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The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)
- leonixyz 1y agoIMHO this is an attempt to legally claim some rights over that land in the future
- hersko 1y agoLMAO you can't be serious.
- justlikereddit 1y ago[flagged]
- Infinity315 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- sjs382 1y agoDepends on the group, but generally the owner of the land that the drug is on needs to be involved in its creation. So, for a sidewalk, the local government. See this article that states that the path of a Houston eruv was leased from the city for 50 years for $1. https://jhvonline.com/mayor-signs-new-rental-agreement-for-houston-eruv-district-p25956-96.htm https://jhvonline.com/mayor-signs-new-rental-agreement-for-h...
- xorcist 1y agoWouldn't the natural thing to do be to bury it? That's what we do with other important wires. Hanging it off old telephone poles seems like a recipe for recurring disaster. Does it need to be a metal wire? Or is, say, a plastic pipe enough? In the spirit of the other comments here, there are plenty of those already in place. Certainly with the involvement of the land owner, which in these cases probably are the city or the state. It would be interesting to hear from someone who are involved in these traditions to hear their view.
- robocat 1y agoFrom https://eruvinitiative.org/eruv-basics/ https://eruvinitiative.org/eruv-basics/ In fact, an entire tractate of the Talmud, called “Eruvin,” is focused on discussing these topics. Most subjects regarding Eruvin are fraught with differing opinions of Jewish Law, and therefore it is of utmost importance that questions related to the Eruv should be discussed with a Posek (Jewish Legal Expert. There's a bunch of info on that site. I just watched the video on "How to Make a Home Made Shabbos Belt", which is a hack to meet some rules about carrying keys on Saturdays. Not Jewish, I just enjoy systems of rules.
- profsummergig 1y agoOK, so the Jews have gotten their NYC situation under control. But what about all the vulnerable populations in SF, LA, etc.? We must group-fund an eruv for those vulnerable populations. Also, this is a lost opportunity for ambulance-chasing lawsuits. Anyone know if anyone's been killed by their city being surrounded with fishing line suspended 30 feet in the air?
- one_more_q 1y agoSF has its own eruv! https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/23/16186962/jewish-tradition-san-francisco-eruv https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/23/16186962/jewish-tradition-sa...
- dima55 1y agoLA and SF both have eruvs
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- 0xTJ 1y agoI'm not Jewish, nor have I studied Jewish law/rules, but I don't think those could be justified as being sufficiently continuous. It's more of a network of various stations connected by discrete cables, rather than one big ring of fiber.
- Havoc 1y agoTwo arbitrary rules that cancel each other out You could just not but hey I guess no harm no foul
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RayVR 1y ago“God hates this one weird trick…”
- mhb 1y agoThere are many similar tricks.
- harvoc5 1y agoThere are other currents in Judaism, such as mystical based, or philosophy based (Spinoza), but they are a minority nowadays. The mainstream Judaism has focused mostly on codifying rules for all situations in life, which has evolved into a semi legalistic framework of rules and their loopholes. So many loopholes... Like temporarily selling your belongings 1 week per year to bypass Passover rules about Hametz, etc.
- gizmo686 1y agoGod didn't make a mistake when writing the Torah. That "one weird trick" as you call it is as fundamental a part of his will as every else. Also most Jewish laws don't come from God. Instead, they come from the confluence of two doctrines: first we develop fence laws to keep ourselves from accidentally violating the actual laws. But, once we have been doing something long enough, they become Minhag and given more or less the full force of law. Naturally, this leads to new fence laws being developed around them, and the cycle continues. Frankly, almost no Jewish law comes from God, and he has no business telling us what to do.
- idiotsecant 1y agoIn fact, I would go so far as to say no religious rules come from God! It seems pretty obvious that an omnipotent being in command of all the subtle and awesome phenomena of all of time and space is not going to concerned with whether some barely evolved apes on a backwater planet orbiting an unremarkable star in a forgettable galaxy, among innumerable galaxies eat shellfish and cows milk in the same meal.
