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May 31, 2002
Eruv makes a big home
Wire circumference allows Jews to carry on Shabbat.
KYLE BERGER REPORTER
Jewish law states that during Shabbat, from the candlelighting
on Friday evening until sundown on Saturday, Jewish people are not
permitted to carry anything, from a paperclip to a handkerchief,
outside of their own private domain.
However, in Richmond, observant Jews are often seen pushing strollers
or carrying items to and from their synagogue during Shabbat and
on Yom Kippur. That's because Richmond is one of only a small number
of urban centres in North America that is surrounded by an eruv.
An eruv is a structure that acts like a fence that surrounds, with
no breaks, a designated area, such as Richmond. It serves to recognize
the zone as one large domain that the community can call their own,
and thus they can carry – or push for that matter – throughout
that domain on Shabbat.
In Richmond, the eruv is made up by a continuous trail of power
lines that completely encircles the majority of the island city.
But having an uninterrupted perimeter of wires is not enough. According
to Rabbi Shmulie Greene of Eitz Chaim Synagogue, the Talmud states
that the korah (the wires) must cross over the top of each
lechi (pole) in order for the eruv to be kosher. And, while
most of the city's power lines do just that, there are some places
where the lines are actually fastened along the sides of the poles.
In this case, Greene explained, they have to "create"
new poles. To the existing wooden poles, they nail thin, plastic
poles that stretch from ground level to just below the lines. The
plastic poles act as the lechim so that the eruv can be kosher.
However, every once in a while an alert is sent out to the community
letting people know that the eruv is not kosher. This likely means
that either Mother Nature has temporarily damaged the eruv or the
city has begun a construction project that affects the electrical
poles.
"What happens is that a lot of times these poles get taken
down by the city workers or they break," said Greene. "So
every week, someone has to go and check that all of those poles
are directly under the wire."
For example, just recently the city began replacing some of the
older electrical wire poles located near the corner of No. 1 Road
and Francis Road with newer ones, thus breaking the eruv in the
process and rendering it unkosher. On May 10, thin plastic poles
were attached to the new wooden poles in time for the beginning
of Shabbat.
To maintain the upkeep of Richmond's eruv, Eitz Chaim pays 18-year-old
Joel David to inspect the wires and poles every week to ensure that
the lechi and korah are in order.
He spends about three hours, rain or shine, riding his bike along
the eruv route, which travels along Steveston Highway, up No. 1
Road, along Granville
Avenue and back down No. 4 Road to Steveston.
He said the most common problem he finds is when vandals break the
plastic poles.
"I don't think they know it's an eruv." said David, "They
see the lechi and say, 'Oh. This is a nice thing to vandalize.'
"
Besides keeping the wires intact, another key aspect of maintaining
a kosher eruv is the communal meal. For an eruv to be kosher, there
must be a symbolic communal meal, which must be available for anyone
in the community who wishes to partake. The meal symbolizes that
all who are within the eruv are living in one domain.
In the case of Richmond, a piece of matzah is kept in Rabbi Avraham
Feiglestock's office in Eitz Chaim to represent the communal meal.
There are just over 150 eruvim in communities throughout the Diaspora
and several in Israel. Other major North American cities that have
an eruv include Toronto, Phoenix, Memphis, Los Angeles, Boston,
Chicago, Miami, New York and Washington, D.C., which includes the
White House.
For more information about Richmond's eruv, call Eitz Chaim at 604-275-0007.
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