[Avodah] Open Door Policy

[Ken Bloom]

T613K at aol.com wrote:
> From: Harvey Benton harveybenton at yahoo.com <mailto:harveybenton at yahoo.com>
>
>
> >>Sometimes a married woman finds herself in a situation where she may 
> need to be secluded with a man who is not her husband.  For instance, 
> if she visits a doctor or dentist, or has a repairman over her house 
> to fix something.... <<
>  
> >>>>>
>  
> My understanding is that in her own home, there is no problem with the 
> occasional man coming in as long as her husband is not out of town -- 
> "ba'alah ba'ir" -- and could theoretically walk through the door at 
> any moment (even though she knows he is at work -- but he could still 
> come home unexpectedly, and he does have a key to his own house!).
>  
> At the doctor's office or dentist's office, it would be a rare office 
> where the doctor and the patient were the only people present and 
> there was no chance of a nurse or receptionist coming through the 
> door.  Nevertheless many doctors have a policy of explicitly asking a 
> nurse to stay in the room with them when they are examining female 
> patients, in order to protect themselves from wild accusations made by 
> mentally unbalanced women.  Even though I am not mentally unbalanced 
> and would not make wild accusations against my doctor, in the unusual 
> case that he does not call in a nurse, I request that he do so.  I 
> simply feel more comfortable with another woman in the room.  I have 
> never known a doctor to hesitate or mind in the slightest when such a 
> request is made.
>  
> AFAIK halachically it is not necessary that another person be present 
> in the room, only that the door is unlocked and other people are 
> nearby and could theoretically enter.
>  
>  
> The case of a single, divorced or widowed woman, with no children at 
> home, who needs a repairman -- that is more difficult.  I guess that 
> leaving the front door open would help, or calling in a neighbor. 
>  
This could also be a situation where the husband isn't in the city, and 
that doesn't just have to mean he's traveling. According to sefer 
Minchat Ish on Hilchot Yichud, ba'alah ba'ir applies to areas that 
people call by the same city name. This leads to the rather paradoxical 
situation that one rabbi in Chicago whose shul is a half mile away from 
his home, on the Evanston side of the Evanston-Chicago border, would not 
be ba'ir if his wife were expecting a repairman and he was at shul. On 
the other hand if he were over 20 miles away on the Chicago side of the 
south border of the city he would be ba'ir.

Besides that, wouldn't the repairman also have to have ishto imo, not 
just ba'ir? (Or does either of these halachot suffice to permit yichud?)

--Ken
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