הלכה על מגילה 1:1

Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook (Igrot Hare’iyah 423) adopts an ostensibly similar yet fundamentally different approach to this issue in a brief but illuminating responsum to Rav Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky. The specific issue he addresses is whether a particular location should read the megillah on the fifteenth of Adar based on contemporary scholarship’s conclusion that the area was surrounded by a wall in the time of Yehoshua bin Nun.⁹Cities surrounded by a wall at the times of Yehoshua read the megillah on the fifteenth of Adar, while those that were not surrounded by a wall at that time read on the fourteenth of Adar (Megillah 1:1). Rav Kook writes (in 1912):

Longtime Beit El residents report that they have never heard of anyone in the city reading the megillah on the fifteenth. They follow the ruling of the longtime Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Beit El, Rav Zalman Melamed, who authored a responsum (Techumin 1:130-134) arguing that it is sufficient to read it on the fourteenth. Rav Melamed emphasizes that he believes the archaeological evidence to be so “far from certain” that “In [my] opinion, even a halachic safeik has not been created.” In a conversation with Rav Melamed in 2004, he confirmed that no one actually reads the megillah on the fifteenth in Beit El. He cited the practical difficulties associated with observing Purim on two days and the majority opinion amongst the poskim (based on the Yerushalmi, Megillah 1:1) that if a resident of a walled city (mistakenly) observes Purim on the fourteenth, he nevertheless fulfills his Purim obligations. Rav Ovadia Yosef also notes this last point in his responsum.