Eruvin 94 – Broken wall

If one of the walls of a courtyard completely collapsed, then this courtyard becomes a public area, and one who carries an object on Shabbat from a house to the courtyard has violated Shabbat and needs to bring an offering for his mistake – that is the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer. The Sages, however, say that the courtyard is not really public – people still do not walk there freely, but rather it is a “karmelit,” meaning an area through which passers-by go only occasionally. How could they disagree to this extent? The truth is that they don’t argue about the complete courtyard, but only about the area where the wall stood. Rabbi Eliezer says that people now do walk there, and the Sages – that they did not do walk there before and don’t really walk there even now.

If a courtyard was broken through on two sides, one can still carry there, but only this Shabbat, and not the next – these are the words of Rabbi Yehudah, but the Sages say that it should be consistent on every Shabbat. What is the situation? If the breach is less than ten steps – it is a door, and even two doors do not make the courtyard lose its private status. And if the breaches are wider than ten steps, then even one of them makes the courtyard open, and we do not need the case of two!? Rav explained that here we are dealing with a breach in the corner of the courtyard, and people don’t normally walk through such breaches. This is why even with two broken walls the courtyard can still retain its private status.

Art: The doorstep encounter by Eugene de Blaas 1843-1932