When the next history of the Jews in England is written — you may recall that Cecil Roth lost interest around 1870 so there’s much to catch up on — last weekend will be looked upon as a watershed, and not just because of the weather.
For the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews in Hampstead and Marylebone, Camden and St John’s Wood, were able to observe the Sabbath to the fullness of rabbinic law and without any inconvenience to themselves or their neighbours.
I refer, of course, to the newly sanctioned eruv. If you saw folk dancing in the streets last Saturday, it was less to do with Rejoicing of the Law than with the easing of a Sabbath edict on carrying objects outside the house, a prohibition that prevented young mothers from wheeling a buggy and disabled persons from attending synagogue.
If I were to recount the extremes to which this law was taken — the handkerchief used first for its prescribed purpose, then retied wetly around the neck — you would dismiss me as a dangerous fantasist. But such measures were the mark of strict observance until last weekend, since when the eruv has caused a rush on emergency ophthalmology, such is the mass rubbing of eyes in disbelief.
For the many non-Jews who pore over this page for enlightenment every Friday, especially in South Korea and the London Borough of Lambeth, let me try to amplify the issue in more or less rational terms. The Book of Exodus forbids work on the Sabbath but is vague about which kinds of work, other than collecting sticks and making fires.
A millennium later, rabbis of the Mishnah defined 39 categorical breaches of the Sabbath, among them writing, erasing, building, demolition and carrying a small item from one house to the next. Their case was that if you lose something in your house, it still belongs to you. But if you lose it in the street, it is anyone’s. By carrying from house to street, you change the status of the object and violate the Sabbath rest. Still with me? Not much more, I promise.
Jews being Jews, and rabbis being rabbis, scepticism was expressed and a way was found to circumscribe the law. Rabbis had hundreds of years of fun arguing out the details in an entire tractate of bypass law, known as the book of Eruvin. An Eruv is a wire that, in some imaginary sense, turns the public domain into a collective space where carrying is permitted. That’s all you need to know. You’re now as expert as I am, dear subscribers in Seoul.
The only mystery is why it took seven whole years for the learned judges of the London Bet Din to decide that the Jews of Hampstead and surrounding heights could be given the means to observe the Sabbath to the minutiae of rabbinic approval. Seven years it took, seven years of repetitive meetings with the councils of Camden and Westminster, who were infinitely sensitive and cooperative, and with the beards of the bench, who were infinitely not.
At first, the Bet Din questioned the need for an eruv. Were there really Jews who chose in free will to live outside the gardens of Eden designated by the holy postcodes NW4 and NW11? Could those who fled the ghetto walls and lived more than a five minute ride from Kosher Kingdom still be viewed as practising Jews who might need an eruv?
By the by, I have issues with that term. When I hear some called a practising Jew, I wonder if they are they practising like a dentist, inflicting great pain and expense, or like a musician inflicting other discomforts on the neighbourhood. Either way, practising is not an adjective I’d wear with pride.
In practice, as it were, the Bet Din first fiddled, then faddled. It demanded a wire twice the thickness of the one in Golders Green in case the fat birds of Belsize Park would capsize the eruv on opening Friday. It required ‘hidurim’ — literally beautifications, as if there were anything aesthetic in an eruv — and it piled delay upon deferment to the point of mass despair. The full eruv was ready weeks before the New Year but it was not until atonement was past that our learned friends on the London Bet Din were available to give their seal of approval.
And last weekend everything changed. People turned up at shul with backpacks containing a tallit, spare hankie and a miniature scotch for these kiddush-free times. Toddlers leaped out of their buggies, saying they never needed the ruddy things anyway. Fresh kippot sprouted in the rose gardens of royal parks. Estate agents were inundated with enquiries from observant Jews in distant parts. The eruv has arrived. The history of the Jews in England has reached its renaissance.
