Sukka 3 a, b

There must have been a good reason for the Sages to ignore the 20 cubit roof on Queen Heleni's  sukka.  Perhaps her sukka was in fact 4x4 cubits, in which case the height of the sukka might be acceptable.  Or perhaps it was her sukka alone, and her sons inhabited another larger sukka, thus leaving her alone with a very high roof - Queen Heleni is not obliged to sit in the sukka at all, as she is a woman, and thus her sukka need not be 'kosher'.  Perhaps her sukka was made of a number of rooms.   So many possibilities!  Is it also possible that our Sages overlooked her errors because she gave so generously to the Jewish people?

Our Sages consider the size of a sukka.  Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagree about both the minimum size of a sukka and about whether a sukka must fit a person's head, table, and most of his/her body.  This seems to be one of the rare cases where the halacha follows Beit Shammai on both counts.  

But how large does a house have to be in order for us to call it a house?  The rabbis share many arguments that prove that a house must be larger than 4 by 4 cubits. For example, laws regarding the sale of a home, leprosy of a home, placing a mezuzah on a home, and joining a home to other homes/communities through eruvin all require that that home is larger than 4 by 4 cubits.  Thus a sukka, which is a temporary home, must be at least this size.

In amud (b), the rabbis put much effort into understanding halachot regarding eruvin, connecting homes to establish a Shabbat limit in which people can carry.  They examine other times that we have used the measure of 4 by 4 cubits; other ways that we determine what is a house and what is not a house.  They even question other types of permanent and temporary dwellings.  All of these considerations help them to better understand the minimum area requirement of a sukka.  

What stands out for me as I read through today's daf is the detailed information shared regarding eruvin that was not included in Masechet Eruvin!  I learned that masechet with great effort and more than a little bit of determination, and I never came across some of the facts that a learned from today's daf in Sukka.  This experience makes me marvel yet again at the rabbis' abilities to cross-reference texts that have no clear beginning and no clear ending.  The Talmud is like a huge, circular bowl, where we can get swept into one current that reaches through time and place, focusing on one topic.  Or, instead, we could stick to one side of the bowl and understand all that was happening at one point in time, while missing out on the larger context.  Or we could dive in and out, continually coming across connected component.  It seems to me that the first time through the Talmud is like a brief introduction to that same text.  We have to know it to learn it, if that makes any sense.