Sydney, Australia – It is a spiritual boundary made from wire just one centimetre thick but a planned Jewish eruv around St Ives has divided residents of the upper north shore suburb.
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Jewish residents of St Ives have long tried to create an eruv around the suburb: a zone marked by overhead wire within which orthodox Jews are permitted to carry objects out of doors on their sabbath and holy days, which would otherwise be forbidden.
Without an eruv, observant orthodox Jews are unable to carry anything outside, no matter its weight or purpose, or push prams or wheelchairs.
There are eruvs in Perth, Melbourne and in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, the third of which includes wire along the promenade at Bondi beach.
Eighty-five per cent of what is needed to create the eruv in St Ives is already in place in the form of overhead electric cables. Development applications for 24 new poles on private property and wire that would not be electric have been submitted to Ku-ring-gai Council.
That has prompted a residents’ group, the St Ives Progress Association, to distribute a flyer describing the eruv as a ”part-symbolic and part-physical wall … [that] would encapsulate most of St lves” and warning it ”is inconsistent with the visual character” of the suburb. The debate has prompted some letters to the local papers that Vic Alhadeff, from the Jewish Board of Deputies, has described as racist.
”It is deeply disappointing that some of the responses to this issue have strayed from a justifiable lack of understanding to blatant bigotry,” Mr Alhadeff said.
The president of the progress association, Christiane Berlioz, said its objections were not a sign of religious intolerance but an objection to the visual and environmental impact of the poles and wire.
”This is not about them following their beliefs; this is about them imposing structures on the community,” Ms Berlioz said.
A Jewish St Ives resident, who asked to be known only as Lisa, said the creation of the eruv ”would help us to integrate with the rest of the community on a Saturday”.
There are estimated to be about 3000 Jews living in St Ives, of which about 300 are orthodox.
The Australians are among the wost anti-Semites. There is no good reason to deny this other than to discourage more Yidden from moving into the area and improving it.
This is the kind of dispute that will arise in most areas where yiddeshe customs are not well understood but have been exacerbated by numerous incidents where frum yidden have themselves not been dilligent in conforming to the generally accepted land use rules and building codes. The image of yidden around the world has been hurt over the past few years by the growing number of chilulei hashem committed by frummies and that only incites more anti-semitic responses like this.
Jews ought recognize that the West is, for various reasons, slowly coming unhinged, and we should therefore avoid such confrontations.
“made from wire just one centimetre thick”
I would also get upset if they tried to make an eruv with a wire more than 3/8 inch thick!
Although electric wire is often much thicker, I presume they are proposing an eruv wire 1 millimeter thick – about 1/32 inch.
Why all the attack against the Australians? Right here in Brooklyn you have Frum Yidden who don’t want an eruv either.
Dear Frum Jews of Sydney,
I wrote a manual with Rabbi Moshe Heinemann on how to build an Eruv in a large city. If you are interested, let me know. Everyone in Baltimore, Maryland knows how to contact me.
In Melbourne, not only was there no issue from anyone against the Eruv, but there was no problem in building a second Eruv inside the first, by some chareidi family. I have also heard that one phone company and electricity company gave substantial amounts of money and work hours to help build the first one.
I live in the US (East Coast) and this whole story is a very old one. Whenever some frum people want to put up an eruv, there are protests. A) Many people simply don’t understand what it’s all about b) Non-Orthodox and non-Jewish correctly perceive that if an eruv is constructed, then more Orthodox Jews will move into the neighborhood. For some people, this would be a disadvantage. There is a perception that when too many Orthodox Jews (specifically black-hatted and shtreimeled ones) move into a neighborhood, that they will attempt to change the character of the neighborhood.
As noted above, certain actions by certain hareidim have given all us frummies a bad reputation. Quet discussions with those people who feel threatened would probably solve the problem. What we definitely don’t need are demonstrations, write-in campaigns and so forth. For instance, those of us who have lived in the American Midwest know that Rubashkin would not have gotten such a severe sentence if we had kept the publicity down. Local authorities are always sensitive to being charged with caving in to outsiders, and react in the way that will keep up their reputation as being strong.