After Kitchener, I travelled throughout North America (Vancouver, Quebec, Ontario, Massachusetts, New York) and to Europe to find the Eruv. And practically every time, I could not locate the Eruv easily, just like in Kitchener, even with my new knowledge. The Eruv is not an ostentatious artefact – its value and its survival in urban contexts is through its ability to blend in. So, it figures that I couldn’t find it - really, it’s not meant to be found. The physical entity of the Eruv serves to make a boundary, yes, but its value is in its symbolic significance. It would be later when speaking with a Rabbi in Buffalo New York, that I would learn even that the community members who use the Eruv do not know what it is made of. He asked me, “Why would they need to know? They just need to know it exists, where the boundaries are and that it is complete”. Something about this resonated with me strongly – as an architect I was desperate to know what the Eruv was built from, what guided its existence, what the materials meant, how it was maintained. In the end, the Eruv was not about what , it was about why . The Eruv provides; it is not ornamental, it is not even complex in its form, it simply allows . The Eruv allows freedom, leniencies, assimilation, tradition, and simplicity. The Eruv is a privilege of practice and community that is entirely founded on multiplicity of materials and space. The entire premise of the Eruv goes back to its translation as a mixing/mingling space. As a symbolic private domain, the Eruv is an architecture of borrowing. It borrows objects and artefacts to build its boundary — fences, highway dividers, roadways, train tracks, waterfronts, telephone posts— but it also borrows space. For an Eruv to be established, it actually leases space from the city in order to rent out the private domain. A symbolic rent is paid, a contract is drawn up, and the Jewish communities can use the space in controlled and agreed-upon circumstances, building their boundaries under the eye of the city. This lease, however symbolic, goes straight to the core of the Eruv – it is a boundary that is undetectable, it is a boundary that can be crossed over, it is a space where anyone can mingle. And in fact, its value is found in the mixing of things – of materials, of people, of communities. Without the existence of the urban material fabric, or the established communities, the Eruv could not exist. It relies on the infrastructures of society. The Eruv is not owned space, it is borrowed. The Eruv is not territorial, it is negotiated space. Borrowing becomes key in so many ways within the Eruv – it leans on existing contexts and materials, but it also leans on the community. It borrows time, it borrows skill, it borrows input to become a thoughtful and resourceful boundary line. Its materials are the triumph to me – I have seen Eruvin made of wood boards, out of string or ribbon, from metal or wood posts tacked onto buildings to simple hooks connected to streetlights to allow for a strong rope or wire to be guided through. The Eruv really isn’t a boundary but is rather an edge. Crossing into the space will be insignificant to most, but for a few it is an acknowledgement of a much broader community working together and living among others. For me, each time, it was a little triumph to find something so subtle and discrete, celebrating the architectures designed by people for people; a resiliency within the contemporary world.
Fieldwork photographs of the many material manifestations of the Eruv
on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 50
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