So rather than face the fact times have changed and some of your doctrines are obsolete and mostly a hindrance to practical living, lets just "cheat" God by playing games with words.

Checking the status of the eruv immediately before the Sabbath begins will avoid most violations. Some people don't bother to check and make the (IMHO, safe) assumption that the eruv is intact. Some people don't bother to check and make the (IMHO, rather inconvenient) assumption that the eruv isn't intact. In particular, this involves some sort of alternate plan for getting back into your house. Some people "wear" their keys. I think some people distinguish between different categories of carryable objects based on their necessity. The eruv is not something that I'm personally involved with so I'm not very knowledgable and the only thing that I can really say with confidence is that it's a thousand times more complex than anything I could hope to explain here.

Cleveland's eruv status is available by phone (as is the East London, I believe; also, I think, the prefered method) and on the web site of the local Jewish paper as text (unknown as of 11AM).

Ok, reading my previous post I can see it could be harsh to accuse a religious person of cheating their deity, but I'm amazed at the belief that committing a major sin against your god depends on whether the poles and wires are up and running or not. I guess that's too huge to get into here, but .... but..... damn!

The London site isn't long on general details of an eruv.

The Sydney site at http://www.sydneyeruv.org.au/description.htm is much more detailed on how eruvs came about and their role.

Interestingly, Toronto has apparently had one for over 60 years. I couldn't find a description or map of where it is, though. Anybody know of such?

In the interests of complete disclosure, I'd like to say that many a Saturday I can be found carrying a ham and cheese sandwhich all over the city regardless of the boundaries or status of the eruv.

With that out of the way, I'd like to take issue with ernie's comments. First of all, I don't understand how changing times has anything to do with this. Some people argue that Kashrut is made obsolete by modern standards of food safety. I can't think of an analogous argument for carrying. The eruv was not a Jewish adaptation to secular progress. In fact, I'm sure it predates most of the innovations which you may have thought were responsible for its conception.

The eruv is not cheating. It's an honest interpretation of what a group of people believe to be the word of god. You seem to disagree, as I obviously do, about the foundations for their interpretation but your conclusion was unfair. I think if you make a deep and honest study of Jewish tradition you'll find that they've faithfully made the modern world conform to their beliefs rather than "cheat" their beliefs to conform to the modern world.

Mostly, I'd like to take issue with your characterization of the Sabbath restrictions as a hindrance. From personal observation I can say that the Sabbath is a tremendous joy to observant Jews - a joy I could never describe in this context. Leo Rosten discusses this in an appendix in "The Joys of Yiddish" and his excellent account goes some small way to capturing the deep relationship between the Jewish people and their bride, the Sabbath.

Mostly, I'd like to take issue with your characterization of the Sabbath restrictions as a hindrance. From personal observation I can say that the Sabbath is a tremendous joy to observant Jews

Oh, I love the concept of setting aside one day of the week to live simply and reflect on one's spirituality without the constant din of modern technology, I would never knock that - in fact I'd quite like to live by that example even as a non-religious person. My issue is with the incredible hoops and scholarly interpretive twists (akin to some complex tax accounting code) that lead up to some poles and wires creating an anti-sin shield. Apologies for any toe-stepping, I debate to learn, not to judge.

This is a really bogus new item.

You can see from the page's HTML that all the traffic light does is tell you if it is currently the sabbath, which it does by looking at the date and time with Javascript. There is no magic here to change the status dynamically based on anything except the current time and date.

The HTML is a long way from being standards compliant, so I'm not surprised it renders differently in different browsers. Mac IE renders it fine.

No, maf. An observant Orthodox wouldn't even look at the webpage if he thought it was the Sabbath.

The front page explains it quite well.

" A eruv status message (with a green, amber or red light) will appear on the top right of this website each Friday around noon. "

The idea is between noon Friday and sundown (which is the start of Sabbath) you would check by the webpage (or other means) to ensure that the eruv is intact. If it is, you can safely traverse the area within the eruv while carrying. If it isn't you cannot.

Discussion of the fine points, well, that'll take a while, and besides, I'm lazy lutheran, not Jewish of any stripe, so I'm the wrong guy.

I'm not jewish, yet I can still see the significance of the eruv. It appears to dennote a neighborhood. There should be no reason why using a perambulator to ferry children for a nice walk around the neighborhood should be forbidden, yet it is still important that commerce be banned. Presumably, no one inside the eruv would enagage in commercial activities, so any package would be non-commercial in nature. Outside the eruv, however, many shops are open-- and carrying a package there could be use for commercial arctivities not in keeping with the Sabbath.

In the same way that a breakin could be seen as a reason to reconsecrate a sanctuary, disturbance of the poles, wires, etc. is seen as a reason to require reconstruction of the eruv-- verification that no nonjews have set up shop within the bonderies, etc...

I overgeneralized here. The operative ban seems to be on carrying things--as the transportaion of objects both disturbs the peace and aids commercial interests. An eruv redefines a neighborhood as part of the "home', bans on carrying objects beyond the home are lifted-- enabling the use of wheelchairs, perambulators, and strollers.

And many eruvim do include the homes and offices of gentiles. The Capital Hill eruv seems to have been constructed to allow Jewish lawmakers to atten commitees, vote, etc.

As a former Jew (I'm reformed now) the idea of the eruv alway struck me as a little bit of Enron-style accounting, a strict dogmatic interpretation of a simple idea--that we should take a day off from material\mercantile matters to contemplate our place in the universe and our relationship to others and the Divine.

Can someone help me see this differently?