The need for 600,00 to make an area a reshut harabbim

Work in progress:
The following is largely based on a shiur Rav Schachter gave. You can see my notes here.

While a tzurat hapesach can form a valid mechitza and thus render an area reshut hayachid, the passing of the public into the area can cancel those mechitzot. This is based on a gemara regarding making pasim for wells, where the public passage cancelling mechitzot is a matter of dispute. However, we determine that all agree to the principle of public passage cancelling mechitzot, but only in non-strong mechitzot. What consititutes a sturdy wall is the matter of the dispute.

Tos' makes an "innocent comment" (see first shiur) that he thinks that public passage cancelling mechitzot is only an issue if the wall is needed Biblically. By a mavoi open on one side, since Biblically only three walls are needed, the fourth wall does not help Biblically, for it is already a reshut hayachid. In such a case, even by a non-strong mechitza, public passage would not cancel its status.

This innocent comment was extended to say that any time the status is only Rabbinic and not Biblical in nature, we need not worry about public passage canceling a flimsy wall. So, while Tos' spoke only of a fourth wall, it was extending to every karmelit.

This was very useful in Europe, where the Jews could not restrict traffic, but they could set up these flimsy walls - via tzurat hapesach. (Assuming tzurat hapesach is a flimsy wall. The case in the gemara was pasim. If not, we would not have to worry even in a Biblically prohibited reshut harabbim.) If they could declare an area a karmelit, and thus only Rabbinic in nature in terms of its prohibition of carrying or transferring, then the public passage by gentiles, which the Jews could not prevent, would pose no problem.

As a result, the parameters of what a karmelit is and a reshut harabbim is is vitally important to our ability to make "eruv"s back then, and nowadays as well.

One such important issue is the idea presented by Rashi and Tosafot that an area is not a reshut harabbim (but is rather a karmelit) unless it has 600,000 people in it or passing through it. On the basis of this, towns of Jews all over Europe declared that their towns did not possess 600,000 residents, and was therefore a karmelit, and based on the extension of Tos' innocent comment, they could make eruvim for their towns and not worry about "asi rabbim umevatlei mechitzta," the public passage destroying the walls. This was not a universally accepted ruling.

Let us now turn to examine the basis of the claim that 600,000 is necessary to make a reshut harabbim.

This is based on a gemara in Shabbat 6a-6b.

On 6a, the gemara cites a brayta:
"The rabbis taught: There are four kinds of premises as regards the Sabbath--viz.: private ground, public ground, unclaimed ground, and ground that is under no jurisdiction. What is private ground? A ditch or hedge that is ten spans deep or high and four spans wide--such are absolutely private grounds. What is public ground? A country road or a wide street, or lanes open at both ends--such are absolutely public grounds."

On 6b, Abaye contrasts this brayta with another one, which has an additional reshut harabbim - a desert - listed.

"Why does not the Boraitha count the desert also, for have we not learned in a Boraitha: Public ground is constituted by public roads, wide streets, alleys that are open at both ends, and the desert? Said Abayi: It presents no difficulty. There when Israel dwelt in the desert; here, in the present time." {J: some editing of the translation was in order to make it more literal and not grant a specific interpretation.}

Tosafot (6b) comments, "This implies somewhat that it is not a reshut harabbim unless 600,000 are found there as in the desert {J: when the Jews were in the desert}.

It seems fairly clear that Tos connects this statement of Abaye with another oft-occuring statement in the gemara that restricts reshut harabbim to domains which are similar to the encampments in the desert. Thus, for example, if the area has a roof, it lacks the unroofed property of the Jewish encampments. And just as lack of a roof is a necessity both in a desert and within all other possible reshut harabbim, so too 600,000 is a necessity in all forms of reshut harabbim - all based on the necessity of being like the encampments of the Jews in the desert.

To be continued in this post...