- defrost 1y ago
- zaptrem 1y agoGoogle Maps zoomable map I found: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=40.76147620007871%2C-73.95387186286153&spn=0.121826%2C0.219727&z=13&mid=1AJc3ptGTXtSJvLlCmLfmFMCT0To https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0... I wonder why it seems to circumvent Hells Kitchen?
- walterbell 1y agoAlso circumvents Times Square, Penn Station, SOHO and Lower East Side.
- duskwuff 1y agoThere are limits on how much traffic can pass in and out of the boundaries of an eruv. I suspect that's why it avoids high-traffic areas like Times Square, as well as the area around Turtle Bay.
- anthk 1y agoThat reminds me of the New York City level from the first Deus Ex game where the level games are laveled like "Hell's Kitchen".
- jefftk 1y ago"Hell's Kitchen" doesn't sound like something I'd want inside my house.
- zaptrem 1y agoSorry, “”Midtown West””
- epc 1y agoI don't think that's a current map, the eruv web site shows much more of the island covered (including much of Hell's Kitchen): http://eruv.nyc/#map http://eruv.nyc/#map
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- hn_user82179 1y agoI'm not religious so I'll admit I don't "get it." It's a neat idea. I'll admit, I especially don't get this part: > The series of practically invisible wires becomes a necessity that “benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.” He sees it not only as a way for communities to come together, but also as a way for the more affluent to give back. The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists. Giving back to your community, sure. Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though. I feel like there are other ways that money could be spent. All in all though, there are nonprofit religious organizations who spend an unreasonable amount of money on things that don't matter (private jets), so I'm not at all complaining about something that helps that communal feeling like this.
- serf 1y ago>Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though. it makes sense contextually. if there is some holy manifest that urges people to do a thing even when they're old/invalid/bed-ridden/sick, and there are people that will devoutly follow this rule, then it stands to reason that those people will feel a burden eased when part of the manifest is accomplished automatically.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago> benefits the most vulnerable people of the community. I suspect the author may have misunderstood what this is euphemistically referring to. I think the original source means women. A lot of routine elements of childcare fall within this restriction, and in conservative communities that would be the exclusive domain of women. Without the eruv women with young children would be confined to their home during this part of the week.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago> confined to their home during this part of the week You say that like it is a bad thing There is a related concept in Eastern Orthodoxy called oikonomia, or a relaxation of the laws. Roman Catholics or Episcopalians may know this as "dispensation". When the law becomes very complex and there is a concerted effort to get legalistic and eventually you end up with circumventions that are worthy of publishing news articles to the goyim, eventually you begin to think about dispensations or oikonomia from the leadership in order to relax the rules of Shabbat observance and the Day of Rest. And undoubtedly that is the crux of whence originated Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism. Judaism is more akin to Islam than Christianity in the particular aspect that it is not unified and not organized under one particular visible head, like the Pope or a Patriarch. Not since the Destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. During the Second Tempe Period there was definitely a unification of Jews and a singular doctrinal authority. But in today's synagogue system with rabbis interpreting Torah and Talmud, it is quite federated and decentralized, and in New York in particular there are congregations following individual rebbes and having unique beliefs inside the walls of their synagogue, but also councils/conferences of Jew leaders who team up to build this Eruv Wall and make America pay for it.
- comrade1234 1y agoThere's one in Santa Monica too so that you can go to the beach. Yeah, I'm sure you tricked god...
- emmelaich 1y agoThere's at least two in Sydney. One near Bondi and one around St Ives. The one around St Ives was a little controversial but the council eventually permitted it.
- jaza 1y agoYep. The St Ives one involved a fairly protracted debate at the local council, with accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion) being levelled at those who argued against it. Although I don't know if the Bondi and/or the St Ives eruvs involve their own physical wires? I thought it was deemed sufficient for the rabbis to just "declare" various sets of third-party power lines / phone lines as constituting the eruv, or am I mistaken?
