YGB - יג"ב: May 2025

I don't know when the print version will be coming out, but this is the link to my latest article, a review of Rabbi Dr. Adam Mintz's Building Communities: A History of the Eruv in America, that will be published in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. This is the "official" pre-publication link. The article follows.

Building communities. A history of the eruv in America: Journal of Modern Jewish Studies: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access

Building Communities. A History of the Eruv in America, by Adam Mintz, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2023, 187pp., $26.95, ISBN 9798887190853

Books and articles written on the fascinating topic of eruvin, the enclosures that allow observant Jews to carry items in public areas on the Sabbath, must often grapple with multiple disciplines.

Foremost in significance and complexity are the issues of Jewish law. In contradistinction to most religions, Jewish law recognizes and authorizes the use of legal loopholes. Examples abound, such as the mechanism by which one sells one’s chametz (leavened bread and other grain products) a non-Jew prior to the advent of the holiday of Pesach (Passover), rather than eradicating and destroying it as prescribed by the Torah (the Bible).

An eruv is another such legal loophole. It is a legal fiction that allows an area enclosed by quite porous barriers such as strings attached to the tops of poles to be considered a walled and private domain, thus circumventing the prohibition on carrying items in an unenclosed area on the Sabbath.

The open embrace of legal fictions and loopholes often strikes a person confronting their utilization in religious life as strange. Perhaps the best analogy one can give in explanation of the phenomenon is the well-known statement by Judge Learned Hand: “Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes” (Helvering v. Gregory, 69 F.2d 809 (2d Cir. 1934), https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/69/809/1562063/). Jewish religious law is a legal system like any other legal system: It demands compliance, but it does not require stringency. Religious fervor can find expression in other manners and activities, such as fervent prayer, intense study or heightened charity.

Another issue involved in eruvin is sociological. Within observant Judaism, societies have defined themselves by the extent to which they were willing to allocate resources and devote efforts to the construction and maintenance of eruvin. After all, carrying objects in a public space on the Sabbath is not essential for the observance of the Sabbath. It does make the Sabbath more pleasurable to be able to do so. This is especially true, for example, for mothers with young children, who, without the benefit of an eruv, find it very difficult to leave home on the Sabbath. Yet Jewish law does not obligate women to attend a synagogue or leave home for any other purpose on the Sabbath. To what extent does a society concern itself with the enhancement of the Sabbath of parts of its constituency?

An additional impetus to maintain an eruv is to benefit people who are not meticulously observant and will carry objects in public areas whether there is an eruv in place or not. To what extent does a community concern itself with saving its laxer members from sin?

Yet another issue involved in eruvin is political. Notwithstanding the fact that the poles and strings (and, of course, the pre-existing structures such as fences and embankments) that comprise eruvin are essentially invisible to the eye not familiar with them and not deliberately seeking them, the construction of eruvin has become a political issue. This is especially true because an essential component of an eruv is a symbolic rental of the public space it encompasses from relevant civil authorities. This has led to well publicized cases surrounding issues of church and state, and not infrequent charges of antisemitic or anti-orthodox attitudes on the parts of the general population or the authorities, or both.

The great accomplishment of Adam Mintz’s thin but comprehensive survey of the history of eruvin in North America is his success in encompassing all these issues in his treatise. The convergence of all these issues in a framework that analyzes them historically adds the additional discipline of the history of American and Canadian Jewry to the rich array of issues in which this volume makes a significant contribution. It is highly engaging and intriguing reading. The one (minor) critique that the author of this review found significant is the paucity of illustrations, with those that appear being limited to various maps. Perhaps in our digital age that is less an onerous omission than it once may have been, as one can search images on one’s own. Be that as it may, readers will enjoy the book and come away enriched and edified across a broad array of disciplines and spheres of interest.

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer, PhD

Talmudic Monitoring Council,

AARTS, Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools

ygbechhofer@gmail.com