What's stopping someone from declaring one of the undersea fiber optic cables which circumnavigates the globe from being an eruv? Alternatively, what's stopping an observant Jew just making a wire bracelet and placing it on the ground and declaring the inner part of the wire as being "outside" and the other "inside?" Could I make a mobile eruv and hire some people to carry a loop of wire around me?
Depends on the group, but generally the owner of the land that the drug is on needs to be involved in its creation. So, for a sidewalk, the local government.
See this article that states that the path of a Houston eruv was leased from the city for 50 years for $1.
OK, so the Jews have gotten their NYC situation under control. But what about all the vulnerable populations in SF, LA, etc.? We must group-fund an eruv for those vulnerable populations.
Also, this is a lost opportunity for ambulance-chasing lawsuits. Anyone know if anyone's been killed by their city being surrounded with fishing line suspended 30 feet in the air?
Why not make a tiny 10cm wire at the north pole to do the entire planet? And bless the oceans for unlimited holy water. Anyone who goes to the beach is baptised.
I'm not religious so I'll admit I don't "get it." It's a neat idea.
I'll admit, I especially don't get this part:
> The series of practically invisible wires becomes a necessity that “benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.” He sees it not only as a way for communities to come together, but also as a way for the more affluent to give back. The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
Giving back to your community, sure. Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though. I feel like there are other ways that money could be spent.
All in all though, there are nonprofit religious organizations who spend an unreasonable amount of money on things that don't matter (private jets), so I'm not at all complaining about something that helps that communal feeling like this.
The article really neglects to explain what an eruv is and why you would want it. Wikipedia's much more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv
Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "home" so you can do things like, say, take your baby for a weekend stroll on a nice day or walk outside with a cane. It's more nuanced than this, there's a whole bunch of rules about what you can't do and about how big an eruv can be and what you have to do to make it valid.
(I am not Jewish so do not ask me for any further details on this.)
My Jewish friend once told me, specifically discussing this wire, that Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime. The same thing goes for the hotels where someone is paid to wave their hand in front of automatic doors so the guests don't force the door to "work" for them or the elevators that run 24/7, stopping at every floor so they don't have to even work by pressing a button.
My favourite in this genre comes from a physics DPhil student I knew in Oxford: He insisted that it was permissible for him to work in the lab on Shabbat because after all he was really just studying the works of God and so it was no different in character from reading the Torah.
I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Friday evenings (after dusk).
I'm pretty sure 99.999% of observant Jewish people would consider this work but there is a lot of room for interpretation in Judaism and in the end it's between you, your belief, and God. An interesting piece of trivia there is that in Yom Kippur you can atone for sins to god but you can not atone for sins to other people without getting reconciliation.
> Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime.
Not only in their own rules. Sometimes in the rules of the universe (aka science) and sometimes in the rules of international law (for example pretending they're not engaging in apartheid in Israel because to be a second-class citizen you need at least to be a citizen).
I am not the brightest spark as it took me a few months of living in a heavily Jewish area to realise that the pedestrian traffics light were configured to run every cycle so they didn't have to press the button. Probably a lot more details I also missed.
Notable examples of Shabos goyim include Maxim Gorky,[7] Thomas D'Alesandro Jr,[9] Floyd B. Olson,[10][11] [President] Harry S. Truman,[12][13][14] Pete Hamill,[15] [Secretary] Colin Powell,[15][16][17] [The Honorable] Mario Cuomo,[17] Martin Scorsese,[15] (((Ralph Branca))) (((who did not know at the time that he was Jewish))),[18] Tom Jones,[19] and the ... [King] Elvis Presley,[15][20] all of whom served their Jewish neighbors in this way. [President] Barack Obama served his Jewish office neighbor while serving in the Illinois Senate.[21]
> Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is.
This was cause for major debate in the founding days of Christianity. Jesus’ ministry as a Jewish rabbi often involved condemning the religious leaders of the time for focusing on minutiae of the law, particularly Sabbath law.
Matthew 23:1–7 — “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.’”
Matthew 23:23–24 — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” [Referring to the pious practice of straining one’s drinks for bugs to avoid violating dietary law.]
