There is perhaps no greater sign of the public acceptance of Judaism than an eruv. The Sabbath boundary zone, which converts ostensibly public space into a notional private area so that Jews can push prams or wheelchairs or carry keys and food beyond their homes on Shabbat, is hardly the easiest religious concept for an outsider to grasp.
It is 20 years since the first metropolitan eruv went live and the controversies it aroused at the time seem distant memories: the secular Jews who feared the imposition of “ghettoes”, the Charedi hardliners who impugned its religious integrity, the conservationists who fretted that the pole-linking wires would pose a threat to wildlife.
The North-West London Eruv, masterminded by the then head of the London Beth Din, Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu, ushered in a trend. The United Synagogue now maintains a family of a dozen eruvim in London with more on the way.
There are two in Manchester and another coming in Leeds. Wonder of wonders, even the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, recognising the pressures of families under lockdown, has given its hechsher to an eruv in Stamford Hill.
Since eruvim have become an established part of the urban landscape, it is no surprise that the latest application for one went through on the nod at Barnet Council just recently.
Still, the Golders Green Eruv is different. It will be an eruv within an eruv, located inside the North-West London Eruv and is intended for those who will do not use the larger facility on religious grounds.
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Federation Chief Rabbi: Shraga Feivel Zimmerman (Photo: copyright unknown)
For many lay people, the intricacies of eruv law can seem as impenetrable as particle physics. The problem with the North-West London Eruv, as some see it, is that a major road, the North Circular, runs through it and is used by too many people to allow the area to qualify for an eruv.
The sponsors of the Golders Green Eruv estimate that around 90 per cent of potential users of the North-West London Eruv in Hendon or Finchley are happy to carry within it, but that figure drops to only 22 per cent in Golders Green. But they believe that eruv use will rise fourfold once the new structure becomes active.
One feature of the proposed eruv is that alongside the sets of poles and wire marking symbolic gateways along the boundary, there will also be “doors in four locations, green cabinets similar to electrical junction boxes”.
These contain barriers that can be stretched across the road to seal off the eruv.
But they won’t pose a problem for motorists. As the applicants explained to the council, “The concept of ‘doors’ is integral to the eruv and would not be used regularly; instead, their primarily role is for a yearly assessment to establish the eruv’s integrity.
"The ‘doors’ could in theory be used to shut off a public domain, even if in practice they never will be, albeit beyond a single day in a year in the early hours to avoid interruption to traffic flows (likely between 2am-4am).”
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Erecting the eruv boundaries (Photo: copyright unknown)
The proposed eruv has the imprimatur of the Rav Rashi, the spiritual head of the Federation of Synagogues, Rabbi Shraga Feivel Zimmerman, even though it is not officially a Federation project.
Referred to as “Chief Rabbi” in the recent council meeting, he explained that his endorsement of the proposal did not imply any view of the existing North-West London Eruv; he was responding to a public need by those who would benefit from the new eruv, in particular those who would remain housebound without it.
There is no doubt that once it is up and running, it will enhance the prestige of the Federation, which had once seemed an anachronism from the old East End. The revived Federation has made little secret of its desire to extend its influence among the growing Charedi population.
It established a mehadrin meat range to rival the UOHC’s Kedassia. And in recruiting Rabbi Zimmerman, formerly the rav of the yeshivah town of Gateshead, it selected one of the most influential strictly Orthodox rabbis in the UK.
As the historian of modern British Jewry Professor Geoffrey Alderman, himself a Federation member, observes: “The Federation in 2023 is not the Federation of 2003.Twenty years ago the Federation was a knitted kippah organisation and the Union [of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations] was a black-hat organisation.
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A map of the new eruv (Photo: Handout)
Now the Federation is more or less a black-hat organisation and the Union is a Chasidic organisation. That is a sweeping statement but it contains a kernel of truth.
“The Federation is making its mark not only on black-hat areas of London but also of Manchester.”
Now it remains to be seen how many of the rabbis of UOHC-affiliated congregations within Golders Green will support usage of the new eruv. There are rumours that some rabbis will eventually come round, perhaps with one or two modifications to the boundary.
But clearly, many congregants are waiting to vote with their hands and feet.
