In a situation where one roommate gives a friend permission to enter his room for whatever reason to take a nap in his bed or to take his sweater to wear … and the other roommate is makpid that this fellow not come into the room. Does the second roommate have the right to prevent the first roommate’s friend from entering the room? Would it make a difference if the roommate himself brought the friend into the room? Please provide mekoros. Thank you!
Answer:
It is permitted for the friend to enter, based on the permission he was given, but only for purposes that are common and normal for external parties to a room.
It is not normal for a friend to enter anytime he wants, and this would not be permitted. But it is normal to send a friend to take a sweater, or to permit him to take a nap, and this is permitted.
Sources:
The Mishnah (Nedarim 45) cites a dispute among tana’im concerning partners in a house, where one of the partners forbids, by means of a neder, a third party from entering the house.
The halachah, which emerges from the Mishnah and the Gemara (see also Tosafos, Bava Basra 57b), is that it is permitted for the third party to enter, provided that the house is not “bar chaluka,” meaning that it is not divisable.
A standard room is not divisable, and therefore it is permitted for the third party — the friend, in this case — to enter.
However, in ruling this halachah, the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 226:1, based on the Rashba in teshuvos meyuchasos 242) rules that the third party may only enter if he does so for the benefit of the roommate who allows him to enter. It is forbidden to enter for his own benefit.
The Rashba explains the reason for this, which is that roommates (or partners in general) agree that each should be able to make normal use of the room, so that when one is using the room, he makes use of his part, and when the other uses it, he makes use of his part. If the third party uses the room for the purpose of the roommate, he is therefore using “his part” of the room.
The principle, at any rate, is that the partners had this arrangement in mind when they became partners. In our case, the halachah will therefore depend on what is the normal arrangement for roommates, which is the arrangement they “agree on” by implication when they become roommates.
If it is normal (it often is) to allow somebody to come in and take a nap, then this is permitted, and the other roommate cannot object (unless the person in question does abnormal things). However, a third party can’t be given free and open access to the room, because this is not ordinary usage.
