Public Access and the Use of the Street

The Torah category of reshus harabim is defined partly by the character of the place as a public domain. The earliest sources do not describe only a width of pavement. They identify places made for public travel, gathering, commerce, and passage.

Several different forms of public use appear in the classical sources. A seratya is a route between cities. A platya is a broad place where people gather. A mavo'i can acquire public significance through the reshus harabim into which it opens and through the people who pass through it. These uses should not be reduced to a single modern traffic statistic.

Seratya and platya describe different forms of public space

The baraisa in Shabbos 6a names the primary examples of reshus harabim:

סרטיא ופלטיא גדולה, ומבואות המפולשין

Rashi explains seratya as a road on which people travel from one city to another. He explains platya as a broad city space where people gather for commerce. He then explains the mavo'os as city passageways sixteen amos wide that are mefulash from both ends to the platya.

The distinction is important. The seratya is characterized by travel. The platya is characterized by public gathering and commerce. The Gemara includes both in its basic description of reshus harabim.

The Rambam similarly lists public places and routes in Hilchos Shabbos 14:1, including markets and public roads, subject to his stated conditions of width and roofing.

The passage of the public can determine the status of a particular place

The Rambam gives a striking example in Hilchos Shabbos 14:6. An area between pillars standing in reshus harabim remains reshus harabim:

הואיל ורבים דורסין ביניהן

“Since the public treads between them.”

The neighboring platform is treated differently. The distinction rests on the way the place is actually used for public passage.

The Rosh gives another example when discussing a mavo'i thirteen and one-third amos wide whose two ends open into a sixteen-amah reshus harabim. Quoting Rabbeinu Yitzchok, he writes that it is considered a Torah-level reshus harabim because the public passes through it. That formulation joins the route's public passage to its width and its connection at both ends.

The Alter Rebbe records the resulting thirteen-and-one-third-amah opinion in Orach Chaim 345:12, alongside the separate opinion concerning a narrower route that runs along the length of a reshus harabim.

Public use is sensitive to how difficult the place is to use

The halacha does not treat every inconvenience as removing a place from the public domain.

In Hilchos Shabbos 14:24, the Rambam discusses a shallow water crossing located in reshus harabim. If it is less than ten tefachim deep, he treats it as reshus harabim even when the crossing is broad and even though most people jump across it instead of walking through the water. Greater depth can change the classification.

The Alter Rebbe likewise gives detailed rules for places within reshus harabim according to whether and how the public uses them. In Orach Chaim 345:13, a place exactly nine tefachim high that the public uses for shouldering loads is treated as reshus harabim, even though it does not have the ordinary width of a road. If the public does not use it that way, its mere suitability for that use does not produce the same result.

These examples show that public use is a halachic fact of its own. The ease of use, the kind of use, and the actual behavior of the public can matter in different cases.

Public access and enclosure interact

Access also has to be read together with the laws of enclosure. A walled city with gates presents a different question from an open road.

The Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 345:7, discusses the gate-to-gate route in a walled city together with whether its doors are locked at night. The Alter Rebbe repeats this condition in 345:11. The route's public character is therefore affected by a genuine enclosing boundary and by doors that close it in the manner required by halacha.

Later Poskim discuss how far this principle extends and whether particular public spaces, such as a platya, are treated differently from the mavo'os of a walled city. Those disputes caution against creating a broad rule that any limited access, gate, toll, traffic control, or inconvenience automatically removes the status of reshus harabim.

Public use is a separate question from shishim ribo

The Alter Rebbe first defines streets, markets, roads, and mavo'os through their physical and public-route characteristics. He then records the additional opinion that a place is not a complete reshus harabim unless shishim ribo pass through it every day.

The requirement of shishim ribo is therefore a distinct disputed condition. Its meaning, whether the count attaches to a particular street or to the city, and how “every day” is understood are substantial questions in their own right.

For the narrower question of public access, the classical sources already require careful attention to what the place is for and how the public uses it. Seratya, platya, public treading between pillars, passage through a mavo'i, and the effect of city gates are separate pieces of that picture. A modern street should be analyzed through those categories before numerical traffic data is asked to carry more weight than the sources give it.