Jewneric: A New Platform for the Jewish Voice

Posted June 23 2008 by David Gertler

To Err is Human, To Eruv is Jewish

For the past few weeks I’ve been reporting for the Long Island Jewish World. The big issue that I am covering is the newest eruv debate. You’ve heard the debates in all their various forms from other locations, and in most recent memory- the one originating from Tenafly, NJ. The new municipality to be entangled in eruv wires is the village of Westhampton Beach. The story has been picked up by the local Independent, Dan’s Paper and Southampton Press and the less than local New York Times and even Haaretz. The New York Jewish papers have all had something to say about it as well.
If you want to learn about the debate and the who said who to what, your computer will help you. If anyone wants to read my reporting on it and that someone has never heard of the Long Island Jewish World or its sister papers the Manhattan Jewish Sentinel and the Westchester Jewish Tribune, let me know by way of email to djtalkline@gmail.com and I’ll email it to you. (This Jewish trinity of papers has yet to learn of the inter-web.)
What I’m going to try in the next hundreds of words is pre-create the head smashing into walls that will result when the Jews of Westhampton Beach try to explain why an eruv is not a beast to be feared.

An eruv is a symbolic boundary in Jewish law that allows one to carry and push basic things (like keys and a baby-carriage) on the Sabbath.
If it’s a Jewish symbol and you want the towns approval, doesn’t that violate the separation of church and state?
Two things: 1) the boundary is a symbolic one to Jews, it is not a Jewish symbol. 2) you clearly have never been educated to the meaning of the separation of church and state.
Well you need the government’s permission to make this eruv and you will be using poles that belong to the village, doesn’t that violate church and state?
Only as much as getting the towns approval on building a church or use of a park for a religious meeting. One asks permission for such things, but it would be more of a violation of the separation of church and state’s free exercise clause to deny the religious group permission.
But you want to rope off part of our town for your use, why should you be allowed to do that? (This question came to me by former Mayor of Westhampton Beach - Bob Morgan)
Rope… off…? I’m sorry, I don’t follow. Could you explain what you mean by that? (This was my first reaction)
They want to set aside an area of our town for their purpose.
Maybe you don’t understand what an eruv is. An eruv is kind of like making the town into an apartment building. The public stairs and hallways are all part of the same building. An eruv does the same thing to the open air: it makes it so that the general area is considered like the hallway between apartments.
Right. They want to make it so that half the town is considered theirs.
Let me try again. An eruv is like city limits signs. It is just a way of demarcating a boundary.
But that boundary doesn’t belong to the jews, why should they be allowed to mark it.
Let me try again. An eruv is like a box of chocolates. Each chocolate has its own compartment, but the entire box of chocolate holds all the compartments.
Come again?
An eruv is like a waffle… One waffle has little parts to it but it is all part of the same waffle… let me try again…
An eruv is like a bench, the whole bench is for sitting, but you only sit in one place at a time and you can’t sit where someone else is sitting… let me try again..
An eruv is like a tent, even though it doesn’t have any walls that touch the ground, it still covers a large area and everyone can enjoy the tent even if they can only use part of it… let me try again…
An eruv is like making a line in the sand, but one that can be passed, one that is above ground and one that you can’t really see. But it distinguishes between here and there without dealing with what is where… let me try again…
An eruv is like a telephone wire, it connects people from various locations to each other without interfering on any third party… let me try again…
An eruv is like Communism… wait, that’s not it… let me try again….