Mefulash: A Street Open From End to End

Mefulash is one of the oldest terms in the definition of reshus harabim. It describes a route that is open through to another public area or route. Its exact application depends on what kind of place is being discussed, what lies at its ends, and which source is defining it.

The word therefore carries more information than the simple statement that a street has no wall at one end. The classical sources describe where a mefulash route leads and how its public passage is connected.

Mefulash appears in the Gemara's basic definition

The baraisa in Shabbos 6a gives the foundational list:

איזו היא רשות הרבים, סרטיא ופלטיא גדולה, ומבואות המפולשין

“What is reshus harabim? A seratya, a large platya, and mavo'os that are mefulash.”

Rashi explains the three examples. A seratya is a road on which people travel from city to city. A platya is a broad city space where people gather for commerce. The mavo'os are city passageways sixteen amos wide, and Rashi explains “hamefulashin” as open from both ends to the platya.

Already in this first definition, mefulash is relational. The mavo'i is being described by its open connection into a public place.

The Alter Rebbe identifies what the mavo'i opens into

In Orach Chaim 345:11, the Alter Rebbe includes among the forms of complete reshus harabim:

מבואות רחבים ט"ז אמה המפולשים מרחוב לרחוב או מרחובות לדרכים הרחבים ט"ז אמה

These are mavo'os sixteen amos wide that are mefulash from one street to another, or from streets into intercity roads that are sixteen amos wide.

The formulation matters. A mavo'i is not described as mefulash merely because both ends are physically open. The stated case connects public routes to public routes.

The next se'if gives another form of the same idea. A mavo'i can be open to reshus harabim at both ends and run along the length of that reshus harabim. Under the first opinion recorded there, the narrower mavo'i can share the status of the longer reshus harabim. Under the additional opinion, a width of thirteen and one-third amos is required for the narrower mavo'i. The Rosh, quoting Rabbeinu Yitzchok, explains that latter case by adding that the public passes through it.

Mefulash, width, direction, and public passage are therefore related factors. They remain distinct factors in the text.

A bent route can still have the law of a mefulash mavo'i

The phrase “open from end to end” can sound as though the two openings must be visible on one straight line. The Gemara's discussion of a bent mavo'i shows why that assumption is too broad.

Eruvin 6a discusses a mavo'i akum, a mavo'i with a bend. Rav rules:

תורתו כמפולש

“Its law is like a mefulash mavo'i.”

Rashi explains that the opening at the bend into the adjoining mavo'i is treated as an opening onward, and the two outer heads open toward reshus harabim.

This sugya is about the required corrections for a mavo'i and does not itself decide whether any modern bent street is a Torah-level reshus harabim. Its terminology does establish an important point: mefulash does not itself mean geometrically straight.

That is why Rashi can separately use the word mechuvan, aligned, when discussing the route from one city gate to the gate opposite it.

Walled cities use mefulash in a further context

The Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 345:7, says that streets and marketplaces meeting the stated conditions can be reshus harabim when the city has no wall. Where the city is walled, it gives the case of a route that is mefulash from gate to gate, with the doors governed by the law stated there and in siman 364.

The Alter Rebbe explains that phrase as gates aligned opposite one another. This is a more specific walled-city use of the concept. It combines through-passage with the alignment of the gates.

Rav Moshe later argues that this gate-to-gate requirement does not govern the exits of an unwalled American city in the same manner. His analysis of Brooklyn treats the absence of a city wall as halachically significant for this question.

Mefulash is one part of the classification

Whether a route is mefulash can be decisive in a particular source, yet the word does not carry every other condition of reshus harabim inside it. The sources separately discuss sixteen amos, public passage, walls and doors, roofing, and the disputed requirement of shishim ribo.

For that reason, the careful question about a city street is: mefulash to what, and under which definition? A sixteen-amah mavo'i opening from one public street to another is one stated case. A narrower continuation along a reshus harabim is another. A walled city's gate-to-gate route is another. A bent mavo'i has its own sugya.

Keeping those cases distinct preserves the meaning of the term and prevents one formulation from being made to govern every street in every city.