Q. My kids build almost every year an igloo to play, eat and enjoy there games with their friends. Since we live in Montreal, the igloo stays up for usually 3 months or more. We want to join them for fun this year and offer a kidush for our friends there (making the structure higher and larger). The door is about 1.20 m high. Do we have to or should we place a mezuza? Should we put a wooden frame with a straight lintel? Do we make a bracha? (We are very interested in placing a mezuza, to impress on our not so frum neighbors and their children).
A. Shaarei Hamezuza (4: 4: n. 8) quotes from the Hirsh Chumash that during the forty years the Jewish nation traveled through the desert, they were not ordained to place mezuzos on their tents as they were only a temporary dwelling. Only when they were about to enter Eretz Yisroel, (Devorim 6: 9) the mitzva of mezuza was given to them.
However, Pischei Sheorim (144: p. 165) rules that although a temporary dwelling such as a sukka or a tent does not require a mezuza, if one intends to use it as a habitation unit for thirty days or more, if it fulfills the size requirements (minimum area of 2m. x 2m.with a height of more than 1m.) a mezuza should be installed. Chovas Hador (4: 3: n. 8) maintains that if it was built to stand over seven days it may require a mezuza as temporary stores in a market place do.
The doorpost of an archway that is at least 1m high even if the lintel is not straight requires a mezuza. as does a circular building with a dome or a cone shaped roof on top. (Shulchan Aruch Y.D. 287: 1, Pischei Sheorim p. 176).
An igloo, as opposed to other temporary tents, may have an additional drawback that it will certainly melt by itself eventually, and in this particular case, it is not used for sleeping.
Horav Shlomo Miller’s Shlit’a opinion is that an igloo is exempt from mezuza since it is similar to a house on a boat that Shulchan Aruch (286: 11) rules is exempt.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit’a