Dan's Papers - April 11, 2008 - Enclosing Westhampton

In ancient times, before the appearance of Christianity, the Jews living in the Middle East, often at the mercy of oppressors, made it a hard and fast rule to designate one day a week when they would worship the Lord and do no work.

They wrote in the Torah, the book of laws, how these rules were to be observed, and rabbis interpreted them for thousands of years in another book called the Talmud. And since that day, from sundown Friday night to sundown Saturday night for Orthodox Jews these rules are in effect, just as later on Sunday became the day of observance and rest for the Christian faith.

The rabbis were very busy people, interpreting what was in the Torah to their various congregants. Much of the time they disagreed from one congregation to another. But overall, the rule of no work on the Sabbath still stands. And it is soon to be interpreted in a very public way in Westhampton Beach that I thought you might like to know about.

Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Hampton Synagogue in that town has proposed to the Village Board that something called an eruv be erected to encircle that Village. It will consist of small sticks nailed about two thirds the way up certain telephone poles, with thick strings connecting the sticks across avenues and up and down certain streets. It will form a symbolic wall surrounding the Village, which will allow certain activities inside the wall to take place on that day of rest where up to now, by the orthodox interpretation of some of the congregants, it cannot.

"We have as many as a thousand worshippers coming to our services in the summertime," the rabbi said. "Many of them are young families. In some cases, mothers cannot push their baby carriages to get to the synagogue, because the Torah tells them they cannot unless they build an eruv."

Mayor Conrad Teller, who is not Jewish, is looking into the matter, and, in fact, is doing a whole study on it so he understands it. The Village will consider the request further at a work session on April 16. If it is approved, it will be the first eruv in the Hamptons.

According to a Supreme Court decision involving a case in Teaneck, New Jersey, eruvs are legal, within reason. Those opposed to eruvs filed a lawsuit claiming an eruv was a violation of the separation of church and state, but the justices ruled that a town could prevent the construction of an eruv only if there is a very good reason. No town has yet come up with one.

Today, there are hundreds of eruvs in communities around America - Teaneck, Brooklyn Heights, Manhattan's Upper East and West Sides (it crosses the park), Phoenix, Memphis, Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Providence, Dallas, Chicago and even Washington, DC, where an eruv encloses an area of that city that includes the White House.

Make no mistake, an eruv is a long, continuous string strung from telephone pole to telephone pole, or where there is no telephone pole, just a specially built pole to enclose a place. They are up there, visible just as telephone wires are. But that's it. Currently, Richard Haefeli, the Synagogue's attorney, is negotiating with LIPA to put the eruv lines up on their poles. Imagine that. A community that WANTS telephone poles, while the residents of Water Mill fight to have new telephone lines put underground.

Here is what Mayor Teller and several others are finding as they study Jewish law.

On the Jewish Sabbath, the Torah says that you may not sweep the floor, operate a car or even be a passenger in one, or turn on an electric light anywhere inside or outside your home. You can't even carry things.

But the rabbis, after interpreting the wording, found exceptions to what you can do inside your home. You can pick up things and move them around in your home, for example. You can carry food. You can put dishes away. And you can help with children. When you think about it, there HAD to be exceptions for things that needed to be done inside your home on the Sabbath.

Rabbis also studied and interpreted what would be okay and not okay at the demarcation line separating home and the outside world. They came up with three principles. Moving an object from an enclosed area (such as a private home, public building or fenced-in area) to a major thoroughfare would be illegal. Moving an object from a major thoroughfare to an enclosed area would be illegal. And moving an object more than four cubits (that's about six feet) within a major thoroughfare inside the eruv would be illegal.

Of course, then they had to define the word "thoroughfare." And what is a "major thoroughfare." The debates went long into the night.

And then, when they got done with that, they began to consider the definition of "home" or "closed in area." Solutions emerged. It was agreed that if you lived in a walled city, you could consider that the wall created a "home," provided some other residents of the city broke bread with you. Then, inside those walls, you could lift and carry certain things that up until then you could not. The key was the wall. So the "carry" rule was extended to the edge of the city walls.

There were many nuances to this interpretation. In some congregations, a small berm might be considered a wall. Or perhaps just a row of trees might be considered a wall. Eventually, it was agreed that if you could surround a small place with a symbolic wall consisting of an overhead string running around it, that would do. The string, the eruv in Hebrew, could cross over busy thoroughfares high up on the poles, creating a gateway experience, exactly mimicking the experience of a doorway into a private home or an open arch leading into a city. I think you get the idea.

Here on Long Island, there are eruvs surrounding a whole number of villages, all at the western end of the Island. Two of these eruvs near the city, one in Lawrence and one in Far Rockaway, were found to share one "wall." After some wrangling about the details, the rabbis arranged to "open" that one wall, so the eruvs could be contiguous. It gave people more space in which to carry things.

In sum, the Jews are putting up strings. And it remains fascinating what you can or cannot do inside or outside the string, as far as schlepping goes. Particularly at the string itself.

For example, a Jewish person might help carry one end of a heavy piano a certain distance within the confines of the wall on the Sabbath. But as soon as he gets to the overhead string, that's it. That marks the farthest reaches of his "home." As for a woman with a child in a stroller, she could push the stroller, but when she reached the string, she'd have to take her child out and have a less observant person, sometimes a non-Jew, carry him or her, leaving the stroller behind.

There are also interesting things that will be done at the eruv. Once a week it has to be inspected by a rabbi to make sure that it remains in order. If there is a break, the word spreads that the eruv is broken, and the rules change for the Jewish community until it is fixed.

Rabbi Schneier himself has to observe another rule. He has to serve bread to a variety of the citizenry of Westhampton Beach once a year just inside the string. The bread, often matzoh, shows that inside this wall, it is "home" for all. When non-Jews or less orthodox Jews eat the bread, it shows that they acknowledge this "home" for Jews and for everybody else. Thus God sees that it is so.