The article really neglects to explain what an eruv is and why you would want it. Wikipedia's much more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv

Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "home" so you can do things like, say, take your baby for a weekend stroll on a nice day or walk outside with a cane. It's more nuanced than this, there's a whole bunch of rules about what you can't do and about how big an eruv can be and what you have to do to make it valid.

(I am not Jewish so do not ask me for any further details on this.)

My Jewish friend once told me, specifically discussing this wire, that Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime. The same thing goes for the hotels where someone is paid to wave their hand in front of automatic doors so the guests don't force the door to "work" for them or the elevators that run 24/7, stopping at every floor so they don't have to even work by pressing a button.

My favourite in this genre comes from a physics DPhil student I knew in Oxford: He insisted that it was permissible for him to work in the lab on Shabbat because after all he was really just studying the works of God and so it was no different in character from reading the Torah.

I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Friday evenings (after dusk).

Just asked my wife about this, who grew up Jewish and also loves debating these things as she's a programmer. Apparently the rules describe certain activities that one is not allowed to do, which in practice block most people from doing their profession. Reading books is not on that list, but nowhere does it say that the book needs to be the Torah. So it would definitely be allowed to read research papers, as long as you don't take notes (because writing is forbidden). Even a book critic could be reading books during shabat without any issues.

Operating a particle accelerator (ie actually pressing the buttons) would probably be a no-go, but if you set it up beforehand and it runs through the weekend without interaction then that would be fine.

Starting a particle accelerator would be forbidden, as the electricity alone would be akin to starting a fire.

Yes. But not if you set up a timer to do it automatically. (As long as you set up the timer before shabat obviously)

There is also apparently a slightly more technologically minded sub-sect of Judaism which considers only electricity generators that actually burn things (coal, oil, gas, biomass, etc) to be "fire". Battery powered devices are therefore OK, as would be things purely powered by solar power (as the sun is technically not "on fire") nucear power or even hydroelectric power. For the vast majority of electricity grids though, at least a percentage of generation will be from fueled generators and so forbidden on shabat.

This is not a mainstream view though.

I'm pretty sure 99.999% of observant Jewish people would consider this work but there is a lot of room for interpretation in Judaism and in the end it's between you, your belief, and God. An interesting piece of trivia there is that in Yom Kippur you can atone for sins to god but you can not atone for sins to other people without getting reconciliation.

In general a lot of scientists who are followers of theistic religions do think there is a religious motivation in their work, it that it is the study of God's creation so I would take it seriously.

I would argue that even a non-believer who studies the sciences in pursuit or truth and appreciates the beauty they reveal is doing God's work.

But did he write down anything?

I am not the brightest spark as it took me a few months of living in a heavily Jewish area to realise that the pedestrian traffics light were configured to run every cycle so they didn't have to press the button. Probably a lot more details I also missed.

Could be coincidence. Many of those buttons are "placebo buttons" and aren't actually hooked up, particularly at busy intersections.

I doubt very much this is related to any local Jewish population. Most traffic buttons are placebos these days; the pedestrian signals automatically signal alongside the traffic lights.

The exception would be low-pedestrian-volume areas with lights and crossings reserved specifically for pedestrians.

You're probably correct, but having lived in northern Brooklyn for almost a decade, I wouldn't be surprised if those communities had a hand in that type of infrastructure. They already have their own police force.

Buttons in pedestrian traffic lights are far from universal, my country is not Jewish and pedestrian lights without a button are very common.

Actually I dislike those with buttons. They send the message that cars passing and pedestrians stopping is the "default", and ensure that a lone pedestrian always has to stop, regardless of luck, while establishing the ritual that pedestrians need to "beg" for being allowed to cross. In my view, cars already have too many privileges in cities, it's not the end of the world if they have to stop at an empty crossing from time to time (something that pedestrians also have to do often).

Cars have much more inertia and often more traffic than pedestrians, it makes sense to give them right of way and reduce the ambiguity with traffic control devices in most places.

If you take sidewalks away completely and turn everything into a big highway you’ll have even less pedestrian traffic. That doesn’t make it good policy.

In my area at least, if there is a pedestrian crossing across a single road, it will not be automatic, but if it's near a junction, where the lights would need to toggle anyway, the button does nothing, and it's just on a fixed timer

I've been a "Sabbath Goy" a couple of times for some of my friends :)

> Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is.

This was cause for major debate in the founding days of Christianity. Jesus’ ministry as a Jewish rabbi often involved condemning the religious leaders of the time for focusing on minutiae of the law, particularly Sabbath law.

Matthew 23:1–7 — “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.’”

Matthew 23:23–24 — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” [Referring to the pious practice of straining one’s drinks for bugs to avoid violating dietary law.]

Luke 14:1–6 — “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?’ But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.

“Then he asked them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?’ And they had nothing to say.”

Mark 2:23–28 — “One Sabbath Jesus was passing through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick the heads of grain as they walked along. So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’

“Jesus replied, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? During the high priesthood of Abiathar, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which was lawful only for the priests. And he gave some to his companions as well.’

“Then Jesus declared, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”

Mark 3:1–6 — “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’

“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.

“He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

And there are further examples, like John 5.

I remember attending a tech conference years ago in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the speakers was a devout Jew from NY City. On Saturday he taped the lock open on his hotel room so he wouldn't need to use a key.

This drove hotel security nuts and one of the conference admins had to get involved because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation. They were certain he was up to something shady.

He and his wife had brought extra food and invited the conference admin and myself to dinner in their room. I remember it as a very special night and I am still friends with them to this day.

There are hotels and apartment blocks that have physical locks as well as the swipe card. So you can use the physical key on the Sabbath.

So turning a key to open a door isn't work, but pushing an elevator button is?

