Boulder Elites Warn: Eruv may be Hazardous

Someone call PETA. That Jewish eruv thing is a hazard to wildlife and pets. Also cars and little old ladies.

It is often the onerous, impractical and abusive boundaries -- walls, fences, barbed wire, ghettos and camps -- that have caused the world to feel great grief on behalf of the Jewish people. So it is painful to see Congregation Aish Kidesh aim to impose on itself and the city a religious boundary called an eruv, which is intended to relieve a burden, that shall be quite burdensome.

The bad news is that the fishing line to be used for the boundary will be a nuisance when it inevitably becomes festooned with pairs of sneakers tossed up by teenagers, and other flotsam like wind-blown bags. It will be a hazardous snare when it gets broken by storms or vandalism and falls to ground to get ensnared in deer antlers and car axles, perhaps tripping old ladies and being lapped up by cats.

Some have said that its invisibility is a benefit -- quite the opposite. The invisibility increases the snare.

And the subtler snare to face is the precedent of using a legal instrument, in this case a lease, to bind our city's public property permanently for a religious pursuit which renders no public service. Were this lease for temporary use, we could easily lend the tolerance that so many wish to show to the congregation.

Thus we have a bind, and the bind is heightened by the out-and-out silliness of using fishing line to create the "unbroken barrier." Fishing line makes no barrier at all, being too far above ground. Instead, the line will function only as an indicator, a sign.

That's the good news.

The answer is simple but may be painful for the devout to hear: If the eruvim want an invisible but compellingly real boundary, they should use the type the Jews have brought to the world through the Ten Commandments -- which is belief in the word. The Eruv should not be constructed -- it should be instructed -- through the use of maps and verbal descriptions for the community members to memorize and heed, for the full enjoyment of their Sabbath.

The eruvim of Boulder should withdraw their request for this lease. They are the People of the Book -- and not people of the fishing line.

Anne B. Butterfield
Boulder Daily Camera Editorial Advisory Board

I shudder to think what has happened to little old ladies and cats within the "hazardous snares" of the eruvs in New York, Washington, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Bethesda, Denver, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Memphis, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Diego, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Irvine, Seattle, Chicago, Providence, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Boca Raton, Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Dallas and Houston. Not to mention Venice, London, Toronto, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Gibraltar, Vancouver, Halifax, Antwerp and Strasbourg.

Comments

[Doris Wise Montrose]

Do you think there would (will?) be such a balagan (hallabuloo) if (when) the Muslims request (demand) footbaths and loud calls to prayer 5 times a day? Oh, and by the way, Jewish prayer and Muslim prayer have nothing in common. Jews pray to Gd for life. Muslims pray for death -- to all the infidels inside and outside the eruv.