[Avodah] Techum Shabbat

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Aug 04, 2021 at 10:49:55AM +0200, Arie Folger wrote:
> RMB wrote in a different thread:
> Truth is, if you look at hilkhos techum
>> shabbos with all the clauses I added in the previous paragraph, I may be
>> living in a "city" that includes the a rectangle that goes beyond Boston in
>> the NE and Washington DC in the SW! Techum under these changed
>> circumstances...

> Actually,  wether a ribua' of te'hum is ever made that large is a matter of
> controversy. Arguably,  once it gets fairly large, the rule of a city like
> a keshet kicks in and we no longer have a major ribua', but rather a
> polygon made up of many large squares.

> There are views on both sides,  but the sanity check inherent in your
> posted comment makes the more restrictive view more reasonable.

My point of raising the topic of techum, and of the example before it,
Tefillas haDerech, was to suggest just the opposite!

How can a modern situation serve as a "sanity check" of a din made before
that situation was remotely possible, never mind commonplace? 

I wrote:
>> Why would that be a problem? If the situation doesn't arise, then the
>> chiyuv is not chal.

>> I am reminded of the AhS saying that there were few reshuyos harabbim
>> deOraisa anymore...

>> What I do see similar is the discusion on the thread about Tefillas
>> haDerekh from Lakewood to Monsey. Maybe today's urban sprawl means there
>> are far fewer opportunities to say tefillas haderekh.

I was suggesting that today's reality can have norms Chazal didn't write
their din for. And therefore the fact that a mitzvah now has little
applicability may NOT mean we're misunderstanding the limits Chazal set
to it.

When Chazal made the reduced measure for techum, there was nothing
similar to today's metropolis, never mind a chain of them in one big
Megalopolis like Boston-Washington.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 You are not a human being in search
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   of a spiritual experience. You are a
Author: Widen Your Tent      spiritual being immersed in a human
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    experience. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin