Exploring the Baltimore Eruv

Baltimore, MD - Nov. 6, 2015 - In Rabbi Mordechai Soskil’s 9th grade Talmud class at Beth Tfiloh, the students began a unit to understand the laws of eruvin. As part of that unit, Rabbi Yonah Ribiat, AKA the “Eruv Rav” (the actual person charged with checking the eruv and fixing it each week), took the class on a tour of the Baltimore Eruv, pointing out examples of things we learned about, and interesting halachot in operation in our own community Eruv.

An Eruv is an integral part of a thriving Jewish community and its laws are complex. This was an opportunity for the students to study something that is relvant to Jewish living and then see its laws in real life. The only thing better than “book” learning is the practical learning of real life.

"It was one of the best field trips I was ever on," commented Aaron N. '19. "It was interesting, practical and fun...and right in our own neighborhood!"
 

 

More about an eruv:
While we think of an eruv and the halachik enclosure that permits carrying on Shabbat, the students learned that this isn’t technically true. In a technical sense, the Eruv (which literally means mixture) is where we join our authority to carry together. In the Talmudic times this was done by each member of a courtyard placing a small amount of food in the home of one member of the courtyard so that it is “as if” all of the families in that enclosed space have joined together in one incorporated entity. Then the courtyard has one owner who gives permission to all of his household and guests to carry in that space. Today, that is done annually during a ceremony where one person acquires a certain amount of food (a box of matza!) on behalf of anyone in the coming year that will want to carry in the eruv. So technically, as shown in th photo below, Baltimore’s eruv is sitting on a shelf in the Agudath Israel of Park Heights sanctuary.