mechutin who was chabad.

aviradeara;

Whoa. After that whole senseless tirade you just put up over there, it’s quite difficult to resist the need to address your claims, however laughable and ridiculous they may be. Who knows? Perhaps an innocent YW user seeking information will unwittingly stumble upon your false statements and, being none the wiser, accept them as fact.

“is such an idea stated specifically in the miteler rebbe’s(or those who came after him) writings?”

Yes, it is. See for example Sefer Hasichos 5699, sicha for 1st night of sukkos. See also Likkutei Sichos vol. 29 p. 211. this statement was documented by the Rebbe Rayatz and the Rebbe in their respective sefarim.

“Rav chaim volozhiner was not “close” with chabad, or any other chasidim. He worked together with the baal hatanya briefly on klal matters. ”

Rav Chaim was, in fact, extremely close with the Rebbes of Chabad, met with them on several occasions, and enjoyed regular correspondence with them as well, All this is well documented and needs no reiteration over here, or anywhere for that matter. R’ itchele volozhin traveled to Petersburg with the Mitteler Rebbe and signed kol kores with him on various communal matters as is also well documented. Likewise, your statement that R’ Chaim was not proficient in Tanya and Chabad teachings is nothing short of absurd, and is disputed by numerous historical accounts which I do not have the patience to detail right here, right now.

“To say that rav Moshe feinstein and rav hutner were “close” with the lubavitcher rebbe is also false.”

Oh really?! Were you aware that both of those individuals met with the Rebbe on numerous occasions, corresponded with them on matters ranging from spiritual or otherwise communal matters, down to mundane birthday Mazal Tov’s and brachos, and spoke highly effusively of one another both to each other as well as to their respective followers? Did you know that the Rebbe would direct many halachic questions submitted to him to R’ Moshe, and that R’ Moshe once requested the Rebbe to send him a pair of Rabeinu Tam’s tefillin which the Rebbe did? Did you know that R’ Moshe attended a Chasuna that the Rebbe officiated at, and used the opportunity to ask the Rebbe a shaila in Gemara which the Rebbe answered? On R’ Hutner: did you know that R’ Hutner corresponded with the Rebbe more than any other Rosh Yeshiva of his time, and that his dozens of letters to the Rebbe are all available for viewing throughout 25 volumes of Igros Kodesh?? And did you know that Rav Hutner is documented by his followers as having said shortly before his death that “the Rebbe is the tzadik hador – most righteous man of his generation”??

More on R’ Moshe’s and rav Hutner’s warm relationship with the Rebbe is extensively documented in Chaim Dalfin’s books ‘Rav Moshe and the Rebbe’ and ‘Rav Hutner and the Rebbe’ both of which are available on Amazon.

In conclusion, avirdeara, your evil rhetoric and factually incorrect statements are the direct reason for all antagonism and animosity that currently exists between the Chabad and Litvish communities. All hate and hostility is the product of sheer ignorance and misinformation the likes of which you’ve just presented in that four post diatribe.

Let’s reiterate – no one’s quoted a single source documenting people who live in eretz yisroel who are orthodox, who did not sleep in a sukkah; not one, because it is unheard-of. Now then, we can return to addressing a lubavitcher. edited

“Yes, it is. See for example Sefer Hasichos 5699, sicha for 1st night of sukkos. See also Likkutei Sichos vol. 29 p. 211. this statement was documented by the Rebbe Rayatz and the Rebbe in their respective sefarim”

I asked if the miteler rebbe himself said this, and i had in mind the rashab, not 4 rebbes later. I’ll take the rayatz’s word for it and accept that the last rebbe didn’t invent the mitelers reasoning ex nihilo. Notice how i asked it in the form of a question, because i am not an expert on chabad seforim at all, and I wanted to know if this had any source. Still, a first hand source would be more pursuasive then something 100 years later. None of this has any bearing on my statements that the miteler had a viable heter and only then would apply kabalistic reasoning, but would never allow people to not sleep in a sukkah in eretz yisroel.

Aside from those two quotes from the last rebbe and his predecessor, you have produced no evidence of a warm relationship between rav hutner, rav moshe, and the lubavitcher rebbe, nor have you produced any evidence of rav chaim volozhiner being close to chabad rebbes – you simply say that you don’t have the patience, or that it is well known and not worthy of addressing. I quoted a very clear proof that rav chaim was not informed of the talmidei habesht’s shitos as seen in shaar 4; you simply brushed it aside by saying that historians (chaim dolfin?) say otherwise…

My comments aren’t evil; they’re just not palatable because in chabad world, you’re used to the imperative to make a “kiddush chabad”(yes that is a term used on chabad message boards, puk chazi). Insulting chabad is tantamount to insulting judaism in your mind, and attacking the rebbe is tantamount to attacking chas veshalom Hashem yisbarach. I personally know people who say that they are still frum because the rebbe wants them to be, even though they don’t care anymore what Hashem wants because of the hardship they’ve endured. No one can judge someone who went through difficulties in life, but we can indict a communal mindset which teaches that one must keep mitzvos because this is what the rebbe wants. I’ve seen in children’s periodicals that they asked a bunch of school aged boys why we do kiruv, and several responded “because the rebbe says do”. I can go on and on about the problems in chabad, but you’ve only thus far answered some technicalities, which i will address, yet the pathology i wrote of you ignored. Perhaps because you’re unable to say openly that the rebbe is not divine and that he does not know your thoughts and does not hear your prayers. You may also not say openly that chabad does not believe itself to be the Ultimate Truth and the only truly authentic Judaism. To say so would be to betray your beliefs, unsavory as they may be to outsiders. The lubavitcher rebbe himself told rav yoel.kahn (i believe it was him) to remove the atzmus elokus line from subsequent printings of likutei sichos. He didn’t deny its “truth” pnly he was afraid (rightfully so) that outsiders would see it as idolatrous. And they did. The chazon ish said so when word came out of atzmus elokus statements ( as heard from rav shlomo brevda)

Saying sholom aleichem and talking by a wedding is something i would do with anyone who i know as an acquaintance, or really, anyone who I just met, because what else do yidden talk about? Especially rabbonim. The fact that this is your evidence ( of course, that is hearsay itself) is very telling. Yes rav moshe received r”t tefilin from the lubavitcher rebbe, no he did not ask for it. He did however decide to wear them. Rav Moshe was exceedingly humble; he also used honorifics with just about anyone, and talmidim have told me that he did so because he wanted his psakim to be niskabel in klal yisroel (leshem shomayim of course, and i mean that seriously – he knew who he was and what his position as posek hador meant).

The fact that the lubavitcher rebbe sent people to him with shailos only means that he held of him (shocker), but rav moshe never to my knowledge sent anyone to ask the lubavitcher rebbe a shailoh.

Chaim dolfin is by no means a historian or authority. Would you consider David berger an authority too? Or is it only lubavitchers that are historically accurate?

avirahdarah:
why you so anti chabad??
“missionaries”??? “called the ppolice on them”???!!!
to another yid?!?

How do so many of these threads get hijacked for the vile purpose of opening a new battle line in the Chabad-Litvish wars?

It also has nothing to do with being Litvish; the concerns discussed here and elsewhere should bother every jew, no matter how they are affiliated or what group they belong to.

Also, would you consider it vile to discuss tax evaders and men who refuse to give their wives gitten, or is it only airing certain issues that makes you uncomfortable but not others, no matter how crucial they may be to Torah Judaism?