More News Jews Can Use

In an earlier post, we discussed the Judaic imperative to avoid "work" on the Sabbath. "Work," we pointed out, consists of all manner of activity, from breaking rocks in the hot sun to flipping a light switch. One form of activity that falls under the category of work is the act of carrying--anything. Thus, whether a Jewish man carts crates of lettuce across town or simply sticks a pack of kosher gum into his pocket, he is effectively dishonoring the Sabbath and not keeping it holy.

On the face of it, you might think refraining from schlepping is not so hard. But consider the plight of the Orthodox Jew who wants to go to temple on Saturday morning and simply wants to lock his door behind him: How can he do this without carrying his keys? As the noted rabbinical scholar Homer Simpson might say, "D'oh!"

Leave it to Hebrews to come up with a solution. Behold, the eruv, a thoughtful solution to an intractable problem--in other words, a loophole. Basically, an eruv is a symbolic virtual extension of the home, which allows people to carry things within its confines. Traditionally speaking, an eruv is an enclosure demarcated by walls and/or doorways of at least ten tefachim in height. (We did not just make up that word.) Within those walls, Jews may engage in the same Sabbath-sanctioned activities they engage in at home: carrying keys, drinking Manischewitz, juggling latkes, whatever!

But what worked just fine in the Sinai--where there was nobody to care if the nomadic Israelites threw up multi-tefach walls hither and yon (especially yon)--poses greater challenges in the modern metropolis: One can't just erect an eruv on the Upper West Side.

Never fear, though; modern Orthodox rabbis have a solution: They can declare an area an eruv and, instead of marking it with walls, simply string wires from lamp posts to mark the boundaries. Such an eruv, in fact, has been erected in Manhattan, and it extends "from river to river between Harlem and the Lower East Side" ("A Jewish Ritual Collides with Mother Nature"). For those of you unfamiliar with New York City geography, this encompasses approximately 80 blocks north-south (about four miles) and about 12 long blocks east-west (a little over a mile): That's some backyard.

The reason this made the news is that the recent heavy snowfalls in the northeast have pulled down some of the wires that demarcated the eruvim. Orthodox Jewish parents have been sending their children off to synagogue without so much as a hankie. But if this whole thing is symbolic anyway, couldn't rabbis just declare an eruv through other-than-physical means? Couldn't, say, the fiberoptic network comprising the World Wide Web safely encompass the religious piety of the Orthodox community? Since religion is all about the observation of ritual, and rituals can obviously be altered to accommodate the realities of the modern world, we think the time has come to inaugurate eruv 2.0 and thus ensure that the Jews of New York are not left without eruv over their heads.

Sorry.