Sukkah 5 - July 12, 3 Av

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Today's daf is sponsored by the Shuster family of Edison in memory of Sharonna's mother Sandra Shimoff and Ozer's grandmother Malka Shuster.

A sukkah that is not ten handbreadths tall is invalid. Where do we learn this from? The first source is from the Ark which was ten handbreadths tall together with the kaporet. God spoke to Moshe from above that space according to the verse - from there we learn that God does not descend below ten handbreadths and man does not ascend to heaven except at a distance of ten handbreadths. This teaches us that that a domain in ten handbreadths. How do we know that the Ark was nine handbreadths and the kaporet was one? The Ark's height is mentioned explicitly but the kaporet is not. The gemara first derives it from the frame around the Table and then Rav Huna derives it from the words "on the face of the kaporet" and the face of a baby is the size of one handbreadth. The gemara offers various possibilities of sizes of other items in the Temple or other sizes of faces that it could have been derived from but rejects them. If we derive if from the Ark and the kaporet, why would the ten handbreadths not include the sechach of the sukkah as the Ark and the kaporet together equal ten? Because of this difficulty, the gemara brings a different proof from the ten handbreadths between the wings of the cherubim and the ark below (the height of the cherubim themselves). This however only works according to Rabbi Meir's opinion that the cubits of the Ark and other vessels in the Tabernacle were made of six handbreadths but according to Rabbi Yehuda who holds that vessels were five handbreadths, the calculation would lead us to eleven and a half, not ten! Rabbi Yehuda therefore must learn it from somewhere else. The gemara suggests that he holds it is a tradition passed down from Moshe at Sinai - Halacha l'Moshe m'Sinai.