Luke 14:1–6 — “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?’ But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
“Then he asked them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?’ And they had nothing to say.”
Mark 2:23–28 — “One Sabbath Jesus was passing through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick the heads of grain as they walked along. So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’
“Jesus replied, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? During the high priesthood of Abiathar, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which was lawful only for the priests. And he gave some to his companions as well.’
“Then Jesus declared, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
Mark 3:1–6 — “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’
“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.
“He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”
I remember attending a tech conference years ago in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the speakers was a devout Jew from NY City. On Saturday he taped the lock open on his hotel room so he wouldn't need to use a key.
This drove hotel security nuts and one of the conference admins had to get involved because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation. They were certain he was up to something shady.
He and his wife had brought extra food and invited the conference admin and myself to dinner in their room. I remember it as a very special night and I am still friends with them to this day.
>Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though.
it makes sense contextually.
if there is some holy manifest that urges people to do a thing even when they're old/invalid/bed-ridden/sick, and there are people that will devoutly follow this rule, then it stands to reason that those people will feel a burden eased when part of the manifest is accomplished automatically.
During Shabbat the members of the Jewish community who are most vulnerable are the ones who take it too far? Technically you are not supposed to even carry your keys, medications, babies, anything, so to strictly follow the rules means either being a shutin for the day or taking stupid risks which could easily cause undo long term hardships or even death. For the most part it is just updating the laws to modern society and the move away from the more communal living arrangements of the past.
> benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.
I suspect the author may have misunderstood what this is euphemistically referring to. I think the original source means women. A lot of routine elements of childcare fall within this restriction, and in conservative communities that would be the exclusive domain of women. Without the eruv women with young children would be confined to their home during this part of the week.
> confined to their home during this part of the week
You say that like it is a bad thing
There is a related concept in Eastern Orthodoxy called oikonomia, or a relaxation of the laws. Roman Catholics or Episcopalians may know this as "dispensation". When the law becomes very complex and there is a concerted effort to get legalistic and eventually you end up with circumventions that are worthy of publishing news articles to the goyim, eventually you begin to think about dispensations or oikonomia from the leadership in order to relax the rules of Shabbat observance and the Day of Rest.
And undoubtedly that is the crux of whence originated Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism.
Judaism is more akin to Islam than Christianity in the particular aspect that it is not unified and not organized under one particular visible head, like the Pope or a Patriarch. Not since the Destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. During the Second Tempe Period there was definitely a unification of Jews and a singular doctrinal authority.
But in today's synagogue system with rabbis interpreting Torah and Talmud, it is quite federated and decentralized, and in New York in particular there are congregations following individual rebbes and having unique beliefs inside the walls of their synagogue, but also councils/conferences of Jew leaders who team up to build this Eruv Wall and make America pay for it.
There are limits on how much traffic can pass in and out of the boundaries of an eruv. I suspect that's why it avoids high-traffic areas like Times Square, as well as the area around Turtle Bay.
I'm pretty sure that if there is a god, then the act of deliberately subverting what you believe to be his laws by exploiting what you perceive to be a technicality for your own convenience isn't going to work out in your favor in the end.
Not at all. The Jewish perspective is essentially that Jewish law stems from the creation of an all-knowing God, and therefore any seeming ‘loopholes’ must not only be known to Him but explicitly intended to exist. On this basis, it must be perfectly valid to use them!
Religious Jews consider your contention to be blasphemous, as it suggests there’s a way to outsmart god, which would directly contradict his apparent higher being status.
I love how Orthodox Jews can't change any of their laws BUT they can and do change the definition of words to such an extent it accomplishes the same thing, such as changing eruv from meaning wall to wire.
I don't see why they wouldn't be. Basically all cities allow 3rd parties to run wires as long as they do all of the paperwork and rent the needed right of ways. Normally this is used for things like comm lines; but some inert wire isn't going to cause any issues.
The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.
I know of at least one religion that made it mandatory to run strands of wire around arbitrary areas. Brigham Young and his successors made the Deseret Telegraph a real community project.
If your religious life is centered around an absolute nutcase god or a set of commandment that seems to come from a psychiatric inpatient maybe then rather than putting in so much time fooling the god and organizing your life like someone with severe OCD it's time to just declare yourself secular.
