January 27, 2006--Friday Fanaticisms XIX--Eruv, Or Carrying On
Why would I expect you to know anything about the Tenafly, New Jersey Eruv Association? Actually, if it weren’t for the trusty NY Times, neither would I (see link below).
It seems the Town Council there, after five years of legal battles, five, just reimbursed that Association, with taxpayer money, for the $325,000 in legal costs they incurred to get approvals to set up an eruv for the Orthodox Jews of Tenafly.
I know, I need to take a step back to give you some background. Especially what is an eruv anyway?
On the Sabbath, observant Jews are not permitted to do anything but the most limited form of work outside of the home. This includes prohibitions about moving an object from an enclosed area to the street; moving something from outside to inside; moving anything, including say a baby carriage, more than four cubits along a sidewalk. (A cubit is a unit of linear measure, from the elbow to the tip of the longest finger of a man.) Or even carrying much less opening an umbrella. (These rules are called Eruv for Carrying) Just these prohibitions, and there are many, many more, make it very inconvenient for Sabbath observers who live in places such as Tenafly (or pretty much anywhere other than a sthetl in Poland), to get through a Saturday.
So, the ancient rabbis, in their eternal wisdom, came up with the concept of the eruv—they extended the definition of a home to include anything within the physical boundaries of a community, a sort of semi-invisible enclosure, within which all bets are off. Anything going on within this eruv is considered to be occurring in this virtual “home.” These eruvs, and there are thousands of them all over the world, are generally demarked, as in Tenafly, by, trust me here, placing plastic strips on a neighborhood-wide circle of utility poles. In Tenafly’s case these strips enclose 4.4 square miles. That’s a lot of cubits!
The fight in Tenafly was a traditional church-state dispute—should taxpayers in any way support public religious practices. In this case give town permits to, among other things, install the plastic eruv strips. The courts ultimately compelled the town to produce the permits and to reimburse the Eruv Association, saying that by doing so Tenafly would not in fact be forcing non-Jews to live in a “religious community.” If your house happens to be within the eruv boundaries, so be it. Maybe, in fact, it would increase property values since it would make your place more attractive to Orthodox Jews wanting to move to Tenafly: they would already be right there in a pre-existing eruv. The dark side of this—many in the area resisited the eruv idea because they thought it would attract even more Orthodox Jews to move into their community.
Let me end here with a little more about eruvs because I feel certain that by now you are fascinated by them. The rabbis also came up with hundreds of rules about Sabbath observance that pertain to what goes on inside as well as outside the home. For example, here is something from the Wikipedia on "Eruv For Cooking":
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.
So there you go. It’s still Friday, so get right into the kitchen and start that mixing so you have something to eat tomorrow.
Because if there is one thing we Jews insist on it's making sure you EAT!
It seems the Town Council there, after five years of legal battles, five, just reimbursed that Association, with taxpayer money, for the $325,000 in legal costs they incurred to get approvals to set up an eruv for the Orthodox Jews of Tenafly.
I know, I need to take a step back to give you some background. Especially what is an eruv anyway?
On the Sabbath, observant Jews are not permitted to do anything but the most limited form of work outside of the home. This includes prohibitions about moving an object from an enclosed area to the street; moving something from outside to inside; moving anything, including say a baby carriage, more than four cubits along a sidewalk. (A cubit is a unit of linear measure, from the elbow to the tip of the longest finger of a man.) Or even carrying much less opening an umbrella. (These rules are called Eruv for Carrying) Just these prohibitions, and there are many, many more, make it very inconvenient for Sabbath observers who live in places such as Tenafly (or pretty much anywhere other than a sthetl in Poland), to get through a Saturday.
So, the ancient rabbis, in their eternal wisdom, came up with the concept of the eruv—they extended the definition of a home to include anything within the physical boundaries of a community, a sort of semi-invisible enclosure, within which all bets are off. Anything going on within this eruv is considered to be occurring in this virtual “home.” These eruvs, and there are thousands of them all over the world, are generally demarked, as in Tenafly, by, trust me here, placing plastic strips on a neighborhood-wide circle of utility poles. In Tenafly’s case these strips enclose 4.4 square miles. That’s a lot of cubits!
The fight in Tenafly was a traditional church-state dispute—should taxpayers in any way support public religious practices. In this case give town permits to, among other things, install the plastic eruv strips. The courts ultimately compelled the town to produce the permits and to reimburse the Eruv Association, saying that by doing so Tenafly would not in fact be forcing non-Jews to live in a “religious community.” If your house happens to be within the eruv boundaries, so be it. Maybe, in fact, it would increase property values since it would make your place more attractive to Orthodox Jews wanting to move to Tenafly: they would already be right there in a pre-existing eruv. The dark side of this—many in the area resisited the eruv idea because they thought it would attract even more Orthodox Jews to move into their community.
Let me end here with a little more about eruvs because I feel certain that by now you are fascinated by them. The rabbis also came up with hundreds of rules about Sabbath observance that pertain to what goes on inside as well as outside the home. For example, here is something from the Wikipedia on "Eruv For Cooking":
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.
So there you go. It’s still Friday, so get right into the kitchen and start that mixing so you have something to eat tomorrow.
Because if there is one thing we Jews insist on it's making sure you EAT!
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:03 AM
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