Internet, Privacy, and Progressive Halakhah

make a loan of any sort to your neighbor, you must not enter his house to take his pledge. You must remain outside, while the man to whom you made the loan brings the pledge out to you.” Jewish law ultimately determined that this prohibition applies not only to the creditor himself but also, with some limitations, to the court bailiff(sh liach beit din).’* This specific legal protection may bear some relation to ethical teachings that stress the inviolability of a person’s home. For example,“One should never enter the home of another without warning. Let every person learn this proper behavior(derekh eretz) from God Himself, who stood at the entrance of the Garden and called out to Adam,“Where are you? (Genesis 3:9)” This advance warning, writes one leading commentator, is necessary because“the occupants of the house might be engaging in intimate activities(milta d’tzn iyuta).”®

2) The tort of“overlooking” into another person’s premises (hezek r'iyah).“When neighbors own jointly a courtyard that is large enough to be divided, any one of them may require the others

to erect a partition in the middle of it so that each one may use his portion of the courtyard without being seen by the others. We hold that damage resulting from sight(hezek r'iyah) is real damage(i.e., an actionable tort).”' Similarly, a person sharing a courtyard with a neighbor can restrain that neighbor from creating a window that opens onto the courtyard,“because the neighbor can gaze at him through it”; if the neighbor creates the window, he can be sued to block it up.” The aggadic tradition attributes the rule of hezek r’iyah to Balaam ’s famous words of praise—“how goodly are your tents, O Jacob”- spoken because the Israelites made certain that the openings of their“tabernacles” did not directly face each other. Nobody gazing out of the doorway of his own dwelling could see into another’s home.®> Why is“overlooking” considered to be an actionable damage? Nachmanides ® suggests three possible answers: because of the“evil eye”; because of the potential for gossip; and because of tzniyut,“modesty,” the demand that a Jew conduct his personal life with restraint and keep his intimate affairs away from the public gaze. The theme of tzniyut is also Present in the writings of Nachmanides ’ student, R. Sh’lomo ben