Yes. There are several explanations for this, but the most popular ones are:

1) Making fires is prohibited work. Activating an electric switch causes a spark, which is kind of like a fire.

2) We have a tradition of considering using electricity to be work.

3) This is stupid, not using electricity is more work. Just push the button.

4) This is stupid, but having a day when we aren't all on our phones is nice, so let's keep all of the silly rules to not lose that

> Activating an electric switch causes a spark, which is kind of like a fire.

So is walking on a carpet and removing your sweater and almost anything involving fabrics and motion.

Is it really a useful definition of "fire" and "spark"? Most people think of those as different things. Fire implies oxygen, you put out fires with heavy blankets or with nitrogen gas since time immemorial. Sparks, as in tiny plasma discharges, does not require oxygen and can not be put out the same way.

There's an important distinction between "thing that happens even if you don't intend it" and "thing that happens because you intentionally caused it" (and the even more subtle distinction between "beneficial side effect of thing you intended" and "neutral/negative side effect of thing you intended").

ie intentionality matters.

We are talking about religion here. Don't try to rationalise it.

I recently heard that an apartment block near me cannot have automatic emergency lighting or fire sprinklers retrofitted incase there is a fire on a Saturday.

Forget about burning to death or falling down pitch-black stairs and breaking your neck, it is apparently more important that electrical circuits are not energized or a valve is not opened on a saturday!

Absolutely absurd.

I am indifferent to people stringing up wires to lie to themselves. They are not "invisible" and the poles they are on are an eye sore in my part of London and also attract negative attention (e.g. people put palestinian flags or stickers etc on them). But whatever.

What I do have an issue is that someone's religious beliefs are preventing basic fire safety protections for everyone else. We in London/UK are rightly getting a lot of fire protections retrofitted to older apartment blocks because of the Grenfell disaster [1] - this is not some hypothetical thing, its a real problem in older buildings and it disgusts me individuals can veto fundamental basic fire protection for everyone else in their building just because of their own personal beliefs, despite being totally willing to go along with this Eruv sleight-of-hand.

Fire does not respect religion.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire

>Forget about burning to death or falling down pitch-black stairs and breaking your neck, it is apparently more important that electrical circuits are not energized or a valve is not opened on a saturday!

This is literally bogus. Nothing in Judaism prevents automated systems! That's the entire point of "sabbath mode" in elevators for example, and it's perfectly normal and usual to set electrical things to work on a timer on the sabbath.

Whoever told you this was utterly wrong and ignorant. There is no rabbi who would have agreed with this, WITHOUT the "you can ignore mitzvot to not die" corollary that others point out.

A fire alarm is a perfectly normal part of a kosher home. Maybe reconsider how much you trust the person who said this to you.

But they're not automated are they? If there are e.g. motion-triggered emergency lights, and you move and they come on then BAM! You did some work.

If I were in a situation like that I would reach out for advice to some religious authority the person in question trusts.

There are widely accepted fairly common sense exceptions for saving lives. [1] That could maybe apply to an automatically activating fire sprinkler. Only someone well versed in the scriptures could say for certain. (And only they would be believed anyway.)

Even about the emergency lighting one can probably find a workaround. For example could it be wired so it is always on via a timer during shabbat?

The point with discussing these with a religious authority is manifold. They might better know how to mediate. In both directions! They might explain to the engineers what is and isn't a sticking point. Similarly they could explain if a given technique is permissible to the person who worries about them. Or alternatively they might have heard solutions others have employed in the past previously.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikuach_nefesh

I think I'd prefer that they just say "deal with it - this is real". How many different sets of beliefs do we need to accommodate? How many "mediations" do we need to do to use fire sprinklers?! What if they are incompatible? Whose religion "wins" if one stays one thing but one says the other?

The solution is obvious: religion and beliefs should not be a factor in these sort of things. We in the UK are a secular society with strong separations between state and religion, so this sort of behaviour should be treated for what it is.

> We in the UK are a secular society with strong separations between state and religion

You might want to look up who's the Supreme Governor of the Church of England

Ah, but it would be forbidden to start the fire on the Sabbath, so there would be no need for sprinklers!

> because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation

I feel like I would expect Arabs to be the most likely to accept this? Abrahamic religion that also still practices all sorts of ritualistic stuff in a region with a historically high Jewish population?

At my last employer I remember a Muslim coworker explaining the fasting thing they do to me and the two of us having a small bonding moment after mutually understanding the whole denial of self thing (I'm protestant.) I think people under appreciate the potential for that kind of thing.

> 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.

> 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.

I've been eastern orthodox roughly my whole life so I'm familiar with economia. But I don't think that's the correct lens to view this through. I'm not as informed about judaism but I believe most practitioners have a very different relationship to rules and the place of them in their belief.

I do think it's a bad thing to confine women to their homes though. I'm in favor of whatever theological tools individual believers and bodies of believers decide to use to break from this historical norm.

Seems more akin to Christianity then, Pope is only recognized by roman catholics, and there's ridiculous amounts of Christianity doctrines that each interpret the writings differently.

That’s not entirely true, the Orthodox Christians recognize the Bishop of Rome as being an equal to any of their patriarchs.

Protestant Christians run the gamut from “it’s complicated” with the pope to “the pope is the literal devil”. Some denominations have no central authority at all, and qualifications for priesthood is determined entirely by the local community.

>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.

During Shabbat the members of the Jewish community who are most vulnerable are the ones who take it too far? Technically you are not supposed to even carry your keys, medications, babies, anything, so to strictly follow the rules means either being a shutin for the day or taking stupid risks which could easily cause undo long term hardships or even death. For the most part it is just updating the laws to modern society and the move away from the more communal living arrangements of the past.