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Good Wednesday Chevra,
I hope your week is going well and that you've been enjoying the Mishna!
A thought as we head into the second Perek: There are two ideas that thread through the first several Mishnayot here, ideas that seem at first to be somewhat incongruent. The first idea is that, contrary to Rabbi Yehuda's opinion (in 2:2), a Sukkah can absolutely be constructed as a very temporary - even fragile building. (Have fun trying to envision the very creatively-built Sukkot in Mishna 3!) A Sukkah is not modeled on a "house". It's a "shelter".
At the same time, another idea emerges in Mishnayot 4 and 5 that seemingly points in the opposite direction. The contours of the obligation to dwell in the Sukkah are patterned on the way that we dwell in our actual homes. What we are and aren't obligated to eat in the Sukkah, and under what circumstances we may actually leave the Sukkah*, are all based upon how we typically use our actual dining rooms, and under what conditions we'd leave our actual homes in order to go somewhere else. So while the Sukkah's construction is distinctly un-house like, we halachikly dwell in it as if it were our house.
And the "as if" is the key here, the one that brings the Mishna's two ideas together. On Sukkot we use our religious imagination to live as if our actual home - and by extension everything else in our lives - were all temporary structures. Which of course, in the end, they all are. (Cue Kohellet here :) And crucially, to learn how to embrace the temporariness of all the things that we think of as "permanent" with faith, with peace, and even ultimately with joy.
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* Though the Mishna only specifically mentions the exemption for "people traveling to perform a Mitzvah" in Mishna 4, the Gemara adds a similar exemption for people who are traveling from home for other reasons as well.
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