The Rebbe on Publicizing an Eruv in a Large City: Yud-Beis Tammuz 5745

At the farbrengen of Yud-Beis Tammuz 5745, July 1, 1985, the Rebbe referred to a contemporary eruv question while making a broader point about halacha and changing circumstances. The passage is in Sicha 4. It begins at 28:14.9 in the public recording and continues for roughly a minute and a half.

Listen from 28:14.9 in the Ashreinu recording. The complete Sicha 4 is also available in the JEM audio collection on Chabad.org.

Why the Rebbe brought an eruv as an example

The subject immediately before the eruv passage is the obligation to influence non-Jews to observe the Sheva Mitzvos Bnei Noach. The Rebbe addresses an argument that if the Rambam had already ruled this way generations earlier, one could ask why earlier generations had not engaged in it in the same manner.

The answer is that a halachic obligation is applied to the circumstances that actually exist. Earlier conditions may have made a particular course of action impossible or dangerous. Changed conditions can therefore change what is practically required, even though the halacha itself has not changed.

The Rebbe then gives an example from the laws of reshus harabim. He refers to the ruling quoted in Shulchan Aruch that in the conditions then prevailing there was no ordinary reshus harabim because shishim ribo were not passing through. He then describes a later question that arose in a city where the relevant count had in fact reached shishim ribo or more.

The point of the passage

The Rebbe rejects the idea that an earlier statement about what was absent in practice can be used to deny a present reality once the facts have changed. In the recording he says that when the factual condition is present, there is no room to turn the earlier description into a fixed rule that such a case cannot exist. He characterizes the resulting status as:

"א זיכערע זאך אז ... א רה"ר דאורייתא"

In context, once the factual condition under discussion has been established, the place being discussed has the status of a reshus harabim d'oraisa. The Rebbe continues that one must be certain, or at least have a sufficient basis for concern, that the shishim ribo are actually present.

This is the same point preserved in the contemporary English rendering of the sicha: an earlier factual premise cannot override a later verified reality. The halacha is not changed by changed circumstances. Its application is.

What the recording identifies

The Rebbe does not name the city in this passage. He refers only to a city in which the relevant count had been made. Crown Heights is not mentioned, and the recording does not identify the example as Brooklyn, Manhattan, or any other particular city.

The passage also is not a full presentation of every condition that can enter the definition of reshus harabim. The Rebbe is using one changed factual condition as an illustration in a discussion whose principal subject is the Sheva Mitzvos Bnei Noach. Other questions in the halachos of reshus harabim, including the role of mefulash and physical mechitzos, have to be learned from the relevant halachic texts and from the Rebbe's other discussions of those subjects.

The significance of this recording is therefore precise. The Rebbe explicitly rejects using the phrase that there is no reshus harabim "nowadays" as though it could remain factually true regardless of present conditions. Where the condition under discussion has changed, the actual contemporary facts must be applied to the halacha.