Come summer, the Oak Park eruv will include Huntington Woods.
LYNNE MEREDITH COHN STAFF WRITER
0
bservant Jewish residents of Hunt-
ington Woods will soon be able to
carry on Shabbat, thanks to an
eruv that should be up within the
next couple of months.
"It's going to encompass virtually all of
Huntington Woods," said Rabbi Yerach-
miel Rabin, rabbi of the Huntington
Woods Minyan and the man in charge of
the new eruv. Rabbi Yehuda Kaplan, as-
sistant director of the new eruv, will do
much of the hands-on practical work.
An eruv is a wall, which can be sym-
bolized by a string, that encloses a neigh-
borhood. The eruv makes a public domain
private and enables Torah-observant
Jews to carry items on Shabbat which
they are prohibited from carrying in pub-
lic.
"The concept is that through encom-
passing an area with a common wall, or
symbolic wall, then it's like a shared area,
and people are able to carry on Shabbos,"
Rabbi Rabin said.
The eruv boundaries will follow Hunt-
ington Woods' borders: between Coolidge
and Woodward and 10 Mile and 11 Mile
roads. It will connect to the Oak Park
eruv, enabling residents to walk between
the two suburbs.
Some Huntington Woods residents ex-
pressed interest in erecting an eruv that
would enable them to carry
babies to synagogue and al-
low people confined to wheel-
chairs to get out on Shabbat,
Rabbi Rabin said.
When the Oak Park eruv
plan kicked off in 1985, the
idea arose to extend the
boundary to Huntington
Woods. But obtaining the
city's approval took longer
than expected.
Dr. Jeffrey Last, president
of the Oak Park eruv, said
the Oak Park eruv has been
"one of the most reliable eru-
vs in the country. We set
things up with a very care-
ful design." Rabbi Yissochor
Wolf is rabbi of the Oak Park
eruv. An eruv can be affect-
ed by weather, construction
or other constraints that can
disrupt the wall or symbol-
ic wires.
Jewish and gentile resi-
dents came together, along
with Detroit Edison, City
and wires. The lechi can be any type of
wire, existing or newly strung up wires,
he noted.
When a fence ends and the eruv needs
to continue, Rabbi Rabin said, they will
"put a pole at the end of the fence on one
side of the road, another on the other side
of the road, then connect them with the
wire." El
Rabbi Yerachmiel Rabin stands next to an eruv
pole attached to a telephone pole.
PHOTO BY DAN IEL LI PPITT
Expanding Borders
Manager Alex Allie and the city com-
mission, to construct a viable plan for the
Huntington Woods eruv, Rabbi Rabin
said.
"We need to put up what's called a lechi
to enclose the neighborhood, like the wall
around the Old City of Jerusalem," he
said. In Huntington Woods, which al-
ready has many fences that will be used,
they are using a small piece of ground
molding attached to Detroit Edison poles
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