Eruv

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Eruv (עירוב) (or Eiruv or Erub) (plural Eruvin) is a Hebrew word meaning "mixture", and refers to any of three procedures which allow certain activities in Jewish law which would otherwise be forbidden. In colloquial usage, it most often refers to the Eruv for carrying (עירוב חצרות or eruv chatzeirot), but it can also refer to the Eruv for cooking (עירוב תבשילין or eruv tavshilin) or the Eruv for traveling (עירוב תחומין or eruv techumin) as explained below.

The Talmud devotes an entire tractate to the subject of eruv titled Eruvin which addresses the eruv chatzeirot, "mixed [ownership of] domains", and eruv techumin, "mixed borders" (discussed below). It does not address the eruv tavshilin, which is covered elsewhere in the Talmud.

In Judaism, an "eruv" unspecified normally refers to an Eruv for carrying, which consists of a fence -- either real or symbolic -- that surrounds an area containing anything from a single private home and its yard, to an entire Jewish neighborhood, permitting carrying within its boundaries. This fence is technically a shituf mevo'ot ("sharing [of the] alleyways"), and this geographical sharing is required in order to effectively engage in the process of eruv hatzerot ("mixing [of] courtyards.") In Judaism, "an eruv" for carrying, means this symbolic "fence," (actually "doorframe/s") rather than the eruv itself.

1 Eruv for carrying
2 Eruv for cooking
3 Eruv for traveling
4 External links
- 4.1 External Resources
- 4.2 Community Eruv links

[edit] Eruv for carrying

There are 39 categories of activity prohibited on Shabbat. On the Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath), the Torah forbids removing an object from one domain to another and thus requires that Jews not move any item outdoors, no matter its weight or purpose. According to Torah law as understood by the Talmud, this encompasses three actions:

Moving an object from an enclosed area (such as a private home, public building, or fenced-in area) to a major thoroughfare,
moving an object from a major thoroughfare to an enclosed area, or
moving an object more than four cubits within a major thoroughfare.

To prevent confusion over exactly what constitutes a major thoroughfare, the rabbis expanded the ban to any area that was not fenced or walled in.

An Eruv surrounds a community in Jerusalem

According to classical Judaism, when one obeys God's laws, such as refraining from carrying on Shabbat, one pays tribute to God. But the law on carrying created severe hardships and diminished the oneg ("joy") of Shabbat.

An additional, Rabbinic prohibition, which Jewish tradition ascribes to the religious court of King Solomon, prohibits carrying in any area that was shared by the occupants of more than one dwelling, even if surrounded by fences or walls. But in this case of areas surrounded by walls, carrying was allowed through the use of an eruv. The eruv consists of a food item - generally bread - that is shared by all dwellers. By means of this shared meal, all the dwellers are considered as if they were living in a common dwelling, thus exempting them from the added prohibition.

[edit] Eruv chatzeirot

The eruv chatzeirot, or "mixed [ownership of] courtyards/domains", operates so that all the residents treat the entire area as their common "home". In other words it is a religious-law mechanism that transforms an enclosed shared living area (e.g. a courtyard) into a common one. In order to be enclosed, the area must be surrounded by a wall, fence, or tzurot ha-petah, "doorframes". Otherwise carrying is still prohibited in accordance with the earlier prohibition, as above.

In many cases -- for example, within a hospital, nursing home, school campus, apartment complex, or a walled city, the demarcation of the shared area consists of real walls or fences.

These fences can also be made symbolically, using stakes and a rope or wire to demark symbollic walls and doorframes. When an Eruv is made to demark a contemporary Jewish neighborhood, a symbolic fence is typically constructed in this fashion, using utility poles and wires as well as any solid walls available. When seen along with the utility poles upon which it is usually strung, it appears like a series of doorframes, with the poles forming the doorposts-lehi or lehai'in- and the wire forming the lintel-korah) strung around a neighborhood or region that allows Jews observing Shabbat to treat the area as if it were their mutual "home." The string must form a continuous boundary and may be strung along telephone poles or buildings. A natural boundary such as a river bank or steep hill can also be used as part of the eruv, as can an actual wall of a building.

