I read today in the news where they are considering making Palo Alto an “eruV’, with a “symbolic” wall, consisting of marks. One woman said she could not carry her child to the park on Sabbath, as carrying an “object” is 'work”.
How on earth is a baby an Object?
If the Talmud says you can’t mix meat & dairy, even tho the Torah prohibition is only on mixing the milk for a mother animal with the meat from her baby, as that is (I forget the exact term that was used) allowing too much possible leeway, how does a “symbolic” wall allow one to ignore portions of the Law?
…it is forbidden to carry any object outside a private domain. Inside private resicences or a synagogue, however, carrying is permitted.
…the prohibition against carrying falls very hard on mothers of infants or young children. They are confined to their homes on Shabbat, since it is forbidden to carry a child outside the house.
To circumvent such restrctions, the rabbis permitted, under certain circumstances, the establishment of a eruv. The eruv takes advantage of the legally mandated permission tp carry inside a private domain by converting a large public area into a huge “private domain”. A common way of making an eruv is to surround an area with a partition of posts which are linked by wire that goes over the top of the posts. Doing so makes the area into a single domain, in which it is permitted to carry.
-Teluskin, Joseph, “Jewish Literacy”.
The prohibition of carrying is in conveying an object (including a baby…anything that is being carried) either a) from one’s provate domain to another private domain, b) from a private domain into the public domain (or vice versa) or c) more than four cubits (approx. 8 feet) in the public domain itself.
The Eruv work-around works because one’s “domain”, in Jewish law for the issue of Shabbat, is not defined by ownership, but rather, by performance of acts implying residence…such as eating a meal. In addition to constructing the “wall” (actually a crude doorway) around the group of properties, all parties to the Eruv donate a certain amount of money for the purchase of a meal, which is then kept in one residence within the Eruv. The existence of that meal, in which each resident has partial ownership, makes it that the entire area surrounded by the Eruv is the “shared private domain” of everyone within it.
(I realize that this gives rise to certain obvious questions. However this is, of necessity, an oversimplification.)
One other factor that is necessary to make it work: the strict Biblical definition of “public domain” is an area that 600,000 people a day pass through (don’t know if that means on average, or as long as that number passed that way once). The work-around cannot make such a place into a “private domain,” since the Bible defines that as public domain. Most places in which a Jewish community would want to construct an Eruv do not meet this definition, and are considered public domain only by Rabbinical decree as a “fence around the Torah” to prevent people from committing transgressions. So the Eruv does not take what was forbidden by the Bible and make it permitted, but rather, is a Rabbinical construct which works around an equally rabbinical prohibition.
Chaim, you might have been more clear about the fact that the actual “eruv” i.e. the shared meal, and the string/wall are addressing two separate issues, having in common only the ban on carrying. But I guess for this discussion such detail is not needed.
The larger point to be addressed is the fact that there is no “getting around” Jewish law. What is possible is to have situations where you can meet a legal standard even if no practical difference is detected.
An analogous situation in secular law is the practice of leasing or buying things of enormous value for $1, for purposes of having the transaction count as a sale/lease. The dollar is not symbolic- it is real. But it serves no purpose other than to meet some legal standard.
So too it is with Jewish, or Talmudic, law. A doorway is considered to be like a wall for purposes of enclosing an area. A doorway has been defined as two posts with a beam on top. No minimum size is given for these posts or beam. Therefore, the posts and string meet the legal definition of doorway, and are considered a wall, enclosing the area.