[Avodah] No Right to Mezuzot at Condos

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:

> RDL suggested (my memory is that RDL was speaking lehalakhah with no
> consideration of lema'aseh) that if the person doesn't have control over
> whether or not he can hang the mezuzah, he lacks sufficient baalus over
> the condo to require him to hang it anyway.

If the law gives your neighbours the right to prevent you from painting
your house with bright purple and yellow stripes, does that mean you
don't own it?  A condo (as opposed to co-op) owner owns his own apartment
absolutely; his neighbours can only object to what he puts in *their*
corridor.

In this case the owners retain the right to put up a mezuzah, but only
inside; the fight is over whether they can put it up where lechatchila
it belongs, on the outside.  My sympathy is certainly with them, but in
the meantime they can put it up inside.  It's certainly not true, as
they are reported to have claimed, that the rule makes it impossible
for an O Jew to live there.  If you want to drive your O neighbours
away, the thing to do is to put up sensor-driven lights on Shabbos :-)

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas