The Rebbe on Hotza'ah and Shabbos in the Hadran on Maseches Eruvin

On 20 Menachem Av 5722, August 20, 1962, the Rebbe held a farbrengen connected with the yahrtzeit of his father, Harav Levi Yitzchok Schneerson. A siyum was made on Maseches Eruvin. The published transcript of the surrounding farbrengen is marked bilti mugah, but the text itself records an important distinction: the hadran was edited by the Rebbe and was later printed in Likkutei Sichos, volume 11, page 63 and onward.

The published text of the farbrengen and hadran should therefore be read according to that textual provenance. It is not necessary to reconstruct its substance from a later description or from a machine transcript of audio.

Why the siyum was on Eruvin

Before beginning the hadran, the Rebbe relates an episode involving his father while he was seeking semicha. During Sukkos, residents of a large courtyard had forgotten to make an eruv chatzeiros before Shabbos. A common sukkah stood in the courtyard, and the question was how they could bring their food to the sukkah.

Harav Levi Yitzchok answered that a separate eruv chatzeiros was unnecessary in that case because the common sukkah itself united the residents in their place of eating. The Rebbe then says that in continuation of this episode, the siyum would be on Maseches Eruvin.

Eruvin as a general expression of Shabbos

The hadran begins from the Rambam's explanation for placing Maseches Eruvin after Maseches Shabbos, because Eruvin is connected with Shabbos. The Rebbe develops this much further, saying:

"עירובין הוא כללות ענין השבת"

He explains that the distinction between inside and outside, and the movement from one reshus to another, expresses a broad structure that runs through Shabbos. The opening mishnah of Shabbos itself begins with the domains of the baal habayis inside and the ani outside. Hotza'ah therefore becomes a lens through which the hadran develops the meaning of Shabbos as a whole.

The discussion then moves from the halachic domains to their spiritual meaning. Shabbos expresses that the whole world belongs to Hashem, a reshus hayachid l'Yechido shel olam. At the same time, in avodas Hashem in this world there remains a necessary distinction between kedusha and chol, good and evil, and the different kinds of reshus become a framework for explaining those distinctions.

Reshus harabim in the hadran

When the Rebbe sets out the categories of Shabbos domains, he gives a concise description of a definite reshus harabim min haTorah:

"דרך מפולשת שרחבה ט״ז אמה, וששים ריבוא בוקעין בה"

The text thus places three elements together in this formulation: a way that is mefulash, a width of sixteen amos, and shishim ribo passing through it. It then contrasts this with a definite reshus hayachid and with intermediate cases, such as a courtyard containing several dwellings, which is a reshus hayachid min haTorah but may be prohibited for carrying miderabbanan until an eruv chatzeiros joins the residents.

This is significant when the Rebbe's later recorded comments about contemporary cities are studied. The Yud-Beis Tammuz 5745 sicha addresses a changed factual situation involving shishim ribo. The 5746 conversation with the Chief Rabbis includes the Rebbe's brief phrase "לא מפולש" while Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu describes the curved streets of new Yerushalayim. The hadran supplies a text in which both mefulash and shishim ribo appear together in the definition being discussed.

It does not follow that every later city can be classified from this sentence alone. The hadran is not a psak about Crown Heights, Manhattan, Yerushalayim, or Miami, and it names none of those places. Its relevance is that it gives the Rebbe's own edited textual treatment of the concepts at the heart of Maseches Eruvin.

The conclusion of Maseches Eruvin

The hadran continues to the final mishnah of the masechta and the two principles stated there by Rabbi Shimon. The Rebbe connects the Rabbinic permissions at the end of Eruvin with the larger distinction between Torah law and Rabbinic restriction, and then with the spiritual work represented by the different domains.

The center of the hadran is therefore much broader than the technical construction of a city eruv. It is a siyum on Maseches Eruvin that uses the halachos of domains, carrying, eruv chatzeiros, techumin, and Rabbinic permissions to explain the inner structure of Shabbos. For questions about the Rebbe's terminology concerning reshus harabim, however, its explicit formulation of mefulash, sixteen amos, and shishim ribo is an important text in its own right.