By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
With any luck, by this time next year many observant Jews living in Seattle’s North end will have the luxury of carrying objects outside their homes on Shabbat.
Since 2005, Congregation Shaarei Tefilah-Lubavitch has been working to establish an eruv around much of the Ravenna, View Ridge and Wedgwood neighborhoods. According to Joseph Greenberg, president of the Shaarei Tefilah-Lubavitch congregation, this long-conceived project will likely see completion within the next six to 12 months.
“It’s something we’ve been interested in for many, many years,” said Greenberg of the eruv. “We’re looking forward to seeing it finished.”
An eruv is a symbolic boundary that allows Jews who observe activities prohibited on Shabbat to carry items outside of the walls of their own property. The idea is that an eruv, in effect, lets those living within its boundaries to treat the area as their common home.
Eruvim are common in Jewish communities in Israel; however, outside of Israel, they are somewhat of a novelty. Several cities in the U.S., including Boston, Miami, Denver and Los Angeles, have established eruvim, and the city of Baltimore boasts a total of six eruvim for its estimated 95,000 Jews.
Congregation Beth Shalom has partnered with Shaarei Tefilah-Lubavitch on the North end eruv project. Rabbi Jill Borodin of Beth Shalom said that of her congregation’s more than 400 members, a significant number had expressed an interest in their homes being included within the eruv.
“I had requests from about 50 families to be included within the eruv,” Borodin said.
According to Greenberg, the eruv will run from Sand Point Way on the south and east to 30th Ave. NE at the west, and be bordered by NE 90th St. and NE 45th St., including Children’s Hospital, north to south.
The boundaries of the eruv will be marked by a thin wire that will run between existing telephone poles.
“No one will have any idea that it’s there just by walking by,” he said. “It’ll just be an unobtrusive little thin wire — not something that would be noticed by the untrained eye.”
Of course, to be able to string up the wire, Shaarei Tefilah-Lubavitch will need permission from the city.
“My understanding is that it’s not nearly as big a deal as getting a building permit,” Greenberg said. “It should be an easy process.”
Other communities in the U.S. have at times encountered difficulty getting permission to put up eruvim, however, as constructing a religious marker on city land can ruffle feathers over the separation between Church and State. In 2001, members of an Orthodox community in Tenafly, N.J. were initially denied permission to erect an eruv by the Tenafly Borough Council. Two years later, the case ultimately made its way to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, where the court determined that the Borough Council could not deny the Tenafly Eruv Council the use of telephone poles for the eruv.
It is unlikely that Shaarei Tefilah-Lubavitch will encounter similar red tape, as the City of Seattle granted permission for the Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath Congregation to erect an eruv in 1991 that encompasses almost all of the Seward Park neighborhood.
The Seward Park eruv was constructed under the aegis of Rabbi Shimon Eider of Lakewood, N.J., the author of Summary of Halachos of Eruv, and an expert on the laws for constructing and maintaining an eruv. Shaarei Tefilah-Lubavitch had been working with Eider as well — until he died in September. Now the congregation is on the hunt for a new rabbi to oversee the project.
According to Greenberg, rabbis who claim any expertise in eruvim aren’t easy to come by.
“There are very few in the world who do it,” he said.
Rabbi Borodin added that building an eruv isn’t something her congregation, or Shaarei Tefilah-Lubavitch, is prepared to do on its own.
“There are a number of complicated geographic questions involving ravines and cemeteries,” she said. “Also, it’s not something most people are involved in on a day-to-day basis. It’s a very unusual thing, so it is a specialty.”
In the meantime, both congregations will continue preparing for the eruv as best they can. Fundraising efforts are underway to cover the costs of permits, construction and maintenance. Rabbi Borodin said that, all told, the eruv is expected to cost around $50,000. So far just under $10,000 has been collected.
Borodin hopes that once the eruv is up, it will help draw new Jewish residents to the neighborhood.
“It will definitely make it more attractive for young Jewish families,” she said. “Just to be able to push strollers on Shabbat is pretty big.”