If that sounds innocuous enough, think again. London’s eruv will amount to no more than 84 boundary poles ranged around an 11-mile perimeter. But it’s been debated with all the passion and precision of Talmudic scholarship. Secular and Orthodox Jews have faced off in fury. Nonreligious Jews argue that the nylon-string-and-pole boundary symbolically separates Jews from other Britons. Environmentalists and homeowners have battled against multiculturalists and synagogue committees. There have been community meetings, newspaper editorials, muttered threats of vandalism. Anti-eruvists object that the poles block house facades or might disrupt traffic, or possibly bird-migration patterns. Those in favor argue it would make life easier for some of the 10,000 Orthodox who live in Barnet.
Late last month the Barnet Council approved the plan (after agreeing to change the color of the poles from sage green to goose-wing gray) and workmen busied themselves putting up the eruv. End of story? Not quite. Members of the Forum Against Intrusive Eruvs claim the installations are illegal. There’s speculation that some in the anti-eruv camp may appeal–or take more radical action. One 80-year-old woman has said if she were spry enough, she’d cut down the markers herself.
Why all the fuss? Perhaps because the proposed eruv seems to challenge a hallowed English tradition of religious quietude. Anglicanism, the official state religion, is an unostentatious faith, eschewing the drama of, say, Roman Catholic liturgy or the five daily prayers of Islam. And Britain’s nearly 300,000 Jews have traditionally tended toward assimilation rather than toward overt displays of Jewishness, says Todd Endelman, author of “The Jews of Britain.” Secular Jews also worry that, by marking their neighborhood as Jewish, the eruv could create what some describe as an Orthodox “ghetto.” Worse, some fear it could attract terrorists.
The anti-eruv crowd is also concerned about less spiritual issues, like wildlife and (dare we say it) property values. North Londoners whose homes are included within the boundary claim that the eruv could infringe their innate human right to an elegant suburb. Others fret that the eruv would somehow damage trees on Hampstead Heath, a large local park, or that birds will entangle themselves in the eruv. Indeed, the Brits’ fondness for animals may yet trump their open-mindedness. “If you demonstrated that the mating habits of the yellow-bellied sapsucker would be harmed, the eruv’s opponents could win any appeal,” says Ned Temko, editor of the Jewish Chronicle. He’s only half joking.
