Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Ta'anis 2a - Rain on Shemini Atzeres

Tosafos asks that outside Eretz Yisroel where we sit in the succah on shemini atzeres, rain should be a siman k'lala even on shemini atzeres, so why acc. to r' yehoshua should we be mentioning rain? Tosafos answers that sitting in the succah on shemini atzeres is only "midrabonon bec. of safek" [Poras Yosef - meaning that since it is a safek we can be lenient to assume that elul was not me'ubar, but midrabonon they were mesaken to be concerned that maybe elul was me'ubar]. Since it is only a mitzah midrabonon to sit in the succah, it is not considered a siman k'lala to leave bec. of rain.
Another suggestion as to why rain on shemini atzeres is not considered a siman k'lala can be based on Tosafos in Succah. Tosafos says that we don't take lulav on s"a out of safek bec. it is degrading to yom tov to proclaim that it is still chol hamoed, but sitting in a succah is different since it is often pleasant to sit in a hut and not recognizable that it is for the mitzvah of succah. Rashi (ta'anis 2a) implies that the siman klala is the fact that we exit the succah due to mitzta'er. It would seem logical that when it begins to rain on s"a, even before you reach a stage of mitzta'er, you have to exit the succah to avoid degrading the yom tov. Therefore, when one leaves the succah on shemini atzeres, they leaving before the stage of mitzta'er to avoid the degrading yom tov. Since they are not leaving due to mitzata'er, the rain is not a siman klala.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought that rain on Sukkos is only a Siman Klalla in Eretz Yisroel. Also, I am under the impression that we are asking for rain to fall in Eretz Yisroel. This being so, there should be no issue for us (in Chutz La'Aretz)to pray for rain on Shmini Atzeres even though we need to sit in the Sukka.

Yossie Schonkopf said...

interesting point. the rosh holds that if a country needs rain even if it is after pesach they can mention and request rain! (see biur halacha and beis yosef 114)You see that we are requesting rain for us. Even those that disagree, I think they hold that the order of tefilah is based on eretz yisroel but the actual request is for us "chutzniks". off course we are also asking for eretz yisroel and it is the source of all that we have, but there definitely is also a practical request for each land.

yosssie

Avi Lebowitz said...

re: Anonymous
i don't think a proof is necessary - rain on succos is clearly a siman klala anywhere and has no connection to eretz yisroel. the rishonim discuss that it may only be a siman klala on the first night - see ritva 2b who proves that this is also incorrect. but, it is paskened in shulchan aruch without making any distinctions.

regarding the second point, we are not speaking about the asking for rain, we are discussing the mentioning of rain. one way or the other, if we were asking for rain only in eretz yisroel, we would begin asking on 7 cheshvon (like in e"y) rather than dec. 4th.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the siman Klalla of rain being only on the first night, I saw it brought down that there is a contradiction in the Ramba"M Peirush Hamishnayos.
In Sukka end of Perek 2 he says in the beginning of Sukkos
In Taanis he says the whole sukkos.