Individual Streets and the City as a Whole

The halachos of reshus harabim speak at more than one geographic scale. Some rules describe a particular road or mavo'i. Other rules describe a walled city, the public routes joining its gates, or the public use of a city as a whole. A modern-city analysis has to keep those levels separate.

This matters directly in Crown Heights. It is possible to ask about the width and course of one street, the relationship of that street to the surrounding street network, and the status of Brooklyn as the larger urban area. Those are related questions. They are not automatically answered by the same measurement or the same sentence in Shulchan Aruch.

Some conditions are stated about the particular road

The Gemara in Shabbos 99a gives sixteen amos as the width of a reshus harabim. The Rambam, Hilchos Shabbos 14:1, applies that measurement to the road itself. The Shulchan Aruch and the Alter Rebbe likewise discuss streets, roads, and mavo'os by their width and by what they open into.

The Alter Rebbe's Orach Chaim 345:11 is especially explicit. Intercity roads are included when they are sixteen amos wide. Mavo'os sixteen amos wide are included when they are mefulash from street to street or from streets into qualifying intercity roads.

These are route-level descriptions. They require looking at the street or mavo'i being classified.

A street is not always treated as a collection of isolated blocks

The next se'if shows that street-level analysis does not require starting the classification over at every point where the road narrows.

In 345:12, the Alter Rebbe discusses mavo'os open to reshus harabim at both ends and running along its length. Even when they are narrower than sixteen amos, the first opinion treats them as a complete reshus harabim because they are:

כרשות הרבים ארוכה שנתקצרה בקצתה

“like a long reshus harabim that became narrower in part.”

The direction of the narrower route matters. The Alter Rebbe distinguishes a route running along the length of the reshus harabim from one running across its width. He then records a second opinion under which thirteen and one-third amos is the relevant minimum for the narrower mavo'i.

This is a concrete example of connected-route classification. The larger road can affect the status of a narrower continuation, while the geometry and width of that continuation still matter.

A walled city introduces a city-level enclosure

The Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 345:7, also speaks about the city as an enclosed unit. Streets and marketplaces meeting the stated conditions can be reshus harabim where there is no surrounding wall. When there is a wall, the halacha turns to the public route running from gate to gate and to the status of the doors.

The Alter Rebbe explains that the gates in that case are aligned opposite one another and that the route joining them is the one with the law of reshus harabim when it meets the stated width and door conditions.

Here the city boundary changes the question. One cannot take the gate-to-gate language from a walled city and assume, without further analysis, that it functions identically in a city whose streets have no enclosing city wall.

Rav Moshe distinguishes the street's width from the city's public classification

Rav Moshe Feinstein makes the street-and-city distinction especially explicit in his later treatment of large American cities (Igros Moshe, Orach Chaim V, siman 28).

In discussing an unwalled city containing the public number that, according to the relevant opinion, gives significance to reshus harabim, Rav Moshe separates two ideas. He refers to the sixteen-amah measurement of the street, while explaining that the city's exits need not be aligned or mefulash in the special gate-to-gate manner of a walled city. He applies this analysis to Brooklyn and other American cities without a surrounding wall.

Elsewhere in his responsa, Rav Moshe also develops a city-wide approach to the shishim-ribo question. The meaning and calculation of shishim ribo require their own treatment and are addressed separately. For this page, the important point is structural: Rav Moshe does not force every criterion into one identical street-level test.

“City-wide” does not mean that every place in the city has the same status

City-wide considerations can affect the classification without erasing the distinctions between roads, mavo'os, enclosed areas, and places that are difficult or unsuitable for public use.

The Rambam, for example, distinguishes the public route from an adjacent platform and from the sides of the reshus harabim. The Alter Rebbe likewise gives separate rules for the road itself, narrower continuations, objects and depressions within it, and places actually used by the public.

Accordingly, there are two opposite shortcuts to avoid. One cannot insist that every criterion mentioned anywhere in the sugya must be reproduced independently on each city block. One also cannot take one city-wide fact and use it to classify every street, alley, yard, and enclosed place alike.

A sound modern-city analysis asks where each condition attaches according to the particular shita: to the street, to its public connection, to the city's enclosure and gates, or to the public population and passage associated with the city. Only after that distinction is made can the separate facts of Crown Heights and Brooklyn be applied accurately.