Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Is a Street Intersected by a Roofed Area Considered Mefulash?

The Aishel Avraham (siman 345) maintains that streets are not considered mefulash if they are intersected by roofed [mikorim] roadways. As a snif l’heter there are poskim who maintain that since elevated train tracks and overpasses ― the equivalent of roofed roadways ― circumscribe our communities we can utilize the heter of the Aishel Avraham and our streets would not be considered mefulash. It is interesting to note that Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l (Igros Moshe, O.C. 1:140) also maintained that a street would not be considered mefulash if it is intersected by a roofed area. So it would seem that if Rav Moshe had known our neighborhoods, he would agree that our streets are not mefulash and therefore our communities would not be classified as a reshus harabbim. [See also Igros Moshe (O.C. 5:28:20) where Rav Moshe posits that while elevated train tracks do not bisect an area of shishim ribo into separate parts of less than shishim ribo, he admits that the intersected street is not considered mefulash.]

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The Bais Ephraim Revisited

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