These religions are whack and only work because the indoctrination happens when kids are young and imprintable. Then they have to contort themselves to the abuse as adults. And, incredibly, they then do it to their children.
On the other hand, if you tried to cult an adult, most of the time it will fail (though not always).
In the Jewish tradition, nobody is tricking God. There's a long history of legalism in the religion - God sets out his commandments in language and you take that language at face value. Exact interpretation of that text is then debated by religious scholars, but the meaning of the words is entirely contained in the text.
For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.
Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.
Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.
> For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign.
I'd say it is quite familiar to Christianity. Canon Law mirrors the secular legal system, complete with its own lawyers, courts and so on. (Arguably, it's the other way around: secular Western law that mirrors Canon Law.)
Canon Law is only for Catholics and also only pertains to the management of the Church itself rather than to the behavior of individuals. All religions have this idea of textual interpretation to some degree, but it has comparatively more importance in Judaism.
I'm not saying your main point is wrong, but there is a lot of legalistic quibbling over things like Lent. For example, various animals are classified locally as "fish" for Lenten purposes, including the Beaver (in Canada) the Capybara (in Venezuela) and the alligator (in New Orleans)
At this point in the conversation I would like to once again point out that Catholics once considered beaver tails (but not beaver bodies) "fish" for purposes of meatless Fridays.
And in Jews consider birds to be "meat" because people in the 15th century kept getting confused. The Mosaic law is that the prohibition against mixing milk and meat applies to land animals; not water or sky animals (which each have their own set of rules).
I am not sure one could argue that playing semantics is the most honest conduct in understanding.
Only the most extremist of Muslims, the Salafi, take the Jewish legalistic idea, majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir that squarely leans on “spirit of the law” than strictly the word.
I see this sentiment a lot when it comes to Jewish customs, especially when it comes to eruvs, I don't really get it. Why do you consider it "tricking" God, instead of just following the rules?
Because under any normal circumstances we'd call this a trick? Like, imagine someone under house arrest trying to argue they were allowed to go all around Manhattan because of this wire - we'd quite rightly jail them for contempt.
Sure, after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
It might satisfy a certain type of person to have explicit, highly detailed mechanistic rules for human conduct, with no exceptions. But even where that’s been tried, 50 years passes, and now someone has the job of interpreting how those rules apply to modern life.
> after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
> The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
I don't think it requires much real judgement to say that a wire does not make a home and that whole area is not a single big home. This is not some finely balanced call that requires the greatest legal minds. Judges can and do strike or ignore definitions that pervert the meaning of a statute too far from the plain reading, and they're right to do so.
In areas of law - or of everyday life - that we take seriously, we would not tolerate such a twisted reading of a rule.
Imagine that a whole nation's statute laws, and associated common laws, were frozen in time for over a thousand years, because (the statutes were declared to be immutable canon, and) any judges with sufficient authority to strike out old common law and to establish new common law were long gone. That's Judaism (specifically the Talmud)! (Speaking from experience as a Jew.)
The "eruv" definition was established back when the biggest conceivable area that it might cover was that of a medieval village or ghetto, of maximum several hundred (small cramped) houses, i.e. let's say about the area of Vatican City, which is 0.49km2 (0.19 sq mi). Whereas the total area of Manhattan island is 59km2 (22.7 sq mi). So, yes, in my opinion, a Talmudic judge would consider the modern-day Manhattan eruv a gross perversion of the spirit of the law, and would update the definition accordingly. But no such judge exists in this era. So, yay, let's play "how ridiculously can we apply anachronistic archaic rules to the modern world" - apparently, ultra-orthodox Jews consider it such a fun game, that they let it rule their entire life!
This has been litigated well over a thousand years ago. To put it in modern legal terms, the legitimacy of an Eruv is a super precedent. It is discussed in depth in the Talmud, which is the clearest source of Jewish law.
Even in modern law, courts can and do come up with some fairly peculiar readings at times. Particularly with old laws or the constitution itself which can, at times, be vague at best when applied in a modern context.
The rules that the Eruv is a loophole for do not even come from God. They come from the specific interpretation that has developed about those relatively vague laws.
There is an old "joke" in Judaism that God has no place in interpreting Jewish law. I put joke in quotes because the Oven of Akhnai is itself part of the Talmud and is generally read as establishing that exact principle.
This type of "trick" is foundational to both Judaism and every common law system.
If your parents said come home by 6:00 PM and instead of coming home you put a wire around the city to “make it your home” and stay out, you’re tricking your parents.
There's at least two in Sydney. One near Bondi and one around St Ives. The one around St Ives was a little controversial but the council eventually permitted it.
Yep. The St Ives one involved a fairly protracted debate at the local council, with accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion) being levelled at those who argued against it.
Although I don't know if the Bondi and/or the St Ives eruvs involve their own physical wires? I thought it was deemed sufficient for the rabbis to just "declare" various sets of third-party power lines / phone lines as constituting the eruv, or am I mistaken?
Both eruvim have their own dedicated physical wires, yes.
> accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion)
I live within the St Ives eruv. At least some of the opposition was unquestionably antisemitic — I recall receiving at least one antisemitic screed in our mailbox during the time of the council debate. (That one went something along the lines of ‘the Jews are trying to kick out all the non-Jews’ etc. etc., for two pages of fairly small text.)
You could make the argument that if God is giving you rules you should just obey them, not try and understand/interpret His exact intentions and do that instead (since presumably you cannot fully comprehend them).
It's not about tricking G-D it's about rationalizing one's own beliefs. Jews have to have their own personal understanding about the relationship. We already know from the story of Jonah that there is no tricking G-d. This more about community understanding.
So we're willing to suspect our disbelief enough to assume that there's an omnipotent sky beard making rules, but not that he doesn't approve of his little rascals trying to trick him?
Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.
There are other currents in Judaism, such as mystical based, or philosophy based (Spinoza), but they are a minority nowadays.
The mainstream Judaism has focused mostly on codifying rules for all situations in life, which has evolved into a semi legalistic framework of rules and their loopholes. So many loopholes... Like temporarily selling your belongings 1 week per year to bypass Passover rules about Hametz, etc.
God didn't make a mistake when writing the Torah. That "one weird trick" as you call it is as fundamental a part of his will as every else.
Also most Jewish laws don't come from God. Instead, they come from the confluence of two doctrines: first we develop fence laws to keep ourselves from accidentally violating the actual laws. But, once we have been doing something long enough, they become Minhag and given more or less the full force of law. Naturally, this leads to new fence laws being developed around them, and the cycle continues.
Frankly, almost no Jewish law comes from God, and he has no business telling us what to do.
In fact, I would go so far as to say no religious rules come from God! It seems pretty obvious that an omnipotent being in command of all the subtle and awesome phenomena of all of time and space is not going to concerned with whether some barely evolved apes on a backwater planet orbiting an unremarkable star in a forgettable galaxy, among innumerable galaxies eat shellfish and cows milk in the same meal.
Regardless of any personal cosmology rules or guidelines with respect to preparing and eating food in an unelectrified fridgeless warm to hot climate are emergent from the nature of the physical universe.
Debating whether such rules spring from physics, 'God', or a mere abundance of caution is fun for some.
> The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
So, no, you're not paying for this.
I'm quite sure that any religion that wanted to fund the cost and follow the proper permitting procedures could similarly run wires for religious purposes, otherwise NYC would have a First Amendment problem. But I don't think any other religions want to run wires for religious purposes.
And yes, other religions can and do use public space in myriad ways too. As for encroaching on others, the eruv doesn't really encroach on anyone - I'm a secular Jew who has lived in NYC for most of my life, and while I've heard about this before, I've never actually noticed it in person, even when I've probably been within eyesight of it.
> Do [ other groups ] get similar perks of using public space
Yes, it's public space.
> and encroaching on others?
An eruv wire looks just like any other wire strung on a pole, save it's and thinner, doesn't carry electricity or communications .. so it "encroaches" on your life just as much as any other utility wire .. even less if you spend little time in jewish neighbourhoods that actually string such things.
Well it’s not a Jewish neighbourhood if it’s all of Manhattan. Encroachment isn’t always the most obvious - do construction permits require builders to fix any breaks to this, similar to other public utility lines (telephone, electricity)? That would be an encroachment. Does it increase any risk to public workers who fix supply lines, or increase the risk of electrical fires from thunderstorms? That’d be encroachment. Not saying it’ll happen, but some non-obvious examples.
Also, what are other such examples from other groups? There’s a big difference between theoretical (a matter of law) and the practical (societal acceptance). I’m also not sure of telephone poles being public space, I can only imagine the administrative and legal hurdles to overcome to hang something off one.
Leaving aside that this is about "much of Manhattan" rather than "all of Manhattan" it remains that Manhattan, Brooklyn, New York City in general are well known as one of the larger jewish neighbourhoods on the planet.
Jews comprise approximately 10% of New York City's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel.
Some of your other what if's are addressed in the article, if you're a good faith commenter looking for actual serious issues then there's also 100 years of existence in Manhattan and the wider New York City to draw upon.
Perhaps you could highlight some actual real issues that have cropped up in the last century?
“Largest [jewish community] in the world outside of Israel” doesn’t really equate to “Jewish neighbourhood”. My argument would be the same regardless of which religion’s orthodoxy this stems from, so questioning whether I’m a “good faith” commenter is just a lazy ad hominem response. The article doesn’t address many of the questions I posed.
Speaking of which, tell me, would there be so many defensive comments if, in a hypothetical scenario, there was an article written about how every cell tower in the city had an Arabic inscription written (in such small text that it couldn’t be seen) in order to “bless” all the cellular waves emanating from there? I know what my response would be.
See this article that states that the path of a Houston eruv was leased from the city for 50 years for $1.
https://jhvonline.com/mayor-signs-new-rental-agreement-for-h...
Also, this is a lost opportunity for ambulance-chasing lawsuits. Anyone know if anyone's been killed by their city being surrounded with fishing line suspended 30 feet in the air?
I'll admit, I especially don't get this part:
> The series of practically invisible wires becomes a necessity that “benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.” He sees it not only as a way for communities to come together, but also as a way for the more affluent to give back. The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
Giving back to your community, sure. Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though. I feel like there are other ways that money could be spent.
All in all though, there are nonprofit religious organizations who spend an unreasonable amount of money on things that don't matter (private jets), so I'm not at all complaining about something that helps that communal feeling like this.
Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "home" so you can do things like, say, take your baby for a weekend stroll on a nice day or walk outside with a cane. It's more nuanced than this, there's a whole bunch of rules about what you can't do and about how big an eruv can be and what you have to do to make it valid.
(I am not Jewish so do not ask me for any further details on this.)
I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Friday evenings (after dusk).
Not only in their own rules. Sometimes in the rules of the universe (aka science) and sometimes in the rules of international law (for example pretending they're not engaging in apartheid in Israel because to be a second-class citizen you need at least to be a citizen).
Notable examples of Shabos goyim include Maxim Gorky,[7] Thomas D'Alesandro Jr,[9] Floyd B. Olson,[10][11] [President] Harry S. Truman,[12][13][14] Pete Hamill,[15] [Secretary] Colin Powell,[15][16][17] [The Honorable] Mario Cuomo,[17] Martin Scorsese,[15] (((Ralph Branca))) (((who did not know at the time that he was Jewish))),[18] Tom Jones,[19] and the ... [King] Elvis Presley,[15][20] all of whom served their Jewish neighbors in this way. [President] Barack Obama served his Jewish office neighbor while serving in the Illinois Senate.[21]
This was cause for major debate in the founding days of Christianity. Jesus’ ministry as a Jewish rabbi often involved condemning the religious leaders of the time for focusing on minutiae of the law, particularly Sabbath law.
Matthew 23:1–7 — “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.’”
Matthew 23:23–24 — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” [Referring to the pious practice of straining one’s drinks for bugs to avoid violating dietary law.]
Luke 14:1–6 — “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?’ But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
“Then he asked them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?’ And they had nothing to say.”
Mark 2:23–28 — “One Sabbath Jesus was passing through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick the heads of grain as they walked along. So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’
“Jesus replied, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? During the high priesthood of Abiathar, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which was lawful only for the priests. And he gave some to his companions as well.’
