One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הלכות שכנים
Shcheinim 1-3
Sefer Kinyan · Neighbors · when jointly held property can be forced apart, the four cubits every doorway owns, and who pays for the wall that stops one neighbor seeing the other
4
Cubits by four, or it is no courtyard
9
Kabbim sown, or it is no field
36
Trees before a Babylonian orchard divides
10
Handbreadths of divider between two roofs
Ch 1When Partners Can Be Forced Apart
- Division is compelled only if the property is big enough. In any joint ownership, whether by buying half, buying together, inheriting, receiving a gift or taking ownerless land, one partner's demand to divide is enforced if the property is large enough to divide, and refused if it is not; movable property follows the same rule. Where one partner already recognizes a specific portion as his own, either may compel a divider between the portions even though the whole is too small to divide (1:1)
- Large enough means the piece keeps the name of the whole. Even the smallest resulting share must still be callable by the name used for the entire entity: a courtyard needs four cubits by four for each partner, a field enough to sow nine kabbim, a garden half a kav, an orchard three kabbim. In Babylonia the measures become labor instead: a day of plowing, thirty-six trees, which is one man's day of tending, or a workman's day of watering (1:4)
- Either sell me yours or buy mine. For something indivisible, a maidservant or a utensil, a partner may name one price and force the other to buy at it or sell at it. But a partner who does not want to buy, or has no means to, cannot be forced to buy even at a low market price, since he may answer that he wants to sell. If both will only sell, the property is sold to outsiders (1:2-1:3)
- Nobody can be made to accept a gift, and nobody shares by alternate days. An offer to take the smaller portion and leave the larger need not be accepted, because the other may say he does not want to receive a gift; the value is assessed instead. Property fit to rent is rented and the rent split; a courtyard is occupied a year at a time, since a man will not trouble himself to move every thirty days; a bathhouse, a mattress or a Torah scroll are used by both at all times (1:2, 1:5)
RememberA share too small to carry the name of the whole has not been divided, it has been ended, and the law will not do it
Ch 2Four Cubits, and the Wall Against Being Seen
- Four cubits per entrance, granted only so a man can unload. Every opening onto a shared courtyard takes four cubits for the full width of the opening, and the remainder divides only if each partner also receives four cubits by four beyond that. Because the sole reason is unloading a burden, a hall one can enter still carrying the load gets none, a chicken coop none, a house roofed over only half none, and a house smaller than four cubits by four none; a doorway merely blocked up keeps its four cubits, a doorway demolished and sealed loses them (2:1-2:8)
- Invasion of privacy is damage, and years of openness establish nothing. In a courtyard large enough to divide, or one divided by consent though it was not, either partner compels the other to share in building a wall down the middle so that neither sees the other using it, because hezek re'iyah counts as damage. No chazakah forms: even after many years without a divider, one partner may compel it whenever he wishes (2:14)
- The wall: its height, its material and the land it eats. The space comes from both partners, the width follows local custom, and even reeds or palm leaves serve so long as no gap lets one neighbor see the other. Height is no less than four cubits; a garden divider is ten handbreadths; open fields need nothing unless custom requires it. Each partner gives three handbreadths of land for unhewn stone, two and a half for hewn stone, two for broken brick, a handbreadth and a half for brick. A man building on his own land marks the outer face with about a cubit of mortar (2:15-2:16, 2:18)
- Dividing extinguishes easements, but only between people who took from one hand. Brothers who divide an estate are treated as having bought from each other, so none may claim a right of passage, a ladder, a window or an irrigation channel, and either may dam the ditch or block up the window that overlooks him; two who bought one field from a single seller are the same. But two who bought from two sellers, or from two brothers, may change nothing the sellers had established, even where it damages the other (2:12-2:13)
RememberA courtyard open for decades is still walled on demand, and the neighbor who grew used to the view pays half the cost
Ch 3Who Pays, and For How Much Height
- Rebuild to four cubits; pay above it only once you show you wanted it. A fallen dividing wall is rebuilt at joint cost to four cubits and no higher. If one partner raised it to ten alone, and the other later builds a wall of his own six cubits high opposite or beside it, he pays his share of the two cubits of extra height facing his wall, since he plainly desired them. If instead he hews a socket in the top or rests a large beam there, he pays his share of all six added cubits although he built none of it (3:1)
- Same wall, two different oaths. On the compulsory four cubits, a defendant who claims he already paid is believed, takes a sh'vuat hesset and owes nothing further unless the plaintiff proves he did not pay. On the height above four cubits his claim is not believed; the plaintiff takes an oath holding a sacred article and expropriates the money, unless the defendant brings proof of payment (3:2)
- Three walls buy nothing; the fourth buys all four. A man whose ruin sits among a neighbor's ruins pays nothing when one, then a second, then a third side is enclosed, because his ruin still opens to the public domain as before and the building is of no benefit to him. Once the fourth side closes it in, he pays half the cost of four-cubit walls on all four sides. A man who closes the fourth side himself has revealed his consent (3:3-3:4)
- Roofs, shared water, and the ways of peace. Adjoining roofs that are lived on need guard rails built past the midpoint so the two owners cannot see each other, since the public sees a man only by day on his roof while his neighbor sees him at all times; between two roofs nobody lives on, ten handbreadths suffice, so that a crossing is obviously a theft. Of five gardens on one spring each shares in the repairs upstream of him and the lowest shares in all; along a river the order follows position, whoever overcomes the other prevails, and a cistern beside the ditch is filled first for the ways of peace (3:5-3:10)
RememberYou are never charged for your neighbor's ambition, only for the moment your own building reveals that you wanted it too