Eruvin exist throughout North America and have served diaspora communities who, once they immigrated, were faced with finding new ways to maintain traditions while assimilating into society. The Eruv, an answer to these immigrant communities, offered a flexibility in already built and well-established cities. So, off I went to Kitchener, the closest publicly recorded Eruv to where I was living in Cambridge Ontario, to start my Eruv Hunting and seek out these markers. I needed to see these things outside of the context of Jerusalem’s rolling desert hills. Upon arrival, and with a map that I had found online through Kitchener’s synagogue, I assumed I would find the Eruv quickly and be on my way. However, when I walked the line, and followed the community-accessible map of the boundary, I saw nothing. I looked up and down, I traced back and forth on the same streets, and nothing. No poles. No fishing lines. I walked the entire length of the boundary, photographing my meandering, only to be disappointed at every turn that nothing stood out to me. The Eruv seemed evasive, and I started to believe this may be a practice of blind faith. It was only upon returning home and reviewing my photographs that I saw something standing out in my field work documentation. At the bottom of telephone posts I saw re-occurring 2x4s, cut down to about a metre in height and zip-tied onto the base of the posts. They seemed out of place, yet hardly noticeable, hiding in plain sight. With further research I discovered this was called a lechi or doorpost, used on the corners of streets where the Eruv would bend; subtly identifying an enclosure and its entrances. In front of my eyes, I had wandered in and out of the Eruv space without any knowledge, the border camouflaged like leftover construction material on the side of the road. I was, truthfully, in awe and all of a sudden saw the streets through a new lens. Two things became immediately evident about the Eruv: 1) the Eruv is made of simple, accessible materials that could be bought from almost any basic hardware store, and 2) that the Eruv uses its context and embeds itself in its surroundings. Inherently, the Eruv is resourceful, and this is how it protects itself. The Eruv uses the city to build itself. It can take advantage of the cityscape and bestow new meaning to the everyday. For example, in London Ontario, highway barriers are used to define the Eruv edges, in Manhattan light posts become the symbolic walls, in Boston even trees are given a new multiplicity to their role in the city with fishing line drilled into the trunks with eye-hooks. By using the surroundings and taking advantage of the basic architectonics of a city, the Eruv can be fabricated, so long as it is connected in its entirety. The value of the Eruv is not in its sophistication, but rather in its accessibility. To patch and mend and connect these urban conditions, simple materials like the 2x4s in Kitchener can be used to complete the symbolic circle. Approachability is key – the Eruv would not exist unless it could be built by the everyday citizen. This is part of what makes it a loophole – the definitions in the Talmud of what makes a private or public domain are unclear, and so communities have interpreted texts to suit their needs and their abilities. The fact that the materials used for the Eruv are so commonplace, and so unrefined, means that it could be built and serve a community easily and quickly. I was surprised to find that this is not a top-down architecture, but rather, a grass roots kind of structure.
above: Kitchener: Eruv sketch below: Community Accessible map of the Kitchener Eruv, courtesy of the Beth Jacob Congregation website more below: a variety of Kitchener’s Lechi posts
on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 49
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