Berkeley synagogue taps ancient custom to relax rules of Sabbath

ERUV_204_RAD.jpg SHOWN: The Schweig family walks from their home to the synagogue to celebrate the beginning of Sabbath. L to R: Dad (pushing stroller) is Muni Schweig, in stroller: Raanan Schweig (age 2.5), Nava Schweig (age 5), Mom is Tania Schweig holding the hand of oldest son Yonim Schweig (age7). The Schweig family are orthodox Jews, and are very impacted by the symbolic boundary called an eruv. Story is about orthodox Jews in Berkeley created an eruv, which is a symbolic boundary around their community that liberates them from prohibitions against "carrying" on the Sabbath. Strict orthodox Jews are not allowed to carry ANYTHING on the Sabbath--keys, babies, etc.--this impacts particularly women, who do most of the child care. Photo taken on 6/30/06, in San Francisco, CA. (Katy Raddatz/The S.F.Chronicle **Muni Schweig, Tania Schweig, Nava Schweig, Yonim Schweig, Raanan Schweig, Sabbath, eruv Mandatory credit for photographer and the San Francisco Chronicle/ -Mags out less ERUV_204_RAD.jpg SHOWN: The Schweig family walks from their home to the synagogue to celebrate the beginning of Sabbath. L to R: Dad (pushing stroller) is Muni Schweig, in stroller: Raanan Schweig (age 2.5), ... more Photo: Katy Raddatz Photo: Katy Raddatz Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Berkeley synagogue taps ancient custom to relax rules of Sabbath 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

As Rabbi Yair Silverman sees it, the 8-mile ring of BART tracks, towers, poles and power lines that encircles his orthodox synagogue's neighborhood in Berkeley and Albany is a series of "spiritual doorways" leading into a sacred space.

Inside an eruv, as such a ring is called, orthodox prohibitions against carrying things outside the home on the Sabbath -- food, keys, even babies -- are relaxed because the ancient construct extends what's considered the home under Jewish law. The centuries-old Jewish laws about "carrying" disproportionately affect mothers of young children, who cannot attend worship because they cannot even push a stroller on the Sabbath. Some in Silverman's congregation missed Sabbath services and celebrations for years before the eruv was created in September.

"It gives me a lot more freedom," said Barbara Schubert, 37, who stopped going to her neighbor's home six doors away for Sabbath, or Shabbat, dinner after her daughter was born two years ago. "You're able to connect more with the community on Shabbat."

Eruvs exist around the globe, from Los Angeles to London to Tel Aviv. But there never has been one in Northern California -- a symptom, orthodox Jews lament, of the relative secularism of the region's Jews.

Plans for an eruv in Palo Alto were blocked in 2000, in part by Jews who saw it as a blurring of church-and-state boundaries. They urged the City Council to prohibit the attachment of string to municipal telephone poles, which the Palo Alto congregation wanted for their eruv boundary.

The eruv does not change the orthodox ban on working on the Sabbath, which includes driving, cooking and using any machines -- including computers, phones, Blackberries and televisions.

"Orthodox Jews choose to live the way they do," said Marty Klein, 56, a Palo Alto resident who describes himself as "very active" in the Jewish community and in Keddem Congregation, a synagogue that promotes adaptation of Judaic traditions.

"Asking the political community to bend its rules in order to accommodate their choice of religious observance is inappropriate," said Klein, who fought the Palo Alto eruv. "The fact that it would be more convenient for their observance, or anyone's observance, doesn't make it right."

The Berkeley eruv requires no government accommodation. But it has also resurrected age-old questions about assimilation. "Why don't you encircle Berkeley with barbed wire and call it a ghetto?" a San Francisco resident wrote to the J., a regional Jewish newspaper, after it wrote about the Berkeley eruv.

Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, dean of the Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy in San Francisco, the only orthodox high school in the region, wonders why other Jews are threatened by the orthodox expression of faith. The cost of blending in, he says, is too high.

"The Bay Area has always been a very secular, anti-religious area," said Lipner, who tried to create an eruv in San Francisco's Sunset District in the early 1980s. He failed, he said, because there was not enough support from the congregation. "It's a tremendous struggle to develop Jewish institutions here," Lipner said. "The Jewish establishment is against it. They don't want tradition. San Francisco is known to be a bastion of intermarriage and assimilation. Anti-orthodoxy. That's what you have."

He said young orthodox couples left the Sunset because the eruv never came together.

More metaphorical than literal, eruvs are provocative because they're so effective in changing behavior and shaping identity, said Deena Aranoff, a professor of medieval Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

"It really blurs the line between symbolic and real action," she said. "It can spark so many deep reactions.

"There are people who don't want the Jewish community to have even a symbolic boundary between itself and other people," she said. "And yet for other people, it changes the Sabbath experience. It has so many reactions, even if it's thin as a string -- or not even that."

Eruvs have their roots in Jewish laws that are at least 1,500 years old.

"One is to carry no burden outside of one's (home) on the Sabbath day," said Silverman, the Berkeley rabbi, paraphrasing a verse Christians can find in Jeremiah 17:22.

The Talmud, a collection of Jewish oral laws and customs, describes rules for creating an eruv, which extends the boundaries of "home." To avoid controversy, Silverman and his congregants chose to use pre-existing structures instead of erecting new poles and string or fishing line.

Many members of Congregation Beth Israel already lived within walking distance of the synagogue because driving is banned on the Sabbath, a day of rest from sunset Friday to an hour after sunset Saturday. So the eruv captured "a significant majority" of the synagogue's 200 member households.

It creates a communal space, Silverman said, rejecting criticism of that space as exclusive.

"Anyone who wants to join into it is all sharing in this common space," he said, noting that an Alameda County Board of Supervisors resolution affirms it.

Members of the congregation volunteer to inspect the lines on foot and by bicycle every Friday morning and send an e-mail to adherents indicating whether the eruv is up or down. This requirement is more relevant in eruvs where string is used, where a downed line means the observant can't "carry" on the Sabbath.

Because the Berkeley eruv relies on structures such as power lines, believers are comforted in the knowledge that agencies such as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. would try to quickly restore a downed line.

Almost immediately after the eruv was delineated by congregants and approved by an East Coast eruv consultant, the number of women and children attending Sabbath services rose dramatically.

Without the eruv, they spent the day at home with family, friends and a lot of food. With the eruv, spontaneous potlucks are possible. Kids can play basketball in a nearby park.

An already close community has gotten closer. Sharing much of their lives, from worship to meals and child care, and following similar schedules, orthodox Jews have created in Berkeley today a community that resembles the mythological America of the 1950s by following rules