CROWN HEIGHTS — Police are investigating multiple cases of vandalism to a controversial new eruv built by a local Modern Orthodox synagogue in Crown Heights — following an uproar about the religious structure from the area’s Lubavitch Jewish community.
The eruv controversy has exposed fault lines between the Lubavitch Hasidic community — longtime residents of the neighborhood who, for the large part, do not use or condone the symbolic enclosures — and the relatively recent arrivals to the area who belong to Congregation Kol Israel, a less conservative Modern Orthodox faith.
Since it officially opened in mid-June, the new eruv — a ritual enclosure constructed from see-through string hung between light poles and walls to symbolically delineate an area where observant Jews may carry items on the Sabbath — has been torn down and tampered with in multiple locations, according to police and those familiar with the case.
Those on both sides of the debate condemn the acts. But those who oppose the eruv can empathize with why the vandalism might have been done.
“I don’t think anyone should condone vandalism in any way, shape or form. I think it’s 100 percent, absolutely wrong," said Chana Lightstone, a Lubavitch mother of four and Crown Heights resident. "Nevertheless, I do completely understand why people are upset about it."
No eruv has ever been erected in the Lubavitch section of Crown Heights before, those with knowledge of the practice said, due to a belief that it violates traditions and religious teachings from the sect's leaders, including the group's influential and revered late leader, Grand Rebbe Menachem Schneerson.
But elsewhere in the city, country and world, eruvs have become "standard" in many Jewish communities, said Naftali Hanau, a trustee at Congregation Kol Israel, the Modern Orthodox synagogue at 603 St. Johns Place near Franklin Avenue that spearheaded the effort to erect the new eruv.
“Modern Orthodox people who are growing up today and now starting families, nearly all of them grew up in communities with eruvs," he said. “They're all over the place. It’s not controversial. Young people are not going to move to a community without one.”
In the absence of an eruv, those observing the Jewish day of rest are forbidden from picking up or moving anything outside of their homes on Saturdays, including strollers — a particular challenge for those with very young children, Hanau said.
“Practically speaking, young mothers are stuck in the home [on the Sabbath] until their children can walk to synagogue,” he said.
To allow their congregants more freedom, the Kol Israel community has pushed to build several eruvs in recent years with little controversy, first surrounding the blocks immediately adjacent to their synagogue, located just west of Franklin Avenue, then expanding to surround nearby Brower Park.
But the synagogue's most recent effort, to build the much larger “Greater Crown Heights” eruv, caused an immediate uproar in the Lubavitch community, headquartered and anchored for decades in the southeast quadrant of Crown Heights now encompassed by the new eruv.
The above map, created by the Congregation Kol Israel, shows where the Greater Crown Heights eruv (in grey), which officially opened on June 17, has been erected. Two smaller eruvs built previously by the synagogue are depicted in blue and purple.
As the eruv was built and went live, anger from the Lubavitch community took many forms.
Prominent rabbis in the community wrote strongly worded letters condemning the enclosure. Flyers went up around the neighborhood forbidding its use. Pamphlets were published with evidence that the Grand Rebbe Schneerson opposed the use of eruvs in Crown Heights.
At the same time, some of those who helped fund and create the eruv — including a handful of Lubavitchers — were harassed by those opposed to it, those familiar with the project said.
“We knew this was going to happen. [But] we didn’t think it was going to get this bad,” said one young Lubavitcher father familiar with the planning of the new eruv who did not want to give his name. “The tone of language and the level of animosity towards it, I didn’t expect.”
The controversy came to a head when, on July 8, the day before the Sabbath, someone cut the new eruv in several locations in the neighborhood, from Pacific Street to Parkside Avenue.
The synagogue paid to have it repaired, Hanau said. But a week later, on Thursday, July 14, the eruv was hit again, torn down in several spots on Ocean Avenue adjacent to Prospect Park, affecting the wires for the long-established Park Slope eruv, as well.
No suspects have yet been identified in the vandalism, police sources said, and the investigation is ongoing.
But people for and against the eruv suspect the culprits are those who feel strongly that it shouldn’t exist in the neighborhood, including one prominent Lubavitch rabbi who said the “residents who were pained by the eruv destroyed it on their own,” adding that he understands “the hearts of these residents,” according to a translation of a letter posted recently on a Hebrew website.
At issue for many Lubavitchers who spoke with DNAinfo New York is a lack of dialogue from those who built the eruv around their community, with no respect for Hasidic traditions.
One Lubavitch rabbi who spoke to DNAinfo on the condition of anonymity described Kol Israel’s insistence on moving forward with the eruv without Lubavitch support as “really nasty,” calling their decision a “knife twist” after all the Hasidic community has done to maintain a Jewish way of life in Crown Heights for decades, particularly through the crime-ridden era of the 1970s and 1980s.
"The way they went about it was, ‘We’re putting it up, screw you,'" he said.
“Hasidic Crown Heights is a very, very active community, a passionate community, over many, many years," said Lightstone, the Lubavitch mother of four. "Talk to us! You just stick it around us? Why?
"Do they think that they’re trying to save me from myself, as a young mother?" she continued. "Do they think I’m sitting crying, trapped in my house on Shabbos and, now, they made me an eruv and I’m a liberated woman? That’s offensive.”
Despite the backlash, there are Hasidim in the neighborhood who support the idea of an eruv. Hasidic news sites in the neighborhood have published letters supporting the eruv project and some have even shared a GoFundMe fundraising campaign created to maintain the enclosure.
Going forward, Hanau of Kol Israel said he hopes those responsible “have the respect to leave it alone,” adding that his “community cannot grow without this amenity.”
