Sukkah, Daf Lamed, Part 5

 

Introduction

In yesterday’s section we saw that Shmuel held that a stolen lulav is disqualified only on the first day of the festival. Today, another amora challenges this halakhah.

 

מתיב רב נחמן בר יצחק: לולב הגזול והיבש פסול, הא שאול – כשר. אימת? אילימא ביום טוב ראשון – הא כתיב, לכם – משלכם, והאי לאו דידיה הוא. אלא לאו – ביום טוב שני, וקתני גזול פסול!

 

R. Nahman b. Yitzchak objected: a stolen or dried up lulav is invalid. From this it follows that a borrowed one is valid.

Now when? If you say, on the first day of the Festival, is it not written "from yours" implying that it should be your own, and this is not his! Rather, it must refer to the second day of the festival, and yet it teaches that a stolen one is invalid?

 

R. Nahman b. Yitzchak analyzes the mishnah that teaches that a stolen lulav is disqualified. First he notes that the mishnah disqualifies only a stolen lulav. This implies that a borrowed lulav is valid. Otherwise the mishnah would have stated that a borrowed lulav is invalid.

Now when is a borrowed lulav valid? It can’t be on the first day of the festival because the Torah says, "And you shall take from yours on the first day " which to the rabbis means that on the first day one must own one’s lulav. Therefore, the mishnah must refer to the second day and onward. From the second day and onward a borrowed lulav is valid but a stolen one is invalid. This is a difficulty for Shmuel who said that on the second day a stolen lulav is valid.

 

אמר רבא לעולם ביום טוב ראשון, ולא מיבעיא קאמר: לא מיבעיא שאול – דלאו דידיה הוא. אבל גזול, אימא סתם גזילה יאוש בעלים הוא, וכדידיה דמי – קא משמע לן.

 

Rava said: it does refer to the first day of the festival, and it is stated in the form of "it is not necessary" it is not necessary to that a borrowed lulav is invalid since it is not his; but in the case of a stolen one, I might say that in general when something is robbed there is abandonment by its owner and that it is like his own. Therefore he informs us [that even a stolen lulav is invalid].

 

Rava defends Shmuel, again claiming that the mishnah refers only to the first day. On subsequent days a stolen lulav is valid. The question now becomes why the mishnah mentions a stolen lulav and not a borrowed one. This was the difficulty raised on Shmuel and it must be answered. Rava answers that it is obvious that a borrowed lulav doesn’t belong to the owner. People don’t give up hope of getting back objects they loaned out (at least not immediately) and therefore, clearly the borrowed lulav can’t be used. The mishnah didn’t even need to teach this. However, we might have thought that a stolen lulav belongs to the one who steals it because the owner will immediately have despair of ever getting it back. Therefore, the mishnah has to teach us that this is not true. One cannot use a stolen lulav on the first day of the holiday because its owner does not automatically despair of recovered. However, on the second day and onwards, one can use the stolen lulav because one doesn’t need to own the lulav after the first day.