- emmelaich 1y agoThe St. Ives eruv definitely has their own wire, though it very difficult to discern unless you know exactly where it runs already. I'd assume the Bondi one also, because I suspect it's not really valid unless continuous and monitored, per the article. Although I'm no expert.
- bradrn 1y agoBoth eruvim have their own dedicated physical wires, yes. > accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion) I live within the St Ives eruv. At least some of the opposition was unquestionably antisemitic — I recall receiving at least one antisemitic screed in our mailbox during the time of the council debate. (That one went something along the lines of ‘the Jews are trying to kick out all the non-Jews’ etc. etc., for two pages of fairly small text.)
- detourdog 1y ago
- _xtbs 1y ago[flagged]
- zoklet-enjoyer 1y agoYou seem to have a very loose definition of anti-semitism
- throwaway2849 1y ago“It is a trick” says the former Minister for Education: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0IHYtUPElJ/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0IHYtUPElJ/
- cap11235 1y agoAnti-semetic or anti-Orthodox? Though I guess the former can come from lumping together different folks as a unified mass.
- anduril22 1y ago[flagged]
- rpmisms 1y agoThinking this is silly is a critique of the religion of Judaism, not the Jewish people.
- jmpman 1y ago[flagged]
- idiotsecant 1y agoIs this an honest question? Are there other religions wanting to run wire around the city?
- jmpman 1y agoThis is a question about the first amendment. Is the government making rules in favor of one religion over, anyone else? Bob, an atheist, is allowed to run arbitrary wires around midtown manhattan, just the same as some other group?
- gizmo686 1y agoI don't see why they wouldn't be. Basically all cities allow 3rd parties to run wires as long as they do all of the paperwork and rent the needed right of ways. Normally this is used for things like comm lines; but some inert wire isn't going to cause any issues. The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.
- fortran77 1y agoComcast is allowed to.
- bravesoul2 1y agoAmen
- Rebelgecko 1y agoI know of at least one religion that made it mandatory to run strands of wire around arbitrary areas. Brigham Young and his successors made the Deseret Telegraph a real community project.
- epc 1y agoSee http://eruv.nyc/#map http://eruv.nyc/#map for a more current map (circa 2023).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- anduril22 1y ago[flagged]
- defrost 1y ago> Do [ other groups ] get similar perks of using public space Yes, it's public space. > and encroaching on others? An eruv wire looks just like any other wire strung on a pole, save it's and thinner, doesn't carry electricity or communications .. so it "encroaches" on your life just as much as any other utility wire .. even less if you spend little time in jewish neighbourhoods that actually string such things.
- anduril22 1y agoWell it’s not a Jewish neighbourhood if it’s all of Manhattan. Encroachment isn’t always the most obvious - do construction permits require builders to fix any breaks to this, similar to other public utility lines (telephone, electricity)? That would be an encroachment. Does it increase any risk to public workers who fix supply lines, or increase the risk of electrical fires from thunderstorms? That’d be encroachment. Not saying it’ll happen, but some non-obvious examples. Also, what are other such examples from other groups? There’s a big difference between theoretical (a matter of law) and the practical (societal acceptance). I’m also not sure of telephone poles being public space, I can only imagine the administrative and legal hurdles to overcome to hang something off one.
- defrost 1y agoLeaving aside that this is about "much of Manhattan" rather than "all of Manhattan" it remains that Manhattan, Brooklyn, New York City in general are well known as one of the larger jewish neighbourhoods on the planet. Jews comprise approximately 10% of New York City's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_New_Yor... Some of your other what if's are addressed in the article, if you're a good faith commenter looking for actual serious issues then there's also 100 years of existence in Manhattan and the wider New York City to draw upon. Perhaps you could highlight some actual real issues that have cropped up in the last century?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- neuroelectron 1y agoReligious enclaves are part of American culture.
- UltraSane 1y agoI love how Orthodox Jews can't change any of their laws BUT they can and do change the definition of words to such an extent it accomplishes the same thing, such as changing eruv from meaning wall to wire.
