Every year millions of people visit New York, but few of them know that a transparent thread of about 30 kilometers surrounds the island of Manhattan, the true epicenter of the American city. The reason? A common practice among the Jewish community in different parts of the world.
Although it may seem strange, there are many cities around the globe with a Jewish presence that follow the ‘eruv’ ritual, a term referring to a demarcation built with the intention of establishing a perimeter in which people or objects from a place can be transported to another during ‘Shabbat’ -Saturdays- and other festivities such as ‘Yom Kippur’ without contravening Jewish Law, which prohibits any work or activity of this type on those days.
The installation of this ‘eruv’, ‘eruvin’ in the plural, present in other large cities such as Vienna or Caracas, is done with transparent thread or wires that are adjusted to the existing public wiring in the perimeter to be delimited.
Although it may seem like a purely symbolic rite, the truth is that its installation allows observant Jews in those areas to carry and transport everything from babies and people with reduced mobility to basic necessities such as keys, medicines, canes and crutches.
In the case of Manhattan, according to the Binarios portal, it is a rabbi who drives around the island every Thursday, checking that the thread is in perfect condition and without any breaks in any of the sectors he travels. In the event of a breakage, a maintenance team repairs it on Friday morning under the supervision of the rabbi so that it is ready by sunset on Friday, which is when ‘Shabbat’ begins.
As the aforementioned website reflects, the maintenance of this thread in Manhattan, essential for the considerable Orthodox Jewish community that lives there, costs around 100,000 dollars a year.
This is the route of the ‘eruv’ of Manhattan (Google Maps):
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