[Avodah] `Eruv hatzerot for hotel hallway?

[Zev Sero]

Michael Makovi wrote:

> If you stay in a hotel during Shabbat, in a place without an `eruv, do
> you have to make an `eruv hatzerot in order to be able to walk through
> the hallways?

No, but not for the reason you first offer.


> Hazal decreed that a common courtyard - which is a reshut
> ha-yahid - might be confused with a reshut ha-rabim / karmelit [...]
> A hotel is OBVIOUSLY a reshut ha-yahid, since it is OBVIOUSLY privately-
> owned, and it even has ceilings, unlike the common courtyard. 

This is not sufficient.  For instance, a block of flats/apartments is
the equivalent of a chatzer, and needs an eruv.  So does a shopping mall.



> My rabbi said this situation is more like a gigantic house with one
> ba'al ha-bayit in which you are renting one room, rather than like a
> common courtyard with multiple houses.

Not quite.  If you were actually renting your room, so that it was
your temporary property, then it would be no different from a block
of flats.  But the metzius of a hotel is quite different: you are not
a tenant, you are a guest, albeit a paying guest.  You have no baalus
over the room that has been assigned to you.  The owner's agents not
only have a key and the right to enter whenever they like, but they
do in fact enter at least once a day to clean, restock, etc.  The
owner can also move you to another room.  And the owner not only has
the right to store his goods in the room, but in fact does so -- all
the fittings, furniture, supplies, etc. that are in the room belong
to him, and he can retrieve and replace them any time he likes.

So your situation is the same as that of a guest in someone's house,
where there is only one baal habayis and therefore no eruv is needed.
The fact that you pay for the privilege of living there doesn't
change anything in this regard.  (It does mean that you have an
obligation of lighting nerot shabbat, and are not yotze with the
hotel owner's own lighting, even if he is Jewish and lights.
Hence if you do want to be yotze with his lighting you have to pay
him a prutah for a share in his candles.  When you are a non-paying
guest in someone's home, and your host is providing all your needs,
you are yotze with his lighting and have no chiyuv of your own at all.)


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher