I have written many times before about the intricate set of rules that Orthodox Jews have to live by. Some of the most restrictive are those involving the Sabbath and what can and cannot be done during that period. It appears that there are certain things that you can do within the home that you can’t do outside it, such as carrying certain items in public. This can be a nuisance in the modern age when people are used to having their creature comforts available to them 24/7. But not to worry! As in the case of kosher telephones, certified Sabbath mode ovens, and Shabbat elevators, there is a workaround that enables the observant to broaden their activities without incurring their god’s displeasure, and this one involves placing a string known as an eruv around a perimeter that creates virtual doorways that effectively can make an entire neighborhood into the interior of a home. (At least, that is how I think that ‘theory’ works though someone who is more informed on this kind of arcana may be able to add to it.)
I received a link to a news item from a reader about the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood that is doing just that. And what it involves is a thing of wonder.
“First of all it (enables) people who live near Beachwood Kehilla to cross over Richmond Road and to carry, and anyone else who wants to go visit family and friends who (live) beyond Richmond Road can carry as well,” Burnstein said. “Also, most importantly it allows anyone who wants to go to Menorah Park, Montefiore, to that entire development, (to have) the ability to carry on Shabbos, which has always been a problem. Until now … (if) they were carrying a bottle or something else, they couldn’t carry it past Richmond Road. Now they can go all the way into Menorah Park or into Montefiore… . So it’s a wonderful asset for the community.”
The virtual doorways were historically represented by vines, but today are more commonly represented by utility poles and the wires that pass above or near them. If the lines and poles form 90-degree angles, then they may be considered as part of an eruv.
Rabbis making sure that the eruv meets the standards
Among the criteria the rabbis were checking were the angles at which specially installed conduits, called lechis, met the wires on top. Some will have to be adjusted to correct the angle.
The rabbis were also looking at the curve of the wires to assure they did not dip too deeply. In addition, in at least one case, they measured the distance between the ground and the bottom of the lechi, checking to make sure it was within three handbreadths or 9 inches from the ground.
Rabbi Howard Jachter, who was doubly ordained as a rabbi and rabbinic judge at Yeshiva University in New York, flew in from Teaneck, N.J., to oversee and inspect the new eruv. It is one of approximately 60 he has overseen in cities across North America, including Vancouver, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Mich., and Birmingham, Ala.
I wrote back in 2013 about the problems that a similar effort ran into in a town in New Jersey and the novel interpretation of the Fist Amendment’s Free Exercise of religion clause that they invoked to overcome the objections of the local community. There should be no such problems in this case because the town of Beachwood is overwhelmingly Jewish in its composition.
My theory is that there are two groups of rabbis working in concert. One group decides on ever stricter and more arcane rules that they claim are based on a careful reading of their scriptures. The other group then gets to work to find workarounds and loopholes in the new rules embedded in the very same scriptures. It is kind of like tax lawyers, one set of whom work to make the tax system really complicated and the other set then find loopholes for the wealthy to escape paying them.
Thus we have a system that creates permanent employment for people who like nothing better than to study the scriptures all the time. And they are sustained by people who think that strictly following rules purportedly derived from their holy books is a sure-fire way of gaining approval from their god. A win-win!
As long as, as the article states, the money to construct and operate the eruv is through fundraising and not provided by the government -- we’re fine….
And they are sustained by people who think that strictly following rules purportedly derived from their holy books is a sure-fire way of gaining approval from their god. A win-win!
Chuck Spinney describes such systems as “a self-licking ice cream cone.”
I would love to walk up to them and ask them if they could use some multi-mode fiber up there ‘while you’re up the pole” and WiFi base stations: broadband border for the masses!
When I was in grad school, I moonlighted as a volleyball referee. Anything on the head, other than a sweat band, was prohibited. One particularly obnoxious team had an obnoxious player wearing a Yankee’s (Met’s?) cap, which I asked him to remove. He said it was a yarmulke and should be an exception. I took him to task about trivializing his religion in such a manner. He complained to the league director (who was Jewish) about me, but then called back to say he was ashamed of his behavior. I guess he had a come-to-Jesus moment.
There is one very good thing about an eruv -- it’s a very useful Scrabble word. It’s only four letters, and the E, R and U are comparatively common ones, so it’s ideal for deploying that tricky V tile.
Oh, you meant games in a metaphorical sense…
Wouldn’t it be very much easier to construct and install a purpose-built properly-90-degrees door frame NEXT to the poles?
I don’t understand this. They want electrical wires to be within 9 inches of the ground? Do they mean the bottom of the lechi? How long are the lechis? Are lechis the utility poles on special doesn’t-count bases 9 inches high? What does this have to do with the curve of the wires between poles? I can’t visualize what they’re talking about.
The whole thing seems ridiculous. Is God so easily fooled? Such a strict constructionist that efforts to get around his rules that are within the jot-and-tittle letter of the law are not a sin? This is “I’m not touching you” levels of childishness toward supposedly divine law.
Wouldn’t anyone wearing clothing be “carrying something”? Why are the rabbis not insisting that any observant Jew must be naked if they leave the house during the Sabbath? If clothes get an exception, why not a backpack — that’s worn like clothing. Problem solved!
Seriously, though — would a wallet in a pocket be considered “carrying something”? If not, then why would a bottle of wine in a pocket be a problem?
It’s all pretty confusing. Hence employment for the rabbis, I guess.
My favourite workaround is one that allows pig farms in Israel despite the rule that no swine shall step foot on Israeli ground. The farms are built on raised wooden platforms, hence the swine’s feet are over rather than on the ground.
DonDueed @8:
Wearing clothes or jewelry is not considered to be carrying, but having something in the pocket of clothing one is wearing is considered carrying. In places without an eruv Orthodox Jews sometimes wear their house-key as jewelry on Shabbat.
God obviously came up with these rules to entertain me. I can’t stop laughing 😂
Mano and others, this isn’t about trying to trick God, it is about agreeing on a process to derive rules and resolve disputes for a community that lacks a ‘divinely appointed’ leadership. Allegedly at some point between 70 CE and 135 CE a process of ‘jurisprudence’ was agreed upon among the leadership of the time. They came up with a method of textual interpretation, and any decision has to be shown to follow that process. Even God doesn’t have the authority to overrule a decision like that.
https://www.yaelshahar.com/tanur-akhnai-tale-two-methods/
https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2010/07/furnace-of-akhnai-story-and-puzzle.html
Basically, a type of shibboleth. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory#Religion_as_a_costly_signal
(Because lopping off the foreskin is just not enough)
@DonDueed:
The actual rule is against “doing work”. Traveling for leisure or pleasure or to visit the ill, these are all fine because they aren’t “work”. Wearing clothes while you engage in these activities isn’t considered “work”, since the activity is leisure or pleasure or visiting the ill, etc., and the clothes aren’t being transported to a particular place and left in a location that they didn’t start in.
But without a prohibition on carrying things from place to place, a courier business could run unimpeded. But if you move something from place one to place two -- something other than yourself -- and leave it there, then you’ve “accomplished” something. You’ve done “work”.
Now, there are lots of little nuances about whether something is really work. If you are skipping stones on a lake because it’s relaxing and clears your head, that’s fine. And if you carry the stones five or ten feet from where you pick them up to the edge of the lake before you throw them, well, they did end up somewhere other than where they started, but did you accomplish work? Probably not. So does this break the rule or not? Well, it depends on your point of view. Some people prefer to have rigid rules so that they don’t have to worry about accidentally breaking the commandment to keep the sabbath. Others believe that they know the difference between “work” and “not work” well enough that they don’t need detailed rules. Knowing their own intent is enough.
Ultimately, I tend to look at a religious jew’s obedience to such rules the way that I look at a person with OCD acting out their compulsions. From my point of view it seems needless, but if it reduces their stress and it doesn’t harm me, that seems fine to me.
@Crip Dyke #15
I worry that it might be more like being pressured to act out Rabbis’ OCD compulsions.
I was in an Indian restaurant many years ago when a mother and daughter (age 11-13?) came in during Lent. The daughter was upset as she was dictated a long list of foods she couldn’t order by her mother. I bit my tongue, but if you’re going to observe some religious eating disorder, why aren’t you cooking at home or at least together with your congregation -- wtf are you doing in an Indian restaurant?
Ok, I’ve stopped laughing now.
I have to say that this smacks slightly of “look at the funny dances the savages perform, what prats!” so beloved of colonialists.
It’s just culture. To people on the outside it appears a bizarre and pointless ritual, but to people on the inside it is an essential part of their identity. As long as it’s not hurting anyone, I don’t see any reason to point a finger, mocking or otherwise.
anat: Your answer is a bit legalistic. Everything you say may be “true”, but the fundamental purpose behind this process IS to fiddle with the arcane rules governing behavior on the Sabbath. It may not be “tricking” God, but it still involves fudging the rules for human convenience,
Andrew Molitor: Sometimes mocking is fun. And the residents of Beachwood (median household income of $83,000 in 2010) are no longer an oppressed class being colonized in any way.
Hmm, on reflection my last sentence in comment #15 could be interpreted in a different way. I only just noticed. I better clarify.
Ok, I’ve stopped laughing now. related to my comment #11, not to the paragraph above it in #15. It was the opposite: that memory sobered me up. There’s nothing funny about child abuse.
Crip Dyke @14: Actions don’t have to have an intentionality of work to count as such for the purpose of Shabbat observance for Orthodox Jews (other denominations differ). In the 90s some rabbi in Israel forbade walking barefoot on grass on Shabbat because one might accidentally pull a weed.
bmiller @17;
So what if my answer appears legalistic to you? FYI, both in Hebrew and in Arabic, the words used for ‘religion’ mean ‘law’ not ‘faith’. Both Judaism and Islam are systems of laws that regulate communities more than anything else. (And this includes behaviors that have no direct impact on other people, because we are talking about behaviors that create identities. That can be anything that to outsiders looks silly or trivial, as long as the community agrees it is important to do it in a particular way at this time.) I don’t think it is by chance that 1/3 of the US Supreme Court consists of people with a Jewish background.
anat @21, you haven’t disputed bmiller.
