By: Rabbi Shai Tahan

Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch wrote:

“In my humble opinion, according to what the Yereim (no. 427) wrote, that one fulfills the mitzvah of the festival through anything that brings him joy and satisfaction, if so, since he enjoys going on an outing, he fulfills through this the mitzvah of rejoicing on Yom Tov. Therefore, it is permissible to go on an outing during the festival and be exempt from the sukkah, when he cannot postpone the outing until before or after the festival, but rather it is necessary for him specifically to go on an outing during the festival in order to fulfill his mitzvah of rejoicing on the festival. And certainly this applies when, as is common, his wife and young children strongly desire to go on an outing with him, in which case it is a mitzvah for him to go out with them, as he thereby also fulfills his obligation to gladden his wife and household, which is a fundamental obligation of the joy of Yom Tov… Furthermore, it can be suggested that I saw it cited that there was someone who made a practice never to leave the sukkah, and the Chazon Ish questioned this practice, since this is not ‘as you dwell,’ for it is comparable to a prison.”

Nevertheless, one should be careful not to spend the majority of his time outside the sukkah, as doing so diminishes the character of the festival and turns these important days into ordinary weekdays.

A traveler can make a sukkah from his car and eat there as needed.

There are several ways to transform a car into a sukkah, provided that certain conditions are met. The following are the possibilities:

1. If there are two cars, they can be parked close to one another, with the sides of the cars serving as two walls. Since a kosher sukkah requires three walls, the door of one of the cars can be opened to serve as the third wall, after which schach can be placed on top.

However, it is important to know that a wall beneath which there is a gap of three tefachim (24 cm / approximately 9.5 inches) is invalid. Since there is generally a gap of three tefachim or more beneath a car, one should place something there to close the gap, or park the car next to a raised curb so that the gap is less than three tefachim.

Another point that must be considered is the height of the space beneath the schach. In a sukkah constructed as described above, the roof will generally be low, so one must ensure that the schach does not descend below ten tefachim, since the sukkah would then be invalid.

1. When there is only one car, it can be parked next to a fence or wall. The fence and the car can then serve as two walls, and by opening the car door, a third wall is created. Here too, one must ensure that there is no gap of three tefachim beneath the door.
2. In a car that has both a front door and a rear door, both doors can be opened, thereby creating three walls.
3. In a car with a sunroof that opens, one can place schach over the opening after opening the sunroof, and then sit beneath it and eat. One must ensure that the opening is at least seven tefachim (56 cm / approximately 22 inches) in both length and width. There must also be at least ten tefachim of open space beneath the sunroof, since the minimum height of a sukkah is ten tefachim.

Although the walls of the car may be some distance away from the place of the schach, this can nevertheless be permitted based on the halachah of dofen akumah, which is a halachah leMoshe miSinai. The principle of dofen akumah allows us to consider a section of an invalid roof extending from the wall toward the schach as part of the wall, up to a distance of four amot, on all four sides.