“Then Jesus declared, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
Mark 3:1–6 — “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’
“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.
“He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”
And there are further examples, like John 5.
This drove hotel security nuts and one of the conference admins had to get involved because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation. They were certain he was up to something shady.
He and his wife had brought extra food and invited the conference admin and myself to dinner in their room. I remember it as a very special night and I am still friends with them to this day.
1) Making fires is prohibited work. Activating an electric switch causes a spark, which is kind of like a fire.
2) We have a tradition of considering using electricity to be work.
3) This is stupid, not using electricity is more work. Just push the button.
4) This is stupid, but having a day when we aren't all on our phones is nice, so let's keep all of the silly rules to not lose that
it makes sense contextually.
if there is some holy manifest that urges people to do a thing even when they're old/invalid/bed-ridden/sick, and there are people that will devoutly follow this rule, then it stands to reason that those people will feel a burden eased when part of the manifest is accomplished automatically.
Yes... well, ... y'all say that like those are "bad things".
Ask a Rebbe what's the worst calamity that can befall him
I suspect the author may have misunderstood what this is euphemistically referring to. I think the original source means women. A lot of routine elements of childcare fall within this restriction, and in conservative communities that would be the exclusive domain of women. Without the eruv women with young children would be confined to their home during this part of the week.
You say that like it is a bad thing
There is a related concept in Eastern Orthodoxy called oikonomia, or a relaxation of the laws. Roman Catholics or Episcopalians may know this as "dispensation". When the law becomes very complex and there is a concerted effort to get legalistic and eventually you end up with circumventions that are worthy of publishing news articles to the goyim, eventually you begin to think about dispensations or oikonomia from the leadership in order to relax the rules of Shabbat observance and the Day of Rest.
And undoubtedly that is the crux of whence originated Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism.
Judaism is more akin to Islam than Christianity in the particular aspect that it is not unified and not organized under one particular visible head, like the Pope or a Patriarch. Not since the Destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. During the Second Tempe Period there was definitely a unification of Jews and a singular doctrinal authority.
But in today's synagogue system with rabbis interpreting Torah and Talmud, it is quite federated and decentralized, and in New York in particular there are congregations following individual rebbes and having unique beliefs inside the walls of their synagogue, but also councils/conferences of Jew leaders who team up to build this Eruv Wall and make America pay for it.
I wonder why it seems to circumvent Hells Kitchen?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plesk
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Man that's 14 years ago
Were these the fabled Geocities Jews that everyone talks about? NYC really made a name for itself
"Hymietown controversy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson#Relations_with_t...
Did they host this website in the cloud services towering above the plains of Shinar?
And I'm all for it. =)
You could just not but hey I guess no harm no foul
Orthodox Jews at East Europe still do not allow women in synagogue, very similar way is Islam!
The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.
If your religious life is centered around an absolute nutcase god or a set of commandment that seems to come from a psychiatric inpatient maybe then rather than putting in so much time fooling the god and organizing your life like someone with severe OCD it's time to just declare yourself secular.
On the other hand, if you tried to cult an adult, most of the time it will fail (though not always).
For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.
Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.
Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.
I'd say it is quite familiar to Christianity. Canon Law mirrors the secular legal system, complete with its own lawyers, courts and so on. (Arguably, it's the other way around: secular Western law that mirrors Canon Law.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law
See https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/105380/is-t...
Only the most extremist of Muslims, the Salafi, take the Jewish legalistic idea, majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir that squarely leans on “spirit of the law” than strictly the word.
The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
It might satisfy a certain type of person to have explicit, highly detailed mechanistic rules for human conduct, with no exceptions. But even where that’s been tried, 50 years passes, and now someone has the job of interpreting how those rules apply to modern life.
> The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
I don't think it requires much real judgement to say that a wire does not make a home and that whole area is not a single big home. This is not some finely balanced call that requires the greatest legal minds. Judges can and do strike or ignore definitions that pervert the meaning of a statute too far from the plain reading, and they're right to do so.
In areas of law - or of everyday life - that we take seriously, we would not tolerate such a twisted reading of a rule.
