The Vancouver Eruv

[Xerx]

Something I recently learnt about is the existence of eruvs which are essentially thin pieces of wire that enclose a community in order to allow Orthodox Jews to do things they could never otherwise do on the Shabbat. And apparently Vancouver has an eruv which you can even check every week if it is up.

This was the most I could find about it from the National Post

In Vancouver, it’s a winding maze of power lines and fences that pass behind city hall and overtop the Vancouver General Hospital.

To make sure the eruv is “up” each Friday, congregations maintain teams of eruv checkers to give it a once-over before the Sabbath. In Vancouver, they use a two-person check team: One to drive and one to watch the wires.

I'm curious if anyone has ever noticed the eruv being inspected (apparently in New York it's essentially a rabbi driving around the Eruv making sure nothing is broken). And being the curious person I am, I'm wondering if I'm looking at a power line that's an eruv if all the lines are part of the eruv or if there's a specific line that functions as the eruv. I'm also curious to know why Downtown doesn't have an eruv.

[bluefox]

Originally Posted by Xerx

Something I recently learnt about is the existence of eruvs which are essentially thin pieces of wire that enclose a community in order to allow Orthodox Jews to do things they could never otherwise do on the Shabbat. And apparently Vancouver has an eruv which you can even check every week if it is up.

This was the most I could find about it from the National Post

I'm curious if anyone has ever noticed the eruv being inspected (apparently in New York it's essentially a rabbi driving around the Eruv making sure nothing is broken). And being the curious person I am, I'm wondering if I'm looking at a power line that's an eruv if all the lines are part of the eruv or if there's a specific line that functions as the eruv. I'm also curious to know why Downtown doesn't have an eruv.

Since the purpose of an eruv is to allow Jews to "carry" items on Shabbat, eruvin encircle significant Jewish populations. I can't really think of any eruv around the world that would not. That's why Vancouver's, like most Jewish institutions in the city, is somewhat centred on the Granville and Oak corridors. If there was a big Jewish population downtown, the Vancouver eruv would probably stretch up to Burrard Inlet; that's why it doesn't.

It's not just power lines, it can literally be wires strung up along existing power poles made to look like power lines so as not to stand out. It can be fences along rights of way, it can be a lot of things, as long as the eruv lines are metal. Usually a wooden eruv is not kosher because it's not as sturdy and can break the eruv (another reason why a rabbi has to inspect it weekly before Shabbat). If you want to see the inspection happen in real time I believe the Vancouver one starts at City Hall, or at least used to.

But, yeah, it's a pretty interesting concept and it's neat to see how congregations have tried to adapt a local eruv around existing infrastructure as much as possible to try to be good neighbours.

[dleung]

Whoa i've never heard of this before. It's probably the strangest religious quirk I've heard of in a long time, seems like a bit of a stretch in interpretation, from a non-Jewish perspective of course

[Alex Mackinnon]

I wonder why they don't just make it out of fibre optics or electrical conductors. They wouldn't have to go around checking it all the time then. Test it for continuity on Friday and they're done.

[libtard]

Richmond has one also