DY (I refer to you because I it seems to me you are logic driven and not emotion driven, וד”ל):
As you so clearly wrote recently (and, like ujm pointed out, I wrote in my “summary”), your Tainah agaisnt MS is that the svarah is illogical, “backwards”. Why is it backwards? You explained twice:
“It’s backwards because it takes a mizvah and makes it k’ilu it’s chas v’shalom an aveirah (or at least a shortcoming that one isn’t “mitztaer”)”
“The notion that ideally one should be on a level to be so sensitive to the kedushah of the sukkah that he is mitztaer and therefore is pattur, is backwards.”
This seems to be one point (with two sides): The fact that MS’s svarah implies that it is a negative thing to sleep in the sukkah, and a positive thing to be on the level to not to sleep in the sukkah, is backwards – because the ideal thing is to do the mitzvah and sleep in the sukkah. If there is a p’tur, fine (like lighting indoors and eating outside on Shmini Atzeres), but it is “backwards to make the p’tur seem like a positive thing.
[I don’t really want to argue on behalf of MS, I don’t know what he holds, but I’ll do so anyway because I find this conversation entertaining and enlightening. So, read the following with the caveat that I don’t know if MS woud actually agree to any of this.]
It does not seem to me at all that it is made out to be a positive thing. From reading this shakla v’tarya, it seems to me that MS would say that the ideal would be to be so holy that their sleep in fine in the sukkah. (Like in the quote MS quoted before, which, being that you are trying to have a logical conversation with him, I am sure you actually read. After all, you can’t debate someone if you refuse to read their claims!) Just that since we are in Golus, our sleep is on a lower level, and therefore doing so in the sukkah woukd cause pain. To re-iterate, not that doing so in the sukkah is improper – just that it causes pain. The ideal (at least to me – MS, you are the one that actually knows the party line on this, so correct me if I’m wrong) that MS would hold, appears to be being on a level where you 1) feel the spirituality of the sukkah, and 2) are at the level where you still feel comfortable sleeping there. When will we reach this ideal? Knowing MS, he is bound to say “when Moshiach comes” :).
DY, this svarah seems very spiritual, and for regular people it seems like a svarah which you would never find in a gemarah or shulchan aruch etc, which is true. We are used to svaros grounded in cold, dry halacha, not in the spiritual realms of “Makkif of Binah”, whatever that is. However, Chassidim evidently do employ svaros like this.
To MS: Can you tell me if what I said above is correct? I was making a lot of assumptions on what you would hold. Also, can you explain the Chassidic practice to employ lofty and spiritual svaros such as this? Is there a precedent in halacha?