[Avodah] No Right to Mezuzot at Condos

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 04:07:21PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: 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.

You're assuming that ba'alus means ownership. However, a rentor who has
permission to hang a mezuzah is obligated to. Despite a lack of ownership.
Or in the reverse, if you own the property but can't move the resident
of the room around at will, you aren't obligated to hang a mezuzah.

It would seem that ba'alus, at least WRT mezuzah, has more to do with the
ability to control than with property. I would suggest this definition of
ba'alus holds bekhol haTorah kulah, with the exception of bal yeira'eh
bel yeimatzei. This is why (again, with that one exception) something
that has no mutar use is by default hefqer, something that was at the
core of one of the VIDC discussions (check the archive) -- if someone
who was oveir is niftar on Pesach, are the yoreshim obligated to destroy
the chameitz, or do they not inherit any?

: 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...

They /could/. I was repeating my old recollection of a theoretical
discussion of whether they /must/. It's not a "ein danin es ha'efshar
mishe'i efshar" argument. Rather than the presence of the rule shows
a lack of control that is granted to many tenants, and therefore less
ba'alus.

RDLifshitz's only chiddush, if any, is that he was willing to use
"permission to hang a mezuzah" as a measure of ba'alus, not only the
textbook criterion of control of who stays where.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Never must we think that the Jewish element
micha at aishdas.org        in us could exist without the human element
http://www.aishdas.org   or vice versa.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                     - Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch