Steal the turn

I don’t see a halakhic prohibition of stealing by skipping in line. There is nothing stolen here. The accepted custom is that services are provided in the order of arrival, and skipping violates this custom. There are no proprietary rights for anyone in anything here. But this is only in relation to the formal halakhic question. On the moral level, it is certainly completely wrong, and there is no reason for halakhic law to address this. A religious Jew, like any other person, is supposed to be committed to moral principles. Halakhic law is not needed for this, and that is not its purpose. See column 15 for details. Indeed, it is likely that bypassing the Torah is a violation of “loving your neighbor as yourself,” with no connection to the prohibition of theft, of course. But as mentioned, there is no need for this, since morality is binding even without the halacha.