Oakland, Calif. - Some lines, it seems, cannot be crossed.
In 1999, Rabbi Yitzchok Feldman and his synagogue, Congregation Emek Beracha, approached the city of Palo Alto — an urbane community of tree-lined lanes that some of Silicon Valley’s and Stanford University’s finest minds call home — about creating an eruv, a delineated area in which Orthodox Jews can engage in certain activities normally forbidden on the Sabbath. City officials initially reacted warmly, but the following year a community outcry about separation of church and state, and perhaps about less high-minded issues, as well, beat back the proposal into obscurity.
Until last month, that is, when city bureaucrats green-lighted the eruv without holding any of the public hearings that had doomed it in 2000. Many of the eruv’s old opponents didn’t know it was an issue again until local newspapers reported it as a done deal.
“We look upon the eruv as a violation of our right to live in a spiritual environment of our own choice,” city resident Walton McMillan commented July 6 on the Palo Alto Weekly’s Web site, where debates have raged. “The eruv forces upon us the necessity to live in a community devoted to the worship of a god foreign to our understanding and devotion. We should not be required to live in a spiritual community which has habitually turned its back on the sacred and sublime for thousands of years.”
McMillan told the Forward he had thought that eruv opponents had “killed it eight years ago”; he was irked to discover otherwise.
Debates about the installation of eruv in are nothing new in American communities, raising church-state questions everywhere they pop up. The situation in Palo Alto is illuminating because it’s taking place in one of America’s most famous university communities, with all the secular and sometimes anti-religious sentiments that come with it.
Joe Webb from the nearby affluent enclave of Woodside vocally opposed the eruv last time, and he minces no words now. “We live in a modern, secular, democratic world, and these wackos are trying to catapult us back into a 2,000-years-ago kind of deal,” he said in an interview with the Forward, citing “the sneaky way that these folks do things.”
“The big thing at the time was declaring this area Jewish space — absurd! It’s not Christian space, it’s not communist space, it’s not Republican space, it’s not Nazi space. If they want to have religious space, go to synagogue,” he said, adding that he has “washed my hands of it…. If people want to allow Jews to run all over them, that’s their prerogative.”
It’s not as if Jews usually live beneath Palo Alto’s radar. A 2004 study by San Francisco’s Jewish Community Federation found that the South Peninsula area, including Palo Alto, saw the Bay Area’s most dramatic Jewish population growth from 1986 to 2004: 248%. And Palo Alto is home to the nascent Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life, a $250 million project to include a new Jewish community center, assisted-living senior residences developed by the Jewish Home of San Francisco, a regional headquarters for the Jewish federation and more.
But the community is keeping quiet until this eruv is actually in effect, Feldman insisted to the Forward. “We enjoyed our years of anonymity, and until this thing is really done, if you went through what we went through seven years ago, you’d keep quiet, too,” he said. “We did lots of talking to the press last time; it didn’t get anybody anywhere.”
When asked whether a contractor has begun stringing the barely visible fishing line that will bridge gaps between the eruv’s already existing, natural boundaries, Feldman replied, “I hope so.” Asked when the task will be completed, he said, “I hope somebody will tell us.”
How the hubbub of 2000 compares with the silent manner in which the eruv proceeded this time is a question “for the historians,” the rabbi said. “That’s all old stuff; it doesn’t seem to have repeated itself.”
Stan Sussman, founding president of Palo Alto Community eruv Inc., didn’t return calls.
Palo Alto City Attorney Gary Baum said that Feldman implored him to be discreet in discussing the eruv, but at least this much is on the public record: Last month, city planners granted an encroachment permit, the sort of permission a restaurant might get to place outdoor seating on a public sidewalk.
Last time, supporters had pursued the eruv as a land-use application, requiring the city council’s approval and public hearings. Citing safety concerns about attachments to public utility poles, and amid the public hue and cry, the city council was willing in 2000 to allow an eruv formed only of painted marks — unsatisfactory by halachic standards, and so, tantamount to rejection.
This time, facing a plan that bypassed all public utility poles and received permits from Stanford University, the California Department of Transportation, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and other entities from which easements were needed, “the City is legally compelled to allow the eruv installation,” Baum wrote in an official city memo.
Legal precedents including a 2002 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on a Tenafly, N.J., eruv indicate granting the permit doesn’t violate the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, while denying it absent a technical reason could violate the same amendment’s Free Exercise clause, Baum wrote.
That’s unsatisfying to Mitchell Zimmerman, an attorney and Palo Alto resident who, along with Joel Beinin, a Stanford University professor, co-authored a March 2000 Palo Alto Weekly guest column titled “Beware the Symbolism of Approving an eruv.”
“I just think it’s a mistake. I still think it’s basically a violation of separation of church and state,’’ he said this month. “I’m sorry that some people have sort of quirky… religious beliefs that they think require them to engage in this kind of activity… but I don’t see that a city or state ought to get involved in some sort of cooperation to help them out of their religious problem.”
Beinin — an often controversial, outspoken critic of Israeli policy who has been accused by right-wing provocateur David Horowitz of being a terrorist sympathizer — is in temporary residence at Egypt’s American University in Cairo. Reached via e-mail, he told the Forward he has “no comments at all” on the eruv.
It’s still unclear how this eruv satisfies the halachic requirement of sekhirat reshut, or “rental of domain,” a sort of leasing of spiritual authority so that all within the eruv’s boundaries is deemed communal, considered enclosed and private for the Sabbath.
Richard Hecht, a University of California, Santa Barbara, professor who is a scholar of the politics of public religious space, said there might be precedent for the Jewish community itself making such a proclamation, but he also opined that doing so without the larger community’s knowledge or approval might be “a perilous way to go,” lest it spark “a firestorm of criticism.”
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"You know", said a man to his Talmudic study partner, "we've been studying together for almost twelve years now, and yet I never see you anywhere else. My oldest son is becoming bar mitzvah next week, and I thought --" "This is kind of embarrassing," interrupted the partner, "but actually I'm not Jewish." "What? How? But -- but -- but you're wearing a yarmulke, you grow payess, you ..." "I know. I got interested in this Talmud stuff back then, figured I'd check it out, and one thing kind of led to another. It was easier to blend in." "But don't you remember that passage we studied about five months ago, that says any non-Jew that keeps all the commandments is under a curse?" "No problem! Every Shabbos, I deliberately walk more than two thousand cubits, so that takes care of that." "But there's an eruv around the community -- you can walk even five thousand cubits without violating the commandment." "Ah, but I don't accept that eruv!"
Freedom of Religious does not mean Freedom FROM Religion. Our founding fathers wanted a society where everyone would be able to practice freely (as long as it didn't infringe on another's ability to do the same). By the comments cited here, people that believe that God (in any form) exists in everything and every person would be violating their religious rights. The fact of the matter is that they won't be affected by the eruv at all. Unless you count their feeling.....and those aren't covered by freedom of religion.
I find it peculiar that so much fun was worked up against an eruv, and in turn that "RLeeSmith" thinks this article is "anti-religion"! Don't be a putz.
<p>Absolutely right, Horowitz is out in fringe rightist land with people like Preger and those other rightist Jewish commentators (ugh).</p> <p><em><strong>Daniel Pevsner</strong> said: </p> <p>I don't know about Joel Beinin, although it's utterly idiotic to imply that living in Cairo makes one a self-hating Jew. But David Horowitz is a very long way from being a respectable authority on this. </em></p>
Joe Webb is an antiSemite, overtly, and opposes efforts to end antiSemitism. See Stanford Daily http://stanforddaily.com/article/2004/5/4/lettersToTheEditor. Why not mention his anti-Semitic background in the article? As for Joel Beinin, its interesting that he opposes the eruv, or at least did in 2000. He is an Israel hating Jew who found himself most comfortable in Cairo, at least for the moment. These are not the people the Forward should want to quote.
WHAT IS REALLY BOTHERING THESE OTHERWISE FRIENDLY PEOPLE, WHY THE VENOM?? THE ERUV IS NOT DIRTY, NOT NOISY , BARELY VISIBLE, AND MEANS ALOT TO THE ORTHODOX NEIGHBORS IF ANY OTHER GROUP WISHED TO HANG SOME SMALL SYMBOLIC RIBBONS WHO WOULD MIND AT MOST YOU CAN DISMISS IT AS NONSENSE OR SUPERSTICIOUS LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO QUARREL AND VENT
I don't know about Joel Beinin, although it's utterly idiotic to imply that living in Cairo makes one a self-hating Jew. But David Horowitz is a very long way from being a respectable authority on this.
In my experience Beinin is an odious Israel-hater, and seems to harbor some deep misgivings about his Jewish heritage as well (ask him about his Orthodox Jewish sister sometime if you don't believe me.) While he would no doubt couch his opposition to the eruv in universalist language, I assure you Beinin will be on the forefront of future effots by the Bay Area's growing Muslim community to compel us to accomodate their particularistic religious practices. Mark my words.
Here we go again -- the Forward becoming a spokesman for the opponents of Jewish practice. First PETA, then the anti circumcision group, and now reaching all the way to Cairo to get comments from an apparent anti semite. Eruv's are spiritual boundaries which general influence only those who observe Shabbat. They don't hurt anyone and they help strengthen Jewish communities. To anti semites and Jewish self haters this is something to be fought. Fortunately the courts general don't engage in the sort of Jew bashing. Why don't you write about the wonderful Eruv that was just reconstituted in the lower half of Manhattan or the Eruv that has been active in upper Manhattan for many years or the Eruv in LA. Write about the positive effects of the Eruv and the complete lack of negative effects on non practicing Jews and non Jews (unless of course anything thats good for observant Jews is by definition bad for secular Jews and non Jews -- but that's a pretty anti semitic approach isn't it. And finally it's not just Orthodox Jews who benefit from an Eruv but all observant Jews which includes many Conservative Jews. And the eruv doesn't allow forbidden activities, it redefines the boundaries of the private domain from the point of view of the Sabbath.
I always thought that the eruv was a legal fiction with meaning only to those who believed in the halachic system. After all it's not a "real wall" that keeps non believers captive or anything of that sort. But it seems now that folks like McMillan are really afraid that being inside the eruv would somehow threaten him. If only more Jews had such a belief in the power of the eruv to transform space (only on Shabbat of course)
Okay. Since a curb works, how about a little ditch with a steel grate covering it. Voila!
Okay. Since a curb works, how about a little ditch with a steel grate covering it. Voila!
from previous postings: "won't be affected by the eruv at all" "BARELY VISIBLE" "spiritual boundaries" But there is a fish line strung over the street in front of my house and there are two 20 foot poles at the corner. I have no other poles nor lines. All my other utilities are underground. Put the eruv underground, and all opposition will disappear. Guaranteed.
unfortunately, spike, an underground eruv cannot be installed underground
sorry for the typo. an eruv cannot be installed underground.
moshe mess said: ... (ask him about his Orthodox Jewish sister sometime if you don't believe me.)... Huh? News to me. Nice spin, though. Basically the issue is not the Eruv, but who's paying for it. Somehow that issue got lost in this discussion.