- throw37384848 1y agoJews can absolutely change their laws. For example butchering animals and women rights are completely different now! Orthodox Jews at East Europe still do not allow women in synagogue, very similar way is Islam!
- bwestergard 1y ago
- AStonesThrow 1y ago[flagged]
- pfdietz 1y agoIf and when there are space colonies, this will naturally generalize to the pressure boundary, even if the thing is a rotating cylinder 100 km long.
- 7e 1y ago[flagged]
- peteforde 1y agoYou know, a lot of Obama voters are wearing red hats now.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- foxwolf 1y agoI'm pretty sure that if there is a god, then the act of deliberately subverting what you believe to be his laws by exploiting what you perceive to be a technicality for your own convenience isn't going to work out in your favor in the end.
- theshrike79 1y agoThis is on the level of "if the bar doesn't have windows, Allah can't see me drink" of tomfoolery. And I'm all for it. =)
- ctkhn 1y agoHave you seen the polymarket odds for Jesus Christ's return in 2025? Can't imagine taking the yes on that whether you believe or not.
- lovecg 1y agoI know, someone should really point out that following the rules of a religion blindly can go too far! Might start a movement of some sort.
- bradrn 1y agoNot at all. The Jewish perspective is essentially that Jewish law stems from the creation of an all-knowing God, and therefore any seeming ‘loopholes’ must not only be known to Him but explicitly intended to exist. On this basis, it must be perfectly valid to use them!
- bravesoul2 1y agoWhy not make a tiny 10cm wire at the north pole to do the entire planet? And bless the oceans for unlimited holy water. Anyone who goes to the beach is baptised.
- mkfs 1y agoYour response may strike some as flippant, but it's not exactly uncharacteristic of how Jews, even the Orthodox, navigate adherence to their mitzvot (commandments). For example, the Shabbos Goy and the Sabbath elevator, or the eruv (the wire described in the article) itself.
- gadders 1y agoIt does seem to me that an omniscient God would see all these attempts to outwit him via looking at the small print, but then it's not me that would end up in hell or purgatory or whatever the Jewish equivalent is.
- kstrauser 1y agoA friend explained it to me like this: they believe God gave the rules, loopholes and all, exactly as intended. His followers were made in his own image. He delights in their creativity in discovering the true intent of his rules, which must include those loopholes because the rules are perfect. If he meant something different, he would’ve phrased the rules otherwise. I’m not Jewish and this just my paraphrasing of an explanation I’ve heard a couple of times. The idea of God giving us a hacker nature and delighting in it makes me happy.
- WJW 1y agoAn omniscient God can't be outwitted by stuff in the small print. If there's a loophole in the small print, God put it there on purpose. If anything, He would be delighted that some of his followers read the holy books closely enough to find some of the easter eggs that He put in there. The whole idea of "the spirit vs the letter of the law" is a secular one that came up as a result of imperfect human lawmakers. But when dealing with holy texts, that is obviously not required because axiomatically God doesn't make mistakes.
- focusgroup0 1y ago[flagged]
- lifeinthevoid 1y agoYou can’t convince people with logic I’m afraid.
- lores 1y agoHas any rabbi ever put together the amount of calamities that befell the Jews with constantly trying to pull fast ones on God?
- AStonesThrow 1y agoHave you read the Book of Daniel? The full Septuagint version? Bel & the Dragon, chapter 14? The Vindication of Susannah? Pretty much half of the Tanakh’s narratives are focused on that theme. “He who sits in the heavens laughs.” “What is this baaaa-ing I hear...?” — Amalekite property and population not thoroughly destroyed “Do you do well...?” — Yahweh to Job, to Jonah, to Moses, et. al. The priests of Ba’al vs. Elijah at Mt. Carmel “That man is you!” — Samuel to David, regarding his proto-Machiavelli seduction and murder maneuvers “Let us [Elohim] go down [to Earth] and see what men are doing now.” Genesis 11 The idolatry of Jamnia — actually that one turned out OK
- azernik 1y agoHe's not "fooled" - this is within the rules he set.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- petesergeant 1y agoI think the thinking is that God appreciates the hustle
- WJW 1y agoHe isn't, of course. According to Jewish thought, God is perfect and therefore any loopholes in the rules were put there on purpose. If you have studied the holy texts deeply enough to find the loophole, that makes you more holy, not less. It's like an easter egg for true believers. The true sinners are those who think that they know what God wants better than what He actually passed down as commandments. God knows what He wants and wrote it down exactly like that.
