Joburg’s Eruvim are a credit to the UOS
Many halachic pitfalls need to be considered in creating an eruv – but the UOS and Beth Din have ensured that Joburg’s are secure and keep growing to meet the needs of the community
SHIRA DRUION
With the Shabbos Project taking South Africa by storm as thousands will this weekend gather to celebrate and observe the Shabbos day in all of its glory, many will be using an eiruv to carry.
According to the Torah, on Shabbos it is forbidden to carry beyond the boundaries of one’s own home. The rabbis therefore made certain allowances to ensure this is not an un surmountable obstacle by implementing an eiruv which allows people to transfer objects from place to place.
This is halachically allowed as the eiruv transforms part of the private domain into a public domain ,eradicating the prohibition of carrying from a public domain to a private domain. The eiruv essentially dissolves the distinction between the two domains,.
Dayan Dovid Baddiel of the Johannesburg Beth Din explains: “It is a Biblical prohibition to move any article from a private domain (such as a private house, etc) into a public domain (a public area such as a main road at least seven and a half metres wide, and according to many opinions, an area in which a minimum of 600 000 people pass through each day).
Vice versa, it is also forbidden to move any article from within the public domain itself a distance of four amot – approximately two metres) – and to move an article even less than four amot is forbidden rabbinically as a safeguard precaution.
Our rabbis included in the prohibition any area that may be perceived as a public domain, for example, a field, the sea, a covered public area, or a public courtyard, which, although not really considered public domains Biblically, are nevertheless considered public domain rabbinically.
The same laws apply to such places, too, for instance if one is standing in a field on Shabbos, one might assume it is permissible to carry an object within the field, but this is also forbidden without an eiruv.
However, as the prohibition of carrying in such places is a rabbinical prohibition, our rabbis instituted the “eiruv” which, when arranged properly, allows us to transport any article from a private domain into the rabbinic public domain and vice versa.
It follows, therefore, that to carry to and from, and within, a place which is classified as a public domain by the Torah, such as from one’s private home into Trafalgar Square because more than 600 000 pass through it every day, is prohibited.
It therefore cannot be permitted to erect an eiruv into this area, because an eiruv which is a rabbinical halachic device instituted only for rabbinically defined public areas, which allows us to carry what we need on Shabbos. (areas which don’t have more than 600 000 people passing through a day.)
Therefore, it is clear that an eiruv was never instituted in order to permit something that was forbidden biblically; rather the eiruv was there to permit cases which are forbidden rabbinically, but which were in the first place permitted by the Torah.
See the UOS website for details of where the eiruv is situated.