One detail about an eruv

[rhu]

Over on Facebook I posted a link to Wyatt Cenac's brilliant piece on the Hamptons eruv. But I wanted to clarify one thing, because I can't stand the way most people talk about an eruv.

The wrong explanation of an eruv: Jews aren't allowed to carry things on the Sabbath. But if they put up an eruv, they can break that rule! (Or "An eruv is a loophole that lets them evade that rule.")

The right explanation of an eruv: Jews aren't allowed to carry things in an unenclosed area on the Sabbath. An eruv is the smallest physical boundary marker that can turn an open area into an enclosed area, within which we are permitted ab initio to carry things.

(And to drive home the point that an eruv is an actual boundary marker, and not just symbolic, every inch of every eruv is physically checked every week for damage that would render it discontiguous, and if it can't be repaired in time then "the eruv is down" and we are not permitted to carry. This happened in Boston after the big snowstorm a few months back.)

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Thanks for mentioning that piece: I had not seen it, and I'm glad to have watched it.

I suspect that the distinction you are trying to draw, while accurate, is a distinction so small to non-Orthodox that it borders on meaningless.

How is it not a loophole?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

It would be a loophole if the law said "Don't carry, period" and then we found a way to subvert that. But the law doesn't say that; it says "Carry only in an enclosed area, and here is the minimum amount of enclosure that is required."

Here's a parallel example: The law says "Don't eat meat and dairy together. Meat doesn't include fish and dairy doesn't include eggs, even though some people might think they should." And so fish and eggs are pareve. It's not a loophole, it's the way the law defines its limits of applicability in the first place.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

"The law" is a series of interpretations, each slightly more remote from the source material than the last.

If one can define an enclosed area, the means of enclosure, the concept of a door or door-frame, shared ownership, and a community meal far enough from the ordinary understandings - and one does so within "law", then I guess one can say that it is not a loophole: because the law permits it.

But while it is a logical and step-wise redefinition of basic and reasonable concepts, the end conglomeration is, to the outside eye, a series of re-definitions.

It's a loophole, by the very definitions of the term.

I have no problem with it being internally halachically consistent with the methods and understandings of Jewish law. But MY premise was that to one not steeped in that tradition, it would best be described as a loophole.

Obviously: I never have had a problem with it, and do not now - it doesn't really apply to me (as I am not and do not plan to be Shomer Shabbos). It obviously makes INTERNAL sense to the community. But to the outside, it is not much more than a loophole.

[cnoocy]

Is a rotary a loophole in the law regarding right-of-way in intersections? I would say no, it's an additional aspect of the law that expands the definitions used. If the outside eye is ignorant of the law, that doesn't make the correct use of the law a loophole. I'd reserve "loophole" for a specialized interpretation that subverts the spirit of the law.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Ignoring the rotary (to my understanding, it is not an intersection).

The popular understanding of the spirit of the law is that Shomer Shabbos Jews can only carry on the Sabbath within a privately owned space (basically).

The eruv redefines the ultimate in public space (a town) as a private space.

From the popular understanding: how is that not a loophole? Especially if one starts to examine the means of the redefinition, where the "wall" is defined down to string, the "door" is defined upward to "space between utility pole" and the joint ownership and ritual meal is redefined to "one rabbi gives another some stale matzo".

Everything is redefined down or up from its common meaning, to the barest of bare minimums or the broadest of exaggerated maximums.

Again: this is fine, if that's what you believe and what you are trained to understand. But to those not steeped in that belief nor in that training, it is such a redefinition sequence as to be nothing but a loophole.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Actually, the "ultimate in public space" is a reshut harabbim and it cannot be included in an eruv. The Mass Pike is an example.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Again: I was talking the outsider perspective. I recognize that in Judaic terms that is so. But to a non-Jew or a non-Shomer Shabbos Jew, the notion of a public space is defined secularly. The double-think to define a town as privately owned space (even if only ritually owned and only from a Jewish perspective of ownership) would be considered outre - and the fact that there is such a definition of ownership that includes, say "my house" - is a logical stretch.

(I'm also curious how the entire concept manages so-called "public roads" as not being reshut harabbim.)

[cazique.livejournal.com]

I like how your examples - the boundary of an eruv and a rotary - are both, in fact, loops.

I'll be here all week.

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

But if there is a hole in the eruv-loop, then...

Great, now I have "There's a Hole in the Bucket" in my head.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

And I'm wondering what happens if the eruv is fabricated as a Moebius Strip.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary website, a loophole is "an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded."

As far as I know, the law isn't ambiguous, nor is anything omitted. The law clearly states the amount of enclosure required, and an eruv fulfills that law.

Unless you're using a different definition of the word loophole?

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I am not.

I consider, from my odd perspective, what Jewish Law is, and what its modern interpretation is. Perhaps I am ignorant.

But I think we are debating past one another. I'm saying that this "Jewish Law" seems, from the outside, to be a series of remarkable and nearly literally incredible series of redefinitions whose purpose is to avoid some rather plain meanings in the original source material.

From the outside, it's nearly farcical.

I recognize that within the traditions of Jewish Law, these sorts of redefinitions are considered proper law and have a had the ambiguity drummed out of them. But, again from the outside, largely by performing a "race for the extreme" - a wall is a fishing line? A door is string between two large poles?

The goyim say "calling a tail a leg does not make it one". In this, they are right, I think. :-)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Telling, but true: I once had the following train of thought on the way out of shul on a Friday night. "Oh, I should make X phonecall... no wait, it's Shabbat... oh, but it's OK, the eruv is up... oh WAIT."

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

For those of us who aren't big fans of FB, can you link to the Cenac piece here too?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Sure, sorry: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-march-23-2011/the-thin-jew-line?xrs=share_fb

(And I'll add it to the post itself)

the first eruvs

[danchall.myvidoop.com (from livejournal.com)]

Is it known when eruvs were first instituted such that an entire community became enclosed?

Re: the first eruvs

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

The Talmud asserts that the first eruv as we know it today was built at the direction of King Solomon. Before that, communities were enclosed by their defensive walls. Of course, as with everything in the Talmud, it can be hard to determine whether it's providing historically accurate information or merely rhetorical backing for one rabbi's position.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I do have to say that I thought Cenac's line about eruv being from an old Hebrew word meaning loophole was very funny, however.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Me: *singing under my breath* The water's not cold, baby, dip in your big toe, maybe I'll see you in flagrante delicto...
Mike: Aw, I just realized Orthodox Jews in an eruv can't celebrate the First of May.