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Darn ethics.
Our building has many tenants. Some of them own their apartments. Some rent. The yard is common ground.
It's pretty cool to have a yard around Succot time, and we want to build a succah in it. We wrote to the management asking permission; they said that the grounds aren't their responsibility and we'd have to contact the owner. However, they couldn't give us any contact information for the owner (?). Working from the premise that it's easier to gain forgiveness than permission, we went ahead and built it anyway.
Now. If you do mitzvot through naughty means, they tend not to work. That is, for instance, if you steal a lulav and wave it, you didn't do the mitzvah. You still have an obligation in lulav. Land - if you put up a succah without permission of the landowner, does that count as stealing the land?
The Beur Halakha seems to think that it's okay because, essentially, a) a succah is totally transient b) a succah doesn't do any damage c) we do have partial rights to the land, given that it's space for tenants. However, I think I shall be giving the super a Succot Gift of a nice bottle of something, since I don't suppose he cares for the opinion of the Beur Halakha.
Our building has many tenants. Some of them own their apartments. Some rent. The yard is common ground.
It's pretty cool to have a yard around Succot time, and we want to build a succah in it. We wrote to the management asking permission; they said that the grounds aren't their responsibility and we'd have to contact the owner. However, they couldn't give us any contact information for the owner (?). Working from the premise that it's easier to gain forgiveness than permission, we went ahead and built it anyway.
Now. If you do mitzvot through naughty means, they tend not to work. That is, for instance, if you steal a lulav and wave it, you didn't do the mitzvah. You still have an obligation in lulav. Land - if you put up a succah without permission of the landowner, does that count as stealing the land?
The Beur Halakha seems to think that it's okay because, essentially, a) a succah is totally transient b) a succah doesn't do any damage c) we do have partial rights to the land, given that it's space for tenants. However, I think I shall be giving the super a Succot Gift of a nice bottle of something, since I don't suppose he cares for the opinion of the Beur Halakha.