The AP reports:
They are largely invisible, and sometimes as simple as a small, plastic marker affixed to a utility pole. There’s an eruv around the White House and one in Manhattan that sprawls from the East River to the Hudson.
Now, in a village at the gateway to the Hamptons, the wealthy eastern Long Island playground, a battle has erupted over this religious symbol for Orthodox Jews, pitting them against their more secular neighbors.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, who counts New York Gov. David Paterson among his friends, wants the Westhampton Beach mayor and village board to approve the placement of the religious boundary called an eruv, which would allow observant Jews to perform minor tasks on their Sabbath or on religious holidays like Rosh Hashana, which was observed on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The proposal has stirred controversy among the 2,000 full-time residents of Westhampton Beach, a community 75 miles east of Manhattan where the population can grow to 20,000 in the summer. Mayor Conrad Teller says 85 percent of village residents oppose the eruv. . .
Opponents worry that if the eruv is established, Westhampton Beach — a wealthy community but one less glitzy than its better known neighbors Southampton and East Hampton — may evolve into an Orthodox enclave.
The mayor, who declined to take a position on the eruv because he may eventually have to vote on it, believes those fears are overblown. He said the village has retained an attorney to research the constitutional issues.
Another opposition group, the Alliance for the Separation of Church and State in the Greater Westhampton Area, also has hired an attorney.
Their leader, Mark Williams, says the alliance is concerned that village approval would amount to sanctioning a particular religion — and is unconstitutional.
A typical eruv is essentially invisible, and serves only to allow Orthodox Jews to go about their lives while adhering to their interpretation of Jewish law governing the sabbath.
The usual suspects say that an invisible line on public property violates the separation of church and state. To the contrary, a federal appeals court has ruled that, not only is an eruv constitutionally permissible, it must be allowed if the municipality allows any other attachments to telephone polls, such as flyers:
A group of Orthodox Jews in Tenafly, N.J., won a six-year battle in 2006 to create one. A federal judge had ruled the borough had the right to ban the eruv, but an appeals court disagreed, saying the borough had selectively enforced the ban on utility pole attachments. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
It’s not about anti-Semitism, opponents say:
Several groups have sprung up to fight it, including Jewish People Opposed to the Eruv.
“The objection to the eruv has nothing to do with religion, per se,” said group chairman Arnold Sheiffer, a semiretired advertising executive. “What they object to is creating a division in the village where none ever existed.” . . . Their intention, he says, is to blunt talk that anyone opposed to the eruv is anti-Semitic.
So it’s not about opposition to Jews, just Orthodox Jews. That’s so much better.
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