Today’s daf meanders into an examination of whether various Jewish laws apply to property that is jointly owned. Let’s look at one particularly famous example:
A parapet. Even though the Merciful One writes: “When you build a new house, then you shall make a parapet for your (in the singular) roof and you shall not bring blood upon your house, if any man falls from there” (Deuteronomy 22:8), your (roof), yes; that which is owned in partnership, no. Therefore, the Merciful One writes: “… if any man falls from there.”
The Torah requires that property owners create railings around their roofs, to prevent someone from falling off. The biblical command is in the singular, suggesting that this commandment is incumbent on people who own a property by themselves. But people who co-own a property are not off the hook — the anonymous voice of the Talmud reads the second half of the biblical verse as stating that the point is to prevent life-threatening danger. If unfenced roofs are dangerous, then whoever owns them, in whatever ownership configuration, must fence them off.
But for what purpose is “your roof” written? To exclude synagogues and houses of study.
Reading the verse as requiring the fencing of jointly owned roofs raises another question for the rabbis. If the law is applicable to groups, then why does the verse use a singular verb form instead of a plural verb form? The Talmud answers that the singular verb form excludes not jointly owned property but communallyowned property, like synagogues and houses of study. But why would synagogues and houses of study be exempt from preventing someone from life-threatening harm? Is this rule like the United States’ Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects houses of worship from “zoning and landmarking laws that substantially burden the religious exercise of churches or other religious assemblies or institutions absent the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest”? Are synagogues and houses of study exempt from building regulations because they are places of religious assembly?
Rashi offers two suggestions. First, that individuals and even groups don’t actually own synagogues and houses of study, for they belong “even to those across the sea.” A space that is owned by everyone actually has no legally responsible owner at all, and so no one who is required to put up a fence. Second, that synagogues and houses of study are not places of residence. In late antiquity, roofs were part of people’s homes. People did laundry and bathed on their roofs. In summer months, people slept on their roofs. But if synagogues and houses of study were not places that people actually lived, then perhaps their roofs were not used for such purposes and the risk of harm did not exist.
In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides ignores Rashi’s first interpretation, perhaps finding it uncompelling for some reason. But he agrees with Rashi’s second explanation, that synagogues and houses of study are not required to build a parapet because they are not residential.
There is, however, a slight difference in Maimonides’ language. Maimonides notes that synagogues and houses of study are not built to be places of residence, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t used that way sometimes. Perhaps we’re seeing the difference between how people thought about their roofs in France, where it was cold for much of the year, and Egypt, where the heat meant that sleeping outdoors on a roof could bring some relief. Perhaps there were times of year when it was so hot that synagogues and houses of study opened their roofs to those who did not have their own to let the community catch a breeze. Both Rashi and Maimonides, then, present us with a picture of sacred spaces as open to the community, whether for a sense of ownership or for periodic use.
We can only hope that these spaces, at least in their Egyptian context, had temporary railings put up in the summer months to prevent falls.
Read all of Chullin 136 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on September 13, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
Curious Minds Welcome. Whatever you're wondering about Judaism, My Jewish Learning has an answer, and it's free because readers like you make it so. Give to open more doors for Jewish discovery.
