Year: 2020

The Laws of Sukkah According to Dr. Seuss…

Rules of the Sukkah

Hag Sameach

Contributed by Rabbi Arthur E. Gould

You can build it very small1
You can build it very tall2

You can build it very large3
You can build it on a barge

You can build it on a ship4
Or on a roof but please don’t slip5

You can build it in an alley6
You shouldn’t build it in a valley7

You can build it on a wagon8
You can build it on a dragon9

You can make the skakh of wood10
Would you, could you, yes you should

Make the skakh from leaves of tree
You shouldn’t bend it at the knee11

Build your Sukkah tall or short
No Sukkah is built in the Temple Court

You can build it somewhat soon
You cannot build it in the month of June12

If your Sukkah is well made
You’ll have the right amount of shade 13

You can build it very wide
You can not build it on its side

Build if your name is Jim
Or Bob or Sam or even Tim

Build it if your name is Sue14
Do you build it, yes you do!

From the Sukkah you can roam
But you should treat it as your home15

You can invite some special guests
Don’t stay in it if there are pests

You can sleep upon some rugs
Don’t you build it where there’s bugs

In the Sukkah you should sit
And eat and drink but never spit

If in the Sukkah it should rain
To stay there would be such a pain16

And if it should be very cold
Stay there only if you’re bold

So build a Sukkah one and all
Make it large or make it small

Sukkah rules are short and snappy
Enjoy Sukkot, rejoice be happy.

[Return to article The Foods of Sukkot]

Notes

1Maimonides (RMBM) Mishne Torah, Hilchot Sukkah, Chapter 4, Section 1. The minimum height of a Sukkah is 10 tepachim. A tepach is a measure of the width of the four fingers of one’s hand. My hand is 3 1/4 inches wide for a minimum Sukkah height of 32 1/2 inches. The minimum allowable width is 7 tepachim by 7 tepachim. This would result in a Sukkah of 22 3/4 inches by 22 3/4 inches.

2The maximum height is 20 Amot. An Amah is the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. My Amah is 15 1/2 inches for a maximum height of 25 feet. Others say that 30 feet is the maximum.

3According to RMBM the Sukkah can be built to a width of several miles. Shulchan Aruch also says there is no limit on the size of the width.

4RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6.

5RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 11. RMBM states that one may construct a Sukkah by wedging poles in the four corners of the roof and suspending scakh from the poles. The walls of the building underneath are considered to reach upward to the edge of the scakh.

6RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 8-10 discusses the ins and outs of building your Sukkah in an alley or passageway.

7There is a location referred to in the Talmud called Ashtarot Karnayim. According to the discussion there are two hills, with a valley in between where the Sun does not reach. Therefore it is impossible to sit in the shade of the roof of the Sukkah. I can’t find the reference…hopefully next year.

8RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6. You can go into a Sukkah built on a wagon or a ship even on Yom Tov.

9RMBM Hilchot Sukkah Chapter 4, Section 6. OK, RMBM says a camel but dragon rhymes with wagon a lot better, don’t you agree. Anyway, RMBM says you can build your Sukkah on a wagon or in the crown of a tree, but you can’t go into it on Yom Tov. There is a general rule against riding a beast or ascending into the crown of a tree on Yom Tov.

10Chapter 5 deals with the rules for the scakh. Basically, you can use that which has grown from the ground, and is completely detached from the ground. So, for example, you cannot bend the branches of a tree over the Sukkah to form the scakh. But you can cut the branches from a tree and use them as scakh.

11This would be a violation of the rule cited in the prior footnote.

12Shulchan Aruch, Hilchot Sukkah, Perek 636, Section 1 The Sukkah should not be built sooner than 30 days before the Hag. However, if the structure is built prior to 30 days, as long as something new is added within the 30 days, the Sukkah is kosher.

13Of course it’s a well known rule that you must sit in the shade from the roof of the Sukkah and not in the shade that may be cast by the walls. It seems that this might affect the height of the walls, depending on the longitude of the location where you are building your Sukkah.

14Traditionally, women, servants and minors are patur from the Mitzvah of Sukkah. In our day we hope we know better than to read out half the Jewish people from the observance of Mitzvot. Of course, that’s just a personal opinion of the author.

15MBM ibid Chapter 6, Section 6 explains that you should eat, drink and live in the Sukkah for the 7 days as you live in your own home. One should not even take a nap outside of the Sukkah.

16 RMBM ibid, Section 10 If it rains one should go into the house. How does one know if it is raining hard enough? If sufficient raindrops fall through the scakh and into the food so that the food is spoiled—go inside!

© Rabbi Arthur E. Gould, Sukkot 1999–2001. Used by permission.

From ITOTD, here.

