Q:
Why are women not included in the mitzvah obligation to dwell in a sukkah?
A:
The same question is, why don’t women have any mitzvah that has to be done at a certain time?
Now, this we have to understand is a question that’s possible to ask only in America in these times. Because in a normal society a woman has a big family; she has children of all sizes and she is so busy she doesn’t have time to do anything except the mitzvah of raising the family.
Even with all the conveniences of today; you have a washing machine, you have a dishwasher – a milchige and a fleishige dishwasher – you have electric broilers, you have everything, and still a mother of a family is busy day and night. And so who would be so cruel as to impose upon her the duty of doing mitzvos that depend on time?!
And so it’s enough if she does whatever she is obligated to do. That’s more than enough. There’s so much that a Jewish woman has to do when it comes to her family that she can’t have any spare time to look for other things.
Only a man can separate himself from the duties of the family enough to go to the synagogue every morning, for kriyas shma b’zmano, to go to at night to shiurim to learn Torah and to do time-dependent mitzvos like sitting in the sukkah.
Of course his wife is welcome to sit in the sukkah. The fact is that a sukkah has to be a fit place for a man to sleep together with his wife in the same sukkah. Certainly! But the obligation of a sukkah you can’t put on a woman because many times she has to be with the little babies in the house and she can’t pull all the little babies out into the sukkah.
And therefore, women are obsolved of these emergency mitzvos that depend on time.
TAPE # 271
