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

[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.)