‘In Government, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure’

NASA’s Budget Rose by 56% After Challenger Exploded

Gary North – September 26, 2020

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. The seven crew members were killed instantly.

An investigation into the cause of this catastrophe revealed that the director of NASA had been warned not to launch that day. It was too cold. The engineers of the company that manufactured the first-stage rocket knew that there could be a catastrophic failure of what was known as the O-rings, which held the rocket together. They lost flexibility when frozen. The engineers had told the head of the project that this was a real possibility. They were all opposed to the launch. But the head of the project refused to block the launch.

This is not surprising. Wikipedia explains why.

By 1985, with seven of nine shuttle launches that year using boosters displaying O-ring erosion or hot gas blow-by, Marshall and Thiokol realized that they had a potentially catastrophic problem on their hands. Perhaps most concerning was the launch of STS-51-B in April 1985, flown by Challenger, in which the worst O-ring damage to date was discovered in post-flight analysis. The primary O-ring of the left nozzle had been eroded so extensively that it had failed to seal, and for the first time hot gases had eroded the secondary O-ring. They began the process of redesigning the joint with three inches (76 mm) of additional steel around the tang. This tang would grip the inner face of the joint and prevent it from rotating. They did not call for a halt to shuttle flights until the joints could be redesigned, but rather treated the problem as an acceptable flight risk. For example, Lawrence Mulloy, Marshall’s manager for the SRB project since 1982, issued and waived launch constraints for six consecutive flights. Thiokol even went as far as to persuade NASA to declare the O-ring problem “closed”. Donald Kutyna, a member of the Rogers Commission, later likened this situation to an airline permitting one of its planes to continue to fly despite evidence that one of its wings was about to fall off.

The company got its money from NASA. The head of the company did not want to anger NASA. So, the company pretended everything was all right, and this pleased NASA.

NASA then tried to cover this up. But it finally came out during the hearings.

At first, the head of the program, Stanley Reinartz, shifted blame to the manufacturer. He testified:

At the end of the two-and-a-half-hour period, including an approximately 35-minute-off-the-loop Thiokol caucus, and after their recommendation, their final recommendation, to launch, I collectively asked all telecon parties if there were any disagreement with Thiokol’s rationale and recommendation as stated by Mr. Kilminster.

There were none received from Thiokol at Wasatch, Marshall at Huntsville, nor Mr. McDonald, who was sitting with Mr. Mulloy and myself at KSC. Thiokol was then asked to document their verbal rationale and launch recommendation statement, as is our normal practice.

Based on the process I described and the conclusions reached as a result of that process, including the contractor recommendation and the Marshall engineering support, I concurred with the decision of the Level III project manager, Mr. Mulloy, supporting the launch recommendation and continuing with the launch process.

This was standard CMA testimony. But then the story unraveled.

What was the result? For the rest of the year, NASA’s budget remained the same. The next year, 1987, saw a major increase in NASA’s budget. Over the next few years, it rose 56%.

 

NASA's Budget Rose by 56% After Challenger Exploded

How could this be?

NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE FAILURE

In a profit-seeking company, failure leads to replacement of senior management if the failure is on the scale of the Challenger explosion. That is not how it works in a government bureaucracy.

In a government bureaucracy, almost no one is ever fired. It is too difficult to fire them. They’re protected by civil service laws. They are merely reassigned.

On April 3, 1986, this story appeared in The Los Angeles Times.

WASHINGTON —The chief of the space shuttle project office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has asked to leave the post “for health and other personal reasons” and will be replaced April 14, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Wednesday.

In a statement released in Washington and at the Marshall center in Huntsville, Ala., NASA said veteran rocket engineer Stanley Reinartz was being reassigned to his former position as manager of the space agency’s special projects office, a post he had held until he took overall responsibility for Marshall’s shuttle activities last August.

It gets worse.

Appearing before the presidential commission investigating the catastrophe, Reinartz acknowledged that he had made the decision not to inform top management of the extensive weather discussions held between Thiokol and NASA engineers on the night before launch.

Defended Decision

It was a decision that he staunchly defended in his appearance before the shuttle panel and again in a press conference after commission Chairman William P. Rogers declared that NASA’s decision-making process before the launch was “clearly flawed.”

Reinartz could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

He was allowed to retire quietly the following November. He took his pension and disappeared.

Why did he retire?

Officials at the Huntsville, Ala., center said Reinartz left the agency rather than be transferred to NASA headquarters in Washington to become deputy director for the shuttle support program.

“In lieu of accepting that position, he decided to exercise his option and retire,” said Marshall spokesman Terry Eddleman.

It was just too embarrassing to be demoted to mere deputy director of the shuttle support program. After all, he had run the program. The humiliation was just too much to bear.

Continue reading…

From Gary North, here.