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126 On the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, February 23, 2003, a woman carrying her infant child walked out her front door, through her yard, and into the street.1 This seemingly unremarkable occurrence was an unprecedented act among Sabbath-observant Jews in London. After centuries of Jewish life in London, why should such a mundane gesture mark a significant departure in the experience of the Jewish Sabbath? The catalyst for ritual innovation in this case was a spatial device called an eruv (plural, eruvim). An eruv is a space whose disparate areas are regarded as forming a single domain by virtue of the contiguity of its boundaries. An eruv can be built in a single street, uniting several dwellings on that street, or on a much larger scale, uniting many streets, households, and even neighborhoods. All eruvim, however , require real, physical boundaries. These boundaries tend to be minimalistic and are usually well integrated into the urban built environment. It is often difficult, even for eruv users, to detect the boundary by sight.2 Where possible, preexisting features of the urban environment deemed acceptable according to Jewish law, such as fences, row houses, hedges, railway lines, embankments, major roads, and bridges, can be borrowed imaginatively to create a contiguous boundary for the eruv. Where preexisting urban features are not fully contiguous, under certain circumstances Jewish law can allow for the boundary to be “completed” by erecting poles and wires to close gaps. The erection of some eighty poles in this way permitted the creation of an eruv that now encompasses an area of 6.5 square miles in North West London, including large parts of Hendon, Golders Green, Finchley, and the Hampstead Garden Suburb, and encircling the majority of the Jewish 5. Urban Boundaries, Religious Experience, and the North West London Eruv Jennifer A. Cousineau 127 Urban Boundaries, Religious Experience population of North West London. This eruv is known as the North West London Eruv. Even though eruv boundaries do not limit the actions of those who do not make use of eruvim, the construction of such boundaries in cities across North America and in England has proven fertile ground for urban conflict. Encounters between eruv supporters and their detractors have been well documented in the scholarly literature.3 For the purposes of this chapter, it will be sufficient to state that the construction of the North West London Eruv was unusually protracted because the objections to it were so vociferous , causing repeated delays in construction. Many people, including significant parts of the Sabbath-observant Jewish community in London, did not accept the North West London Eruv as legitimate, either for the purposes of carrying on the Sabbath or as a means of advancing the religious practices of a small segment of London’s population. Some claimed that any urban area enclosed by an eruv would become a type of Orthodox Jewish “ghetto” in which both secular Jews and non-Jews would be unwelcome. Though irrational (because in all documented cases the implementation of an eruv has been preceded by the settlement of significant numbers of Jews in the area), this argument appears to have had broad appeal and has been a feature of urban conflict in places as disparate as Palo Alto, California; Outremont, Québec; and Westhampton Beach, New York, as well as in other communities in England. Eruv users, who have almost always lived in heterogeneous urban environments, however, have never made claims to ownership or exclusive use of the space within an eruv, and Jewish law does not require it. The essays in David Chidester and Edward Linenthal’s edited volume, American Sacred Space, chart a variety of conflicts that seem almost inevitably to accompany the establishment and practice of sacred space by individuals and groups.4 This chapter turns away from urban conflict even while it acknowledges the inherent multiplicity of meaning of any urban space. Instead, it presents a study of urban religion from the perspective of religious practitioners. I am interested in the ways that urban places designated for religious practice alter the lives of those who use of them. Historian of religion Robert Orsi has defined urban religion as “the dynamic engagement of religious traditions with specific features of industrial and post-industrial cityscapes and the social conditions of city life,” and his work on the American religious landscape lays the groundwork for my work on the eruv.5 Orsi’s research differs from mine in two ways. First, for historical reasons that...

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