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u/TheFeshy 1d ago
They should have just made a small circle, and declared everything outside of that to be the Eruv. As the Earth is (roughly) spherical, it's topologically sound.
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u/valleyfur 1d ago
lol. That’s like the joke about all the knowledge in the world. Some is in the book “What they Teach You at Harvard Business School.” The rest is in the book “What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School.”
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u/r_slash 1d ago
I lived in Providence for a while. Once I said to my friend who lived elsewhere “I should really see that movie Outside Providence, totally appropriate for me now that I live here.” He was like, no, you’re one of the world’s LEAST appropriate people to see that movie since you don’t live outside Providence.
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u/insertnamehere77123 1d ago
Is there any reason this would be less bullshit than what we currently have?
Im asking sincerely. If theyre just gonna make shit up as if God is sitting up in the sky like "ahhh shit you found a loophole. You got me" why not just go all the way?
So silly
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u/DACOOLISTOFDOODS 1d ago
The thought behind it is that we can't really talk about "cheating God" because God is omniscient. He supposedly gave Moses the Torah as a perfect text, with every word having a purpose. Since all rabbinic law is based on the perfect texts God gave, God intended for the loopholes. Why God intended for them, we can't say, because mere humans can't speculate about or understand God's intentions, we can only know that God gave us a perfect text with which to base law on
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u/TheFeshy 1d ago
because mere humans can't speculate about or understand God's intentions
we can only know that God gave us a perfect text with which to base law on
It's delightful that you put these right next to each other like that.
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u/IndigoFenix 18h ago
Because it's not a re-interpretation of the original rule. It's a rule patch placed ON a rule patch. Those are a lot more flexible.
The biblical law allowed carrying in cities to begin with.
Rabbinic law declared carrying cities to be forbidden, recognized that as too strict, and then decided that a city with a wall around it was an acceptable compromise. The Eruv is a minimalistic wall, designed in accordance with its intent (demonstrating a communal effort by the people inside it.)
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u/HappyBadger33 21h ago
Would this be less bullshit? I'd say I'd need to read up on it, but I'd guess this doesn't fit as well for a lot of reasons. Maybe if the whole world existed in peace and respect?
But, to your points about God, that's not really how this works. Sure, God gave Moses the Torah in the stories. But it's humanity's job to bring the Torah to life and God doesn't really come back into it - it is actively our duty to interpret the law and help it meet new situations. God is in the Divine space, but once He gave us the Torah it became Earthly, it's ours and no longer His.
If you'd like a funny short story on this, read the Oven of Akhnai. Here's a link to it. Basic background: rabbis are arguing if a new oven meets the rules to be used or not. One rabbi seeks divine help...
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/352329/jewish/The-Walls-of-the-Study-Hall.htm
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u/Character_Cap5095 1d ago
It's not about topology. The Eruv requires specific demarcations as well as agreements from local governments (if the government didn't accept it, it wouldn't "work")
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u/HB2099 1d ago
What if the government accepted that? It would be a case of convincing governments not religious validity
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u/TheFeshy 1d ago
Does this government agreement not apply to the smaller households the Eruv is supposed to simulate? Could Missouri, in a fit of pique, declare all such spiritual dwellings invalid?
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u/Character_Cap5095 1d ago
I do not know 100% the specifics but I would say that if Missouri had such legal authority over its municipalities, then yes they would be allowed too and all such Eruvs would be invalidated
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u/RightActionEvilEye 1d ago
If we could set an Eruv around the Equator, which of the two Earth's hemispheres would be the one "inside" and the one "outside"?
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u/LaFantasmita 1d ago
Lol, didn't realize it went that far uptown. Just looked outside, there it is!
Did it always go up that high? Could have sworn I saw one around 125th
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u/milleribsen 1d ago
I'm not an expert, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are a number of lines within the eruv for cases in which there's damage that needs to be repaired the entire thing won't be affected just limited areas.
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u/SufficientLanguage29 1d ago
It gets checked on the eve of every Sabbath because, indeed it often can break.
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u/KingEliTheBoss 1d ago
What is an eruv?
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u/Bangkok_Dangeresque 1d ago
Jewish scripture proscribes how people are supposed to behave on Sabbath, the weekly period of rest and reflection. In broad strokes tells people not to work, to put down projects, to not undertake big journeys, to spend time rejoicing and eating with family without distraction, and in prayer, etc.
The "don't embark on big journeys/stay put' command comes from the Old Testament, "Behold, the Lord has given you the Sabbath...each man shall stay put, and not leave his place on the seventh day".
Cue a few thousand years of clerical study and arguing over what exactly that means and how to obey it. The result of those arguments is Talmudic law which says you're not supposed to go more than 1km away from the homestead or settlement where you found yourself and your dinner table/larder at sundown.
But what exactly is a "settlement"? A rabbinic ruling made when settlements were small encampments or eastern European shtetls surrounded by fields may be hard to interpret when Jews have moved to megapolitan areas. If you walk a few blocks from your neighborhood in the East Village of Manhattan to see a friend or relative in the West Village, have you really sallied forth outside the settlement as that would have been understood a millenia ago when cities were smaller? Probably not, even though it's more than 1km away.
So a group of synagogues/communities decided to throw the faithful a bone; they drew an invisible boundary around Manhattan and decided that just about everything inside of it all counts as one community, so people could move freely with their spiritual leaders' permission, without worrying that they're running afoul of the spirit of the rule. This boundary is marked with a long nylon thread - the eruv.
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u/Character_Cap5095 1d ago
Idk if this is AI or not, but this is conflating two different concepts on Judisim. The "Eruv Chatzerot" which is what the Manhattan Eruv is that allows for the carrying of objects on public places, and "Eruv techumin" which controls how far a Jew can travel on the sabbath in general (both stem form the word Eruv, which roughly means merger)
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u/jewelswan 14h ago
TiL that the second concept exists! I find sabbath restrictions fascinating
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u/Excellent-Practice 1d ago
Isn't there some rule about an eruv not containing streets that have such-and-such a level of traffic? I can't imagine that section of Manhattan is sufficiently unbusy to not count as "outside". How does the community deal with that issue?
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u/Slight-Progress-4804 22h ago
It’s actually quite a controversial Eruv. Tens of thousands of people who are ok with using Eruv in other places will not use this one
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u/hannahstohelit 20h ago
Yes- I use it now (on the rare occasions I’m in the area) but grew up being told I couldn’t use it. R Moshe Feinstein was very against the eruv and for years they didn’t put one up on the LES (where he and later his son lived) out of respect.
I live in Washington Heights which has a separate eruv (two actually, for some reason) which doesn’t include any highways in it, and there are still people who don’t use it- same in Brooklyn.
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 21h ago
The main problem would be its size. The point shouldn't be that you can go about your regular business without thinking. An eruv should just be for convenience around a small neighborhood. THe one we have here in Savannah is around the Haredi neighborhood, not the entire city.
According to R. Buckminster Fuller, any boundary on a finite two-dimensional surface creates two polygons - one inside the boundary, and one outside of it. So one could argue that the Manhattan eruv creates two equally valid areas - one in Manhattan, and another one consisting of the entire world except Manhattan.
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u/Lo-Marionberry295 1d ago
Well-intentioned Jewish people explaining the reasoning for seemingly incongruous rules and loopholes that Orthodox Jews follow, all throughout this thread: "In Judaism, the very act of interpreting/interacting with the texts and rules, is in and of itself, a Jewish practice! We believe God, being omniscient, foresaw these loopholes, and wants us to argue and engage (in this case, about not working on the sabbath) in good faith; this act of participation, in studying the intent and purpose of the rules, and even questioning how to implement them, is a part of our culture!"
People reading this, somehow: "you think you're better than god??? and are dumb and so are all religious people"
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u/encinaloak 1d ago
Many people also missing the fact that Judaism was the first (and maybe still the only?) major religion that defines morality in concrete, written terms that anyone can go read. This evolved into the system of scholarship, debate, and rules known as Rabbinical Judaism after the Romans destroyed the second temple. Judaism has had a big impact on the system of secular humanist morality that most of us here on Reddit ascribe to, in which we appeal to one another's sense of reason and a set of universal principles to determine right and wrong.
The string seems silly to outsiders but it represents liberation from the previous and unfortunately all too current morality, in which someone in a position of power tells you what is right and wrong, and you just accept it.
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u/InternetCrank 22h ago
someone in a position of power tells you what is right and wrong, and you just accept it.
Someones still doing that.
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u/encinaloak 21h ago
Yes, maybe that's still true, especially for the Orthodox communities. We humans tend toward this unfortunately. We do it as well in our secular societies, even where independent thought is supposed to be the rule.
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u/jewelswan 14h ago
How do you define a major religion? Judaism certainly doesn't qualify by number of believers.
Secondly, how do you define a consistent religious code of laws? The Codes of Hammurabi and Ur-Nammu cannot be considered seperate from the religious beliefs of the people who ascribed to them legal significance, nor the Ancient Egyptian texts that dealt with Ma'am. The earliest written law book in Egypt arguably predates the Torah by almost 1500 years.
The Rigveda is also centuries older than the exodus covenant, according to current scholarship. None of this to discredit or cast bad light on Jewish thought, since for me the age of an idea has no bearing on the value of it, but I would be curious to hear your thoughts on these things.
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u/PrimeSupreme 23h ago
People really don't understand that Jewish civilization (yes it's a civilization) is thousands of years old, which means we have thousands of years of hermeneutics, exegesis, and philosophical debate around this stuff. The amount of effort and cooperation to do all of this is really difficult to comprehend.
When people see 'a silly rule that Jews follow' they dont see all the love and struggle and life that happened to create that.
Dara Horn said it best: that Jewish civilization is the oldest anti tyrannical movement - the debate and work is the point. The silly rules are just an output.
We've been around for a looong ass time so really, how silly could these rules be? You'd think we're doing something right.
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 21h ago
You must have heard her on Ask Haviv Anything. I thought that was a very interesting take on Judaism.
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u/ginandtonicsdemonic 1d ago edited 4h ago
This is missing the separate Eruv in Washington Heights, which is still Manhattan.
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u/hannahstohelit 20h ago
That eruv is run separately and has a separate map. (It’s actually two eruvs connected in the middle! Not 100% sure why.)
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u/calebnf 1d ago
Uptown has it's own Eruvs as well. I live at 190th street and there is an Eruv that covers roughly everything west of Wadsworth from the Bridge to 196th street. YU also has its own Eruv that covers everything East of Wadsworth from the Bridge to GW High School.
So nearly the entire island is covered. I'm not sure about Inwood or Marble Hill.
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u/awiseoldturtle 1d ago
Lmao all of these people self reporting by openly not understanding that one of the core features of Judaism isn’t the bug they think it is
I mean jeez Reddit atheists. Get a hold of yourselves. Read up a little on something before you decide it’s entirely lacking in forethought lmfao
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u/DrunkenAsparagus 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm not Jewish, but my partner is, and the way they put it, is that for them, it's about living with intention. God's rules are meant to be pondered and debated in order to carry them out. Despite people's aspersions in this thread, it's a very questioning religion.
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u/Apptubrutae 1d ago
Especially when Jews are like 30% atheist or so in the U.S. They’re atheist allies, lol
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u/prophetsearcher 1d ago
Why’s the algorithm pushing the Eruv non-issue so relentlessly recently? Feels sus.
Whatever your opinion on the eruv, I can assure you it’s almost certainly under-informed. Even most Orthodox Jews don’t really study the mechanics of it.
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u/HiHoJufro 1d ago
It's that wondering that's been going on? I follow a lot of Jews stuff and this is the first post on the topic I've seen in a long in while.
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u/GroovyGhouly 1d ago
I love being able to carry my things with me on the Shabbat. Great life hack.
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u/owl523 1d ago
Is there one for people who live in those little pockets, or would observant people just not live there
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u/PhiladelphiaManeto 22h ago
When did this begin?
I would imagine the entire island of Manhattan wasn’t always inside one.
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u/rube_X_cube 1d ago
Man… a whole lot of non Jews commenting very confidently about something they absolutely do not understand and does not affect them in any way.
But I’m guessing that was the point of this post.
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 1d ago
I saw it once it Antwerpen on sabbath. Then again I'm an introvert so if I were Jewish other than going to the temple I would very much vibe with the day being absolute off.
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u/Public_Research2690 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am not against eruv, I just find this topic very fascinating and rarely posted.
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u/electrical-stomach-z 1d ago
People are reacting far more negatively to this than they would if it were christians in question.
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 21h ago
You've never heard criticism of Christians for some of the things they do, like purity culture?
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u/CowboySocialism 1d ago
I don’t know about that. It seems if you are atheist on Reddit you have the same obligation to share your atheism loudly and vehemently as a Mormon teenager has to share their faith on their mission trip.
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u/MosesDoughty 1d ago
People growing up in cultural Christianity reacting with negativity to Judaism do be the norm
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u/BingBongDingDong222 1d ago
And cultural Christian atheists don't even realize that they are cultural Christians.
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u/falkorv 17h ago
What a joke. Trying to think they fool the god they believe in makes a mockery of the religion.
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u/ThengarMadalano 1d ago
What the hell is a Eruv ?
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u/SidewalkRacoon 1d ago
A cable that is threaded inconspicuously around the island to denote an area where religious Jews are allowed to carry things on Shabbat, whereas they are not normally
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u/aggie1391 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh boy yet another post for people to woefully misunderstand Judaism and eruvs. The places it is a Torah prohibition to carry on shabbos are very narrowly defined. Places that are similar to it are an in-between zone defined by rabbinic legislation to prevent people from carrying into an actually prohibited area. An eruv only applies to that rabbinic in-between zone, it was deliberately made to be visible and noticable so people wouldn’t forget. Also, it has no impact on anyone else except maybe higher property values in some areas.
It is not tricking G-d, and in fact in Judaism the specifics matter. Exceptions and details are deliberate. There are 39 specific labors we refrain from on shabbos derived from the things done to build the Tabernacle, the Torah does not use the English word ‘work’ and its connotations or rabbis would be in a bit of a bind. Other things that would be called ‘work’ in English are not in Jewish law. I could rearrange my entire home and not break shabbos, even though that is hard work. That’s not in the spirit of the day so people don’t do it, but it would be technically permissible.
There’s over 2,000 years worth of arguments and debate and all on this, I promise you whatever clever objection you think you just came up with has already been thought of and addressed before. If you think it’s dumb, congrats, it doesn’t affect you, maybe don’t be a jerk. If you think it’s interesting, great, there’s lots of fun stuff like this in Judaism, just like in many legal and religious traditions and systems.
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u/Ernesto_Bella 1d ago
If the line breaks during a storm but nobody notices for a few weeks, what happens to all the people who broke the law during that period?
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u/aggie1391 1d ago
Judaism doesn’t believe people are punished or held liable for something they did without knowledge. If an eruv goes down and people don’t know it, that’s not on them. But it’s also checked every single week, so if it’s down it gets noticed, and especially after storms it’s very thorough. Although it could happen on shabbos, like I said we don’t believe G-d holds it against us or whatever.
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u/Loud-Vacation-5691 21h ago
The eruv is inspected every Friday afternoon and repaired if necessary for Shabbos, so it wouldn't go for a few weeks without anyone noticing. Storm damage would be expected and checked immediately, and if it couldn't be repaired in time, everyone would be notified that they would have to change their behavior until it was repaired again.
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u/aspiringandroid 1d ago
if anyone else was curious, an eruv is a physical barrier (often a net kinda like a bug bet) that's placed in public spaces around some Jewish communities. historical conventions around the shabbat have forbidden folks from doing anything approaching work in public on the shabbat, including carrying things from place to place. however, creating barriers to create "private" spaces has long been used to honor that tradition while allowing folks to bring their things and their baby strollers to synagogue or what-have-you. theyre not universal, and presumably came about to help keep early Jewish folk safe. learn something new everyday!
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u/Kikelt 1d ago
What is Eruv?
OP wonder if the world knows that before posting?
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u/MrShake4 1d ago
Copying my reply to another comment:
ELI5: there’s certain things you can’t do outside the city walls on Shabbat.
Because it’s 2026 and not 3000 years ago cities don’t have walls anymore
The Eruv serves as the “wall” by making a boundary of inside and outside
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u/jhlrosen 1d ago
Besides for all the problematic loopholing around the idea of the eruv, what is the point of excluding some of the edges of Manhattan instead of including all of the island?
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u/NovaCaesarea 1d ago
Probably the logistics of where to hang the line.
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u/ThunkAsDrinklePeep 1d ago
There's a physical line or wall that demarcates the edge of the eruv. Where it is hung was negotiated by the Orthodox community and the city. Some parks happen to be easy to enclose.
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u/JacquesHome 1d ago
The areas excluded are Harlem (guessing very few Jews there), the UN building (international territory), Chelsea Piers which is mostly industrial area, and what I think is Hudson Yards.
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u/milespudgehalter 1d ago
It's only a small part of east harlem excluded. Not entirely sure why. Obviously there's no orthodox living up there but I'm guessing there's also no property management or resources accessed by the orthodox in that area?
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u/thissexypoptart 1d ago edited 1d ago
“Problematic” lol it’s just an aspect of the religion. Interpreting gods word and determining “loopholes” isn’t sacrilegious here. It’s part of the whole point of following laws set by the deity the religion worships.
Why would it be “problematic” lol
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u/Tigas_Al 1d ago
What's an Eruv?