Succah – Ain Maavirin al Ha’mitzvos
The Avnei Nezer once gave a big Shabbos Teshuva drasha (speech) before Yom Kippur. In it, he said a very interesting chiddush (new idea):
When Yom Kippur falls out on Wednesday, that means the Shabbos in between is after Yom Kippur but before Sukkos. The Avnei Nezer said:
In such a case, you have to build your sukkah before Shabbos!
Why? Because you're not allowed to build a sukkah on Shabbos. So the time before Shabbos and the time after Shabbos are considered like two separate times. If someone waits and pushes it off until after Shabbos, it's like he is being "ma'avir al ha'mitzvos" — passing over a mitzvah and not doing it when the opportunity first came.
But there's a big problem:
Tosfos explains that the halacha of "ain ma'avirin al hamitzvos" (don't pass over mitzvos) only applies when you have two mitzvos in front of you and you pick the second one first. But if it's only one mitzvah, we don't usually say it.
The Avnei Nezer says: true, but if it's one mitzvah that comes up in two different times, then it's as if you have two mitzvos in front of you! And therefore even by one mitzvah we say ain ma'avirin al hamitzvos.
The Gemara in Megillah (6b) talks about a leap year. In a leap year there are two Adars. The question is: when should we read the Megillah — in the first Adar or the second Adar? One opinion says: read it in the first Adar, because of ain ma'avirin al hamitzvos. Meaning — even though it's one mitzvah (reading Megillah), since there are two different times you could do it, if you wait until the second Adar it's like you're passing over the first chance.
In the end, the halacha is that we read it in the second Adar, because we want to connect Purim to Pesach ("semichas geulah l'geulah"). But you see from here that there's such an idea — that even one mitzvah, if it can be done at two different times, has the rule of ain ma'avirin al hamitzvos.
Now, his talmid, the Chelkas Yoav, asked a question:
"How can you say Shabbos isn't a time to build a sukkah? It is the time — there's a mitzvah to have a sukkah ready for Sukkos! Just you can't build it because of the issur of melacha on Shabbos. So maybe you can't say it's a different zeman at all!"
Still, the Avnei Nezer stuck with his idea. Later, the Minchas Elazar also raised many questions on this Avnei Nezer. At the end, he commented: "This is what the Avnei Nezer chose to say in his big drasha? Either it's a chumra that doesn't make sense, or maybe his community was so full of tzaddikim that this was the kind of thing he spoke about with them!"