No, I just don’t get what English speakers refer to as ‘legalism’ and why that might be a bad thing. To insiders this kind of thinking is a thing of beauty. Just like how a particularly brilliant legal opinion can be a thing of beauty.
anat, basically, it refers to a literal interpretation of a law, rather than its spirit.
But in Judaism (especially Orthodox Judaism) there is no difference. The ‘spirit’ of the law is that the community has an agreed-upon way to do all sorts of things, and they all do it that way.
anat, not ostensibly, but people are people.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat#Ways_of_circumventing_the_Shabbat_prohibitions
Outsiders see ‘ways of circumventing the Shabbat prohibitions’. Insiders see ‘ways to celebrate Shabbat in our community in our time’. The approach that (eg) because Torah forbids lighting and putting out fires on Shabbat it means Jews can’t have hot meals on Shabbat was ruled against in the big schism between Rabbinical Judaism and Karaite Judaism, back in the 9th century. (And isn’t that reading legalistic?)
You’re still not disputing bmiller @17; but you have clarified that your “so what” is just, heh, legalism.
Me, I don’t see the point of having rules and then excusing their breach via loopholes and workarounds; it’s all very silly.
—
Current example here in Oz: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-08/t20-international-mens-cricket-begins-but-does-anyone-know/11680534
Guess what? Not on free-to-air TV.
Their view is that hanging on to what the rules say for thousands of years with no change is silly. Again, you don’t get what the alleged ‘spirit’ of the laws is. Ultimately, the goal is to create a community that preserves its identity as a separate subculture. You can’t do that with rules that don’t change -- you either become irrelevant or you have a lifestyle that is so unappealing that people leave. So you give your community some, you increase livability, but by relying on a community-specific mechanism you don’t lose the community. In contrast, in Reform/Progressive Judaism they just went and said, ‘most old rules don’t apply anymore’. What happened was that community members started driving on Shabbat, which allowed them to live far from Temple -- and the result is that few have community members as neighbors.
Ahem. I refer you to my #13.
So yeah, I get it. Gotta go through the pointless hoops to belong.
That wouldn’t be so, if the rules from thousands of years were not unappealing enough to make people reject them (and perhaps leave). Implicitly, the thought here is “these rules suck and we need to fix them.” But if they didn’t suck to begin with, there would be no need to change them.
Please don’t pretend like that’s asking for too much, or even as if that’s impossible. Many very old legal concepts/traditions are still quite important. For example, most everyone thinks it’s still relevant and appealing to prohibit murder and theft, among many other things. Those were definitely good ideas, and it’s no coincidence that people everywhere have kept them all these years.
What’s if they’re not such good ideas? Well, you only considered one of the options in that case. If it’s not part of the identity the community wants to preserve anymore, you could take one approach, involving creative re-interpretations, new loopholes, etc. If you sort of squint at it, when it’s put it in the right light, the community may sort of look like it has “the same identity” it always did; but that’s simply not true, because it was changed, even if some don’t like to think of it as being changed.
Another very normal and commonsense approach is to simply remove the offending item, not consider it a worthwhile part of this group’s identity/traditions anymore, not try to adjust it somehow to fit with the group’s new way of thinking or living. Instead of trying to polish the turd until you’re “happy” with it again, you decide to flush it out. Nothing wrong with doing that.
But is that bad? Why not have important social connections (neighbors, coworkers, etc.) with people who aren’t in the congregation? You’re worried about keeping it relevant and appealing to people, and you probably should’ve learned at some point that many don’t want to have such social isolation forced on them. Besides, even when some think they’d like that sort of thing, it can quickly become a terrible experience which they can no longer escape.
Also, there are plenty of other factors (since the invention of automobiles, highways, modern approaches to zoning and subdivisions, etc.) which already divided up communities and made pedestrian travel difficult or impossible. Those things have nothing to do with Reform/Progressive Jews deciding which rules they wanted to follow.
Reform Judaism has a huge retention problem. It is likely that the lack of strictures has something to do with it -- there just doesn’t seem to be enough ‘character’ to it to be worth the damn for many young people. Orthodox Judaism, and in particularly Hassidism has been functioning as the ‘stem cells’ of Judaism -- they not only replicate themselves, but also provide members to other groups.
Westerners all want culture to vanish, except for some picturesque costumes, some dances, and of course the restaurants. People who actively pursue other ideas of how to live make us uncomfortable (well, maybe that makes everyone everywhere uncomfortable?) and so we engage in a whole lot of stuff from mockery, through othering, to outright violence, to try to make them stop or at any rate to express our wish that they stop.
Colonialism wasn’t about exploitation, it was, and remains, about exporting western ideas, frequently at gunpoint. The exploitation was a sweet side-benny that funded the whole operation. Now we have other sources of funding.
We’re still doing it. The woke left does it, but they lie to themselves *super* *hard*.