The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

I remember attending a tech conference years ago in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the speakers was a devout Jew from NY City. On Saturday he taped the lock open on his hotel room so he wouldn't need to use a key.

This drove hotel security nuts and one of the conference admins had to get involved because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation. They were certain he was up to something shady.

He and his wife had brought extra food and invited the conference admin and myself to dinner in their room. I remember it as a very special night and I am still friends with them to this day.

The article really neglects to explain what an eruv is and why you would want it. Wikipedia's much more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv

Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "home" so you can do things like, say, take your baby for a weekend stroll on a nice day or walk outside with a cane. It's more nuanced than this, there's a whole bunch of rules about what you can't do and about how big an eruv can be and what you have to do to make it valid.

(I am not Jewish so do not ask me for any further details on this.)

>Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though.

it makes sense contextually.

if there is some holy manifest that urges people to do a thing even when they're old/invalid/bed-ridden/sick, and there are people that will devoutly follow this rule, then it stands to reason that those people will feel a burden eased when part of the manifest is accomplished automatically.

During Shabbat the members of the Jewish community who are most vulnerable are the ones who take it too far? Technically you are not supposed to even carry your keys, medications, babies, anything, so to strictly follow the rules means either being a shutin for the day or taking stupid risks which could easily cause undo long term hardships or even death. For the most part it is just updating the laws to modern society and the move away from the more communal living arrangements of the past.

> benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.

I suspect the author may have misunderstood what this is euphemistically referring to. I think the original source means women. A lot of routine elements of childcare fall within this restriction, and in conservative communities that would be the exclusive domain of women. Without the eruv women with young children would be confined to their home during this part of the week.

I don't think that's a current map, the eruv web site shows much more of the island covered (including much of Hell's Kitchen): http://eruv.nyc/#map

"Hell's Kitchen" doesn't sound like something I'd want inside my house.

Also circumvents Times Square, Penn Station, SOHO and Lower East Side.

I don't see why they wouldn't be. Basically all cities allow 3rd parties to run wires as long as they do all of the paperwork and rent the needed right of ways. Normally this is used for things like comm lines; but some inert wire isn't going to cause any issues.

The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.

Is this an honest question? Are there other religions wanting to run wire around the city?

In the Jewish tradition, nobody is tricking God. There's a long history of legalism in the religion - God sets out his commandments in language and you take that language at face value. Exact interpretation of that text is then debated by religious scholars, but the meaning of the words is entirely contained in the text.

For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.

Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.

Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.

You could make the argument that if God is giving you rules you should just obey them, not try and understand/interpret His exact intentions and do that instead (since presumably you cannot fully comprehend them).

I see this sentiment a lot when it comes to Jewish customs, especially when it comes to eruvs, I don't really get it. Why do you consider it "tricking" God, instead of just following the rules?

There's at least two in Sydney. One near Bondi and one around St Ives. The one around St Ives was a little controversial but the council eventually permitted it.

It's not about tricking G-D it's about rationalizing one's own beliefs. Jews have to have their own personal understanding about the relationship. We already know from the story of Jonah that there is no tricking G-d. This more about community understanding.

So we're willing to suspect our disbelief enough to assume that there's an omnipotent sky beard making rules, but not that he doesn't approve of his little rascals trying to trick him?

Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.

Please omit internet tropes on HN, thanks!

There are other currents in Judaism, such as mystical based, or philosophy based (Spinoza), but they are a minority nowadays.

The mainstream Judaism has focused mostly on codifying rules for all situations in life, which has evolved into a semi legalistic framework of rules and their loopholes. So many loopholes... Like temporarily selling your belongings 1 week per year to bypass Passover rules about Hametz, etc.

God didn't make a mistake when writing the Torah. That "one weird trick" as you call it is as fundamental a part of his will as every else.

Also most Jewish laws don't come from God. Instead, they come from the confluence of two doctrines: first we develop fence laws to keep ourselves from accidentally violating the actual laws. But, once we have been doing something long enough, they become Minhag and given more or less the full force of law. Naturally, this leads to new fence laws being developed around them, and the cycle continues.

Frankly, almost no Jewish law comes from God, and he has no business telling us what to do.

There are many similar tricks.

Anti-semetic or anti-Orthodox? Though I guess the former can come from lumping together different folks as a unified mass.

Thinking this is silly is a critique of the religion of Judaism, not the Jewish people.

You seem to have a very loose definition of anti-semitism

Yes, let’s jump to labelling so it shuts down any criticism. Looks like the good old DJT playbook.

From the article:

> The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.

So, no, you're not paying for this.

I'm quite sure that any religion that wanted to fund the cost and follow the proper permitting procedures could similarly run wires for religious purposes, otherwise NYC and the Jewish eruv funders would have a First Amendment problem. But I don't think any other religions want to run wires for religious purposes.

And yes, other religions can and do use public space in myriad ways too. As for encroaching on others, the eruv doesn't really encroach on anyone - I'm a secular Jew who has lived in NYC for most of my life, and while I've heard about this before, I've never actually noticed it in person, even when I've probably been within eyesight of it.

> Do [ other groups ] get similar perks of using public space

Yes, it's public space.

> and encroaching on others?

An eruv wire looks just like any other wire strung on a pole, save it's and thinner, doesn't carry electricity or communications .. so it "encroaches" on your life just as much as any other utility wire .. even less if you spend little time in jewish neighbourhoods that actually string such things.