- Ekaros 1y agoDo these wires apply castle doctrine? That is if you create a big one and then someone believing in their power enters you are free to defend what is inside?
- opentokix 1y ago[flagged]
- samuel_navi 1y agoSince people seem to be completely misunderstanding what the point of this is, or why it's even a problem in the first place, let's start with two simple definitions of what's going on: 1. In Jewish law, the definition of "work that is prohibited on the Sabbath" includes "moving objects outside the private domain". 2. The definition of "domain" has three kinds: "public domain" (such as a house), "private domain" (such as a highway), and "vineyard" (a catch-all term for "hard to define whether it's public or private"). Turns out, most of an average city in the world is "vineyard". The Eruv's function is to change the domain within it from "vineyard" to "private domain". That's it. No "fooling God", no loophole, just a simple way to create a legal status. Public domain remains public, private domain remains private, and now the grey area in between gets resolved. And there's a bonus of "there's a nice symbolism in the creation of a unified community boundary".
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- M4v3R 1y agoI'm sorry but I fail to see how what you wrote makes it any different. The wire is nothing more than a hack, like a cheat in a game. The law prohibits work "outside" so let's redefine the meaning of "outside" so we can continue working there.
- Horffupolde 1y agoPerhaps what’s inside or outside is the intrinsic concept of private versus public, and cities without such a wire are incomplete?
- nashashmi 1y agoAah! Now I see the relevance to HN.
- bgwalter 1y agoA rabbi and a priest are sitting next to each other in a plane on the Sabbath. The priest notices that the rabbi keeps on his seat belt for the whole journey. Finally, overcome by curiosity, he asks: "Rabbi, why are you traveling on the Sabbath and why do you keep your seat belt on the whole time?" The rabbi answers: "I'm not traveling, I'm wearing the plane!"
- xchip 1y ago[flagged]
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- planet36 1y ago[dead]
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't comment like this on HN. It's a path we don't want to go down here.
- imchillyb 1y ago[flagged]
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoto keep out vampires?
- FrustratedMonky 1y agocouldn't they hook up some kind of low voltage or resistance check to confirm continuity. instead of a visual inspection. and This is pretty crazy loop hole.
- haiku2077 1y agoWould that make it invite a lot from scrutiny from the city and power company? An inert wire, they can look the other way. A live wire is a potential fire hazard and source of EM interference for utilities.
- myself248 1y agoWith a fraction of a volt and a fraction of a milliamp on it, how many fires you gonna start? No EM if it's DC. C'mon.
- haiku2077 1y agoWill the power company believe you that your system will only ever provide a tiny amount of power? Will you convince city government (in NYC, where some level of corruption is a fact of life) to allow your plan?
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago>Will the power company believe you that your system will only ever provide a tiny amount of power? A small guage wire (ex:24 AWG) is limited to low voltage use. The issue is that voltage will drop over distance less than a city block. ref: https://www.cctvcamerapros.com/AC-DC-voltage-drop-cable-distance-s/846.htm https://www.cctvcamerapros.com/AC-DC-voltage-drop-cable-dist...
- myself248 1y agoThink of it as a telephone line. They do fine for tens of miles. And you have no signal integrity concerns, merely continuity. (Though being able to launch a TDR pulse down it would be neat, since localizing breaks would become trivial.) I wonder if a fiber would meet the definition...
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago[dead]