my understanding of this gemara is that to qualify as a walled city, the city had to have been walled first and then settled. But if the city was first settled and only afterwards they erected a wall around the city then that city does not have the halacha of a walled city and they read on the 14th.
1. Is my understanding of the gemara correct?
2. Have you ever heard of a city that a wall is built BEFORE houses are built and move in?
3. Today, other than Yerushalayim is there any city that reads the megillah on the 15th?
4. If you don't know for sure which happened first, is the megillah read twice? If yes, on what day do you recite the berachos?
Thank you,
Allen Schuldenfrei, Baltimore, Maryland USA
1. Is my understanding of the gemara correct?
2. Have you ever heard of a city that a wall is built BEFORE houses are built and move in?
Your understanding of the Gemara is indeed correct, however it is not strange at all that in ancient times when a city was built that the walls would be built before the houses. There were times that living outside the walls of a city was unthinkable because of bandits or conquering armies. It could be that in certain times and places - for example the Roman Empire during the Pax Romana - there was enough political stability to build cities without walls as we are accustomed to today, but this was the exception to the rule in ancient times.
3. Today, other than Yerushalayim is there any city that reads the Megilah on the 15th?
There is only one other place in the world where the Jewish community reads the Megilah only on the 15th and that is the place where the story took place - Shushan ha'Birah. I have been told that there is a debate as to the location of the ancient Shushan, but an old Persian Jew who grew up in the modern Iranian city of Shush which is supposedly built on the ancient site of Shushan told me that they read Megilah only on the 15th.
4. If you don't know for sure which happened first, is the Megilah read twice? If yes, on what day do you recite the berachos?
You don't need to know for sure what happened first because we assume that the walls were built first (Shulchan Aruch 688:1). There are, however, places - like Yafo and Teveriyah - that read twice, but for a different reason. In the case of Teveriyah the Safek is whether a wall that doesn't surround the whole city (one side is the Kineret) is considered a wall regarding this Halachah. In the case of Yafo, the Safek is whether there was a walled city there since the times of Yehoshua.
The Berachos, in these places that read both days, are recited only on the fourteenth because this is when most of the Jewish world reads Megilah (Shulchan Aruch 688:4).
Kol Tuv,
Yonasan Sigler
This is not a Psak Halachah.