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Rema writes in his commentary to the Tur (OC 639):

והמרדכי בפרק הישן (סי' תשמא) כתב אבל העולם סמכו על דבר זה שיראים מן הצינה והוה כחולה שאין בו סכנה או כמצטער דפטורים מן הסוכה עכ"ל (עיין ב"י סימן תר"מ) ואפשר מזה נתפשט המנהג שרבים מקילים בשינת הסוכה ואף על גב דהטעם אינו מספיק שהרי ברוב המקומות אינו קר כל כך בימי הסוכות והיו יכולים לישן שם בכרים וכסתות.‏
The Mordechai wrote "the people rely on their fear of the cold [to avoid sleeping in the Sukkah] because it gives them the status of a sick person not in mortal danger or that of one in pain who are exempt from the Sukkah." And perhaps this is why the custom developed to be lenient in this regard, although this reasoning is not sufficient because in most places it is not too cold around Sukkos time and they could sleep in the Sukkah with [extra] blankets and pillows.

In other words, he is not impressed with the argument that it is too cold to sleep in the Sukkah in his town because one can always "bundle up" by bringing along an extra blanket.

What was the temperature like around Sukkot time where Rema lived? How does this compare to temperatures in, say, New York City?

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  • In the Shulchan Aruch HaRav 639:8 he writes that it depends on if you have enough pillows and blankets. i.e. there is no set temperature. He adds that even if you have enough, but it's it's such a trouble to have to remove them for mealtimes and then replace it each night that you would not do this in your home then there is room for leniency.
    – Ariel
    Commented Sep 30, 2012 at 10:22
  • @DoubleAA Note Rama to OH 639 (citing Or Zarua and others) that one is exempt from staying in the Succah once his Succah reaches a status that would precipitate (no pun intended) his leaving of his house. (It seems that unlike Radvaz, they understand the issue of rain to be a typical one of tsa'ar) . Numerous Rishonim explain the exemption of tsa'ar as being based on teshvu k'ein taduru. Note for example, the Aggudah (ch. 2: 26a) who writes אמר רבא מצטער פטור מן הסוכה ולא משמשיו. וכתב בספר יראים משום תשבו כעין תדורו ושיעור מצטער אם הי' יוצא חוץ לביתו מפני צער זה. [cont.]
    – mevaqesh
    Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 18:55
  • [cont.] Accordingly, I assumed that the benchmark would be whether for such cold they would leave their houses. Accordingly, to attempt to parallel the conditions of Rama, one would need to know how much colder their Succot were from their houses. || Do you disagree with this line of thought?
    – mevaqesh
    Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 18:57
  • @mevaqesh Yes, I do disagree. It doesn't matter how much colder the Sukkah is than the house. It matters if, were the Sukkah your house, would you leave? This depends solely on the temperature in the Sukkah. If you can assess that you'd leave the house at 45 degrees but not 46, then if it's 45 in your Sukkah and 46 in your house, you'd go inside. That's a difference of only 1 degree. On the other hand, if you assess you'd leave your house at 45 and it's 46 in the Sukkah and 75 inside, you still have to stay outside despite the 30 degree range.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 19:00
  • @DoubleAA Put differently, the degree which would cause them to leave their houses, might well be different from the degree at which we would leave our houses in NYC. Thus, we cannot simply apply the degree at which they would leave their houses / Succot as the benchmark for ourselves. We could, however, compensate somewhat by noting their indoor Winter temperatures. If these were significantly lower than ours, then maybe they had a higher cold tolerance.
    – mevaqesh
    Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 19:09

1 Answer 1

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Rabbi Moshe Isserles (Rema) lived most of his life in Krakow, Poland. Rabbi Mordechai ben Hillel Hakohein (whose explanation Rema rejected) lived at the end of his life in Nuremberg, Germany where he was murdered in a pogrom.

Sukkot always falls in September or October.

The following data is from www.weatherbase.com (degrees Fahrenheit):

September:       Average High | Average Low | Highest Recorded Temperature | Lowest
Krakow               64       |      48     |             84               |    28
Nuremberg            66       |      48     |             93               |    27
New York             76       |      60     |             99               |    40

October:         Average High | Average Low | Highest Recorded Temperature | Lowest
Krakow               55       |      40     |             79               |    19
Nuremberg            55       |      41     |             82               |    18
New York             65       |      50     |             88               |    29

This data is based on the last 30-50 years. Rema lived towards the beginning of the Little Ice Age in Europe so he might actually have been discussing even colder temperatures.

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  • I'm not sure the Average Low is the number you want, because for someone sleeping in the cold, the coldest number is what matters, not the average. So I've added that info (but note it's based on only 19 years worth of data for Krakow, which is very little).
    – Ariel
    Commented Sep 30, 2012 at 19:43
  • @Ariel Average Low is the average of all the lowest temperatures for each day of the month. Obviously there could be one day when it was really ridiculously cold, but we can only assume the Rema was talking about an average case when he said you should bring more pillows.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented Sep 30, 2012 at 19:47
  • I know, but average is a poor way of measuring this because if the temperature variance is large, warm days will counter cold days and the temperature will not seem too bad, when actually it was very cold sometimes. i.e. if one year it was in the 60's, and the next year in the 10's - the average will be 35 which doesn't seem bad, but the temperature was actually 10 sometimes which is much more extreme. (People don't complain about the average, they complain about the extreme.)
    – Ariel
    Commented Sep 30, 2012 at 19:51
  • @Ariel Showing the highest and lowest is just as poor a way of measuring it because they could just be freak occurrences. Unless you can find what the average temperature variance is, I'd assume it isn't unusually large.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented Sep 30, 2012 at 19:53
  • The Rama does not sound like he's only rejecting the cold heter in certain particularly warm years. If you want to say it was often 10 degrees then that's a huge chumra for the Rama.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented Sep 30, 2012 at 19:55

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