Interesting psak by the rabbonim of Sanz: building your sukka at night

Now is the season in which we hear Jews become carpenters. Everybody is banging away with a hammer on sukka boards. Some of us wait until after Yom Kippur, but plenty of people have already begun.

The construction of the sukkas can be heard, in religious neighborhoods, at all hours of the day and night. There is always someone invariably banging away at midnight or even 1am. I can pretty much sleep through a nuclear war, and if I was asleep that early on any given night, the noise of the hammer would not bother me. But it bothers other people.

The law says all such noise must be stopped at 11pm. The rabbonim of Kiryat Sanz have decided that 11pm is also too late and have said that people in their neighborhood should not make noise constructing their sukkahs after 10pm.

The reasoning used in the psak is very honorable, as it disturbs the elderly, sick and the children from their sleep. Even Yom Kippur does not atone for sins between man, so gezel sheina is very serious. Sukka should not be a mitzva achieved via a sin.