Religious enclosure pits Jewish law vs. N.J. town's zoning law

By The Associated Press

09.29.00

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NEWARK, N.J. — A thin strand of wire has become the flash point for a dispute pitting centuries-old Jewish law against modern zoning laws in Bergen County.

Tenafly is the latest New Jersey community in which construction of a ritual enclosure called an eruv has touched off a debate over whether an accommodation to Orthodox Jews should be permitted on public property.

The borough's small Orthodox Jewish community started erecting the eruv to enable its members to conduct certain activities normally prohibited on the Sabbath.

But Tenafly officials said the wire, which was stretched above the borough's nature center, was strung without permission, and ordered municipal workers to take it down last week.

"What they've done is highly illegal," Mayor Ann Moscovitz said. "They're not permitted to do that. The law is very clear."

An eruv is a symbolic enclosure of a community that, in religious terms, extends the domain of Orthodox homes out into the street and neighborhoods. Once it has been erected, observant Jews are permitted under Jewish law to do more on the Sabbath. The principal benefit is to allow women to push baby strollers in the street while walking to synagogue, and to allow men to carry personal items, like keys, with them — things normally forbidden on the Sabbath.

Eruvs have been constructed in many cities in New Jersey and throughout the country where Orthodox Jews live. Often utilizing existing utility poles and wires, many are barely noticeable.

But the wire that stretched above Tenafly's nature center caught the attention of borough officials, who noted it was erected without permission.

Moscovitz said two members of the Orthodox Community, Erez Gottlieb and Gary Osen, approached her and the borough council last summer about erecting the eruv.

"They told me they had to rent the borough of Tenafly for a dollar a year," she said. "Even symbolically, it seemed inappropriate for the mayor and council to rent the borough to anybody. How do you do that?"

Gottlieb, president of the Tenafly Eruv Association, says he's hopeful a solution can be found.

"We're doing our best, trying to figure this out," he said. "We want to have an amicable relationship with the town. We want things calm."

Rabbi Mordecai Shain of Lubavitch Chabad House in Tenafly said his congregation does not use eruvs, but noted the enclosures are intact in many communities in Bergen County and elsewhere.

"There's got to be a way to do them legally," he said. "I'm sure that if other towns have an eruv, Tenafly should be able to have one also. If I would have done it, I would have tried to work with the town in a better way."

Rabbis from neighboring communities say the eruv should not be a big deal if people understand what it's about.

"I understand the conflict," said Rabbi Mark Kiel of Congregation B'nai Israel in Emerson. "I'm sympathetic to having an eruv in areas where there's large Jewish communities. It makes people feel at home.

"On the other hand, to take possession of a town, even symbolically, also conflicts with the separation of church and state, which is also very important to me," he said. "I think it does need some debate so that the issues are aired publicly and people don't think Jews are trying to take over a city. We need to bring about mutual understanding."

"People who don't understand this, I can understand them asking, 'What are they trying to do? Why do they need community property?'," added Rabbi Yosef Adler of Congregation Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck. "If people understood it, they wouldn't be threatened by it. This has been done for centuries all over America and Israel."

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Congregation B'nai Yeshurun in Teaneck said objections to an eruv on legal grounds sometimes mask a darker motive.

"Those legal arguments are a smokescreen for those arguments against more Orthodox Jewish families moving into a community," he said. "The only objection that should be raised is one against the religious community being able to exercise its rights."

Update

N.J. town may remove Jewish ritual enclosure, rules federal judge
Tenafly officials were properly concerned that public property ‘not be permanently allocated to a religious purpose,’ according to 114-page opinion.  08.10.01