The "eruv" definition was established back when the biggest conceivable area that it might cover was that of a medieval village or ghetto, of maximum several hundred (small cramped) houses, i.e. let's say about the area of Vatican City, which is 0.49km2 (0.19 sq mi). Whereas the total area of Manhattan island is 59km2 (22.7 sq mi). So, yes, in my opinion, a Talmudic judge would consider the modern-day Manhattan eruv a gross perversion of the spirit of the law, and would update the definition accordingly. But no such judge exists in this era. So, yay, let's play "how ridiculously can we apply anachronistic archaic rules to the modern world" - apparently, ultra-orthodox Jews consider it such a fun game, that they let it rule their entire life!
Even in modern law, courts can and do come up with some fairly peculiar readings at times. Particularly with old laws or the constitution itself which can, at times, be vague at best when applied in a modern context.
The rules that the Eruv is a loophole for do not even come from God. They come from the specific interpretation that has developed about those relatively vague laws.
There is an old "joke" in Judaism that God has no place in interpreting Jewish law. I put joke in quotes because the Oven of Akhnai is itself part of the Talmud and is generally read as establishing that exact principle.
This type of "trick" is foundational to both Judaism and every common law system.
Although I don't know if the Bondi and/or the St Ives eruvs involve their own physical wires? I thought it was deemed sufficient for the rabbis to just "declare" various sets of third-party power lines / phone lines as constituting the eruv, or am I mistaken?
> accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion)
I live within the St Ives eruv. At least some of the opposition was unquestionably antisemitic — I recall receiving at least one antisemitic screed in our mailbox during the time of the council debate. (That one went something along the lines of ‘the Jews are trying to kick out all the non-Jews’ etc. etc., for two pages of fairly small text.)
I'd assume the Bondi one also, because I suspect it's not really valid unless continuous and monitored, per the article. Although I'm no expert.
Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.
The mainstream Judaism has focused mostly on codifying rules for all situations in life, which has evolved into a semi legalistic framework of rules and their loopholes. So many loopholes... Like temporarily selling your belongings 1 week per year to bypass Passover rules about Hametz, etc.
Also most Jewish laws don't come from God. Instead, they come from the confluence of two doctrines: first we develop fence laws to keep ourselves from accidentally violating the actual laws. But, once we have been doing something long enough, they become Minhag and given more or less the full force of law. Naturally, this leads to new fence laws being developed around them, and the cycle continues.
Frankly, almost no Jewish law comes from God, and he has no business telling us what to do.
Debating whether such rules spring from physics, 'God', or a mere abundance of caution is fun for some.
> The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
So, no, you're not paying for this.
I'm quite sure that any religion that wanted to fund the cost and follow the proper permitting procedures could similarly run wires for religious purposes, otherwise NYC would have a First Amendment problem. But I don't think any other religions want to run wires for religious purposes.
And yes, other religions can and do use public space in myriad ways too. As for encroaching on others, the eruv doesn't really encroach on anyone - I'm a secular Jew who has lived in NYC for most of my life, and while I've heard about this before, I've never actually noticed it in person, even when I've probably been within eyesight of it.
Yes, it's public space.
> and encroaching on others?
An eruv wire looks just like any other wire strung on a pole, save it's and thinner, doesn't carry electricity or communications .. so it "encroaches" on your life just as much as any other utility wire .. even less if you spend little time in jewish neighbourhoods that actually string such things.
Also, what are other such examples from other groups? There’s a big difference between theoretical (a matter of law) and the practical (societal acceptance). I’m also not sure of telephone poles being public space, I can only imagine the administrative and legal hurdles to overcome to hang something off one.
Some of your other what if's are addressed in the article, if you're a good faith commenter looking for actual serious issues then there's also 100 years of existence in Manhattan and the wider New York City to draw upon.
Perhaps you could highlight some actual real issues that have cropped up in the last century?
Speaking of which, tell me, would there be so many defensive comments if, in a hypothetical scenario, there was an article written about how every cell tower in the city had an Arabic inscription written (in such small text that it couldn’t be seen) in order to “bless” all the cellular waves emanating from there? I know what my response would be.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0IHYtUPElJ/