As mentioned above, the term "eruv" is used within Judaism to refer to this rope or string, but the term actually refers to the process of sharing ownership within the enclosed domain, which is conducted using the norms and procedures of Jewish law, which has a law of property ownership and transfer distinct from the law of the surrounding society. The property transfer needed to create a shared domain on Shabbat under Jewish law is formally effected today by having one resident give some "bread" (usually it is a box containing matzo which can last for an entire year) to another resident to keep, to create a joint ownership of food for the whole community. This is usually done by the rabbi of the community to insure that it is done correctly, and the bread is usually matzo to insure that it will be edible and usable for a long time. (It is usually replaced once each year.) In the Talmud and other classic rabbinic sources, the term eruv refers to the bread itself. Because the domains are enclosed and legal transferred to shared ownership, carrying objects within an eruv keeps them within a single domain, and hence does not break the prohibition of transferring objects from a private to a shared domain on Shabbat. Creating an Eruv that involves public property requires the local government to permit a temporary transfer of its domain (in addition to government permissions for placing markers on government property that may be required as a matter of local government law.)

Most eruvin satisfy most Orthodox rabbis and enable Jewish communities to enjoy Shabbat with greater ease. There are no rabbis who dispute the concept of an eruv in theory. But in practice, some rabbis do disagree about the technical requirements of a valid eruv, and might therefore instruct their followers that certain eruvin are not valid and should not be used. The examples of an eruv considered in the Talmud involved the sharing of courtyards and other relatively small areas. The subsequent expansion of the concept to include entire neighborhoods and entire cities has been controversial ever since its inception in the Middle Ages, and there are disagreements within Rabbinic literature to this day about how large an Eruv can be.

Even without an eruv, there is no problem with wearing clothing outside, provided that it is normal clothing and being worn in its normal manner, as it is considered secondary to, and "part of," the person himself. The same is true for most medical items which are attached to the body and can be considered secondary to it, such as a cast or bandage or eyeglasses. Rabbinic authorities differ about the use of a cane or wheelchair, some allow their use even without an eruv and others do not. Most authorities also allow the wearing of jewelry by women. There are different customs about the wearing of watches by men.

There are well over 150 eruvin in communities all over the world -- and many more in Israel. Almost every major city in North America has one, though they tend to surround only the Orthodox neighborhoods, and not the entire city - Toronto, Phoenix, Memphis, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Providence, Miami, Dallas, six eruvin in Baltimore, several in New York City and Washington, D.C. (there are actually 8 different eruvin in the Greater Washington area), to name but a few. Outside North America there are eruvin in Johannesburg, Melbourne, Perth, Gibraltar, Antwerp and Strasbourg. One Washington, D.C. eruv includes the White House. The Strasbourg eruv includes the European Court of Human Rights. Borough Park and Kiryas Joel, New York have eruvin certified by Hasidic rebbes. As might be expected, every city in Israel, and many small towns and agricultural communities, is surrounded by an eruv.

[edit] Activities prohibited even within an Eruv

The presence of a valid Eruv enables people to carry or move virtually all items outdoors on Shabbat. However, this is only true provided that there are no other, possibly unrelated prohibitions regarding any particular item.

Examples of common activities prohibited even within an Eruv include:

Carrying items classified as Muktzah, which may not be moved at all on Shabbat based on a rabbinic decree to prevent Biblical transgressions and to protect the sanctity of Shabbat (e.g. writing utensils).
Opening or carrying an umbrella (analogous to erecting a tent, which falls under the prohibition of building)
Performing typical weekday activities (uvdin d'chol) a rabbinic decree to protect the sanctity of Shabbat (e.g. riding a bicycle).
Carrying or moving items in preparation for post-Shabbat activity (hachana) a rabbinic decree to protect the sanctity of Shabbat.

[edit] Controversies

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The installation of Eruvin has been a matter of contention in many neighbourhoods around the world, classic examples are Barnet, England; Outremont, Quebec; and Tenafly, New Jersey.

In the United States, the issue is often framed legally as whether the stringing of the eruv to public property violates the First Amendment's prohibition of a governmental establishment of religion, and popularly as whether it violates a "separation of church and state."

In Canada in the Outremont debate the issue of religious law and territory was also raised by non-Hasidic Jewish members of the borough. In most cases, eruvin are allowed because they are unobtrusive and are generally, though certainly not always, seen to not impede on the religious rights of other community members, while providing an invaluable service to the observant Orthodox-Jewish population.

