Reply To: Makom Kavua – Being Kicked out of your Seat

Its a real stretch to extend the inyan of chazaka in baba basra as cited above to stand for the notion of makom kavua and a license to demand someone who comes to daven change seats if there has been no financial commitment in relation thereto. If a shul wants to “reserve” particular seats for certain individuals, they should be clearly marked as such. In most shtieblach, one would logically conclude that a chair and shtender in the corner by the bimah piled high with seforim “is reserved” for the rav, gabbai, etc….not so for a unmarked seat in a row of otherwise identical seats in a shul with many rows of seats