American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces

4. The Urban Practice of Jewish Space

4 The Urban Practice of Jewish Space Jennifer Cousineau In 1959, Rabbi Tzvi Eisenstadt, acting on behalf of the Jewish residents of Manhattan, contracted to rent the five boroughs of the city of New York—Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island—for the token sum of one dollar for a period of forty-nine years, until 2008.1 This unconventional exchange activated a type of space—known by its Hebrew name, eruv—which would serve a practical ritual purpose for a segment of New York’s Jewish community and stand as a powerful spatial and material expression of communal values and identity. This mid-century structure was the second to have been constructed in Manhattan and can be viewed as a forerunner of the Upper West Side Eruv, which was completed in 1986 and is much more limited in size and scope than its immediate predecessor (Fig. 4.1).2 Rather than encompassing the entire island, it covers approximately 300 city blocks and is bounded by 125th and 60th streets to the north and south and between Central Park West and Riverside Drive to the east and west.3 The conceptual space of the eruv assumes a physical boundary. A significant part of the present New York eruv is constructed with thin wires strung between a series of poles; it is virtually indistinguishable from other street furniture. Jewish law prohibits Jews from transferring objects from a private domain to a public domain and vice versa on the Sabbath.4 The prohibition not only prevents people from carrying sacred texts to be used in study or indoor shoes Nelson_AmerSanctuary 11/30/05 2:32 PM Page 65 Nelson_AmerSanctuary 11/30/05 2:32 PM Page 66 to the synagogue in winter but also restricts mothers from carrying or strolling their young children, the elderly from carrying canes, and physically handicapped people from using wheelchairs. An eruv is a legal fiction through which unrelated territories are amalgamated to create a single private domain, a type of enlarged Jewish household. Within this geographically expanded but conceptually intimate domain, Jews can freely carry objects or infants, as they would at home, on the holy seventh day. Eruvs, though practical, are also intensely symbolic. The spatial culture of the Sabbath materially expressed by the eruv embodies a complex set of communal values and ideas about social life and ritual performance and the relationship between these and the urban environment in which they unfold and which they create. Although New York’s eruvs are rarely recognized by nonusers, they are hardly atypical elements of the American urban landscape. Eruvs can be found in Toronto, Ottawa, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia , St. Louis, Denver, Seattle, and Memphis, to name only a few North American cities. Large cities often have several.5 Although many might consider the Mall in Washington, D.C., to be the sacred space of American democracy, few are aware that the same land has been incorporated into Jewish law for distinctly ritual purposes through the vehicle of the Washington eruv. The Washington, D.C., eruv was endorsed by the first President Bush and then Mayor Marion Barry, and it encompasses the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol.6 While the number of active eruvs in Europe was reduced as a result of the decimation of its Jewish population by the end of the Second World War, eruvs still support ritual life in London, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Strasbourg, and The Hague. Eruvs are common features of cities with significant Jewish populations. The Jewish experience in the modern period has been a predominantly urban experience.7 It is perhaps surprising, then, that the fruitful relationship between the practice of Judaism and one of its paradigmatic sites has drawn so little critical attention from scholars. Scholars of Judaism have generally focused on texts as the primary cultural product of Jewish religious or spiritual practice. Until recently, urban and architectural historians rarely trained their lenses on The Urban Practice of Jewish Space 67 Figure 4.1. left Map of Upper West Side Eruv. From http://www.lss.org/eruv.htm. With permission from Rabbi Nasanayl Braun. Nelson_AmerSanctuary 11/30/05 2:32 PM Page 67 Judaism and they have generally produced studies of discrete buildings within larger urban environments.8 The significance of urban residence for Jews and its implications for modern ritual practice are...