Under Jewish law, the Jewish community must seek agreement with the community at large before installing the eruv, which adds a layer of complexity to the issue of their installation. In Outremont and other extreme cases, some congregations have sued local authorities to allow their installation. This method is rare and controversial, some critics within the Jewish community have criticised the very rare incidents of lawsuits for their installation, as the method is not considered by all to be equivalent to community support. However, Outremont was a special case, as one city councillor was vehemently opposed to the installation, for reasons that may be perceived as personal. The councillor had lived in a building owned by a local congregation which was operating a synagogue on the first floor without the necessary approval under Outremont's zoning regulations. When the congregation relocated to a busy commercial street, she remained opposed and went as far as to sue the congregation herself at her own expense to stop the construction of the new synagogue. The councillor, Forget, has also opposed minor "special treatments" given to the Hasidic community such as not ticketing cars that are left parked during Shabbat, the day of rest for observant Jews.

The eruv in Outremont has been studied as an example of planning issues exacerbating pre-existing tensions in ethnically diverse and polarised neighbourhoods. Many people opposed to the eruv did not in fact fully understand what it was, or what it meant for the local Hasidim. Many of these people were simply using the issue to vent their frustration with the ultra-Orthodox Outremont community of approximately 6,200 people who have long operated as a very independent community in all respects within Outremont, an elite French-Canadian suburb northwest of the Montreal city centre.

[edit] Disagreements between Orthodox groups

There are instances where various Orthodox groups, headed by their rabbis, dispute both the validity of an eruv or if an eruv can in fact be built in a neighborhood.

One of the oldest halakhic disputes in the United States revolves around the issue of an eruv in Manhattan (which is actually an island), in New York City. Some Halakhic opinions refer to an island's re-inforced walls against an ocean as contributing to and forming an eruv, and this view had been relied upon by some of the older rabbinate in the early part of the twentieth century. Other, more recent authorities, such as Rabbi Moshe Feinstein who lived in Manhattan, dispute that this is possible anywhere in New York City.

Another ongoing dispute is the status of two inter-connected eruvs in Brooklyn: The Flatbush eruv and the Boro Park eruv. The Boro Park eruv was built and accepted by much of the Hasidic community but rejected by some of the Hassidic and non-Hasidic "Lithuanian yeshiva" communities. The Flatbush eruv was originally built with the support of the Modern Orthodox community and was later enhanced with the support of some local non-Modern Orthodox yeshiva families and Hasidic rebbes. It was totally rejected by the many "Lithuanian yeshiva" communities led by the rosh yeshivas ("deans") of the large yeshivas Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, Mir yeshiva, and Yeshiva Torah Vodaas that are based in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. In spite of a number of well-publicized efforts to popularize the Flatbush eruv, the eruv's supporters have been ostracized and many Orthodox Jews in Flatbush do not use the eruv.

[edit] Eruv for cooking

In this instance, Eruv refers to an eruv tavshilin "mixed [cooked] dishes" whereby one prepares a cooked food prior to a Jewish holiday that will be followed by the Shabbat.

Normally, cooking is allowed on Jewish holidays, but only for consumption on that day, and not for consumption after the holiday. Technically, if such a holiday occurs on Friday, cooking is allowed for the Sabbath, but the rabbis forbade this in order to prevent confusion on other years (when the holiday does not immediately precede the Sabbath) unless this ritual of eruv tavshilin is performed, which would remind the people of the reasons for the exception.

This ritual consists of cooking and baking some food for the Sabbath even before the holiday begins. Then, because the "dishes" or "servings" are "mixed", meaning we have "mixed" the time of preparation between the day prior to the holiday with a food that may be eaten on the day after the holiday (which will be the Shabbat), this thereby allows for cooking to take place on the holiday itself which is not considered a "new" cooking, but rather a continuation of the "mixed" cooking that has already "begun" before the holiday started.

[edit] Eruv for traveling

In this instance, Eruv refers to an eruv techumin ("mixed borders") whereby one prepares a food prior to a Jewish holiday or Shabbat on which he plans to travel farther than is normally allowed on such days. (It is important to note that this is unconnected to the method of transportation which is being used, all of which - other than walking - are forbidden on such days.)

Normally, one can walk anywhere in his city or town on such days, but only within that area and up to 2000 cubits past the city limits. (The definition of "city limits" in Jewish law is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that it relates to the area which is actually populated, and not to the political borders of a municipality.) If one needs to travel farther than that, he can leave some food in a certain location prior to that holiday or Sabbath. This will temporarily establish his home as at the location of the food, allowing him to travel 2000 cubits from the food. There are many other details beyond the scope of this article.