[Avodah] everyone is a liar

[Daniel Israel]

Quoting Chana Luntz <Chana at Kolsassoon.org.uk>:
> Now it is interesting that the Shulchan Aruch does specifically note, based
> on the Yerushalmi, that the permission to dig up a grave found near a road
> is even if the road was built after the grave was buried.  Now why should
> this be?  Fine if somebody went and buried a body when there was an already
> existing road there, they should not be able to cause problems for the
> public by their act.  But why the other way around?  Surely it was the
> responsibility of the public in building the road to check carefully enough
> to ensure there were no graves under or near the road when they built it.
> And if they didn't do their due diligence carefully enough, then they should
> suffer the consequences.  But that does not seem to be the din.  In which
> case it is not so easy to see why there should be a difference between the
> situation where the public had already expended the money on purchasing the
> land and paying for the construction and the builders had gone in onto the
> land and started digging, to the minute the first person puts their foot
> onto the road to use it for its public purpose.

In general, I am not convinced by RZS's position on this issue, in  
metzius if not in din, but I would say you haven't fully made your  
case here.  Even if you read the SA to be allowing moving the grave in  
a case where the builder of the road didn't do his due diligence, it  
does not necessarily imply that l'chatchilah it was okay to build a  
road here.  Perhaps the builder should have checked, and should have  
not built the road here, but now that the road has been built, the  
entire community does not need to bear the trouble and expense of  
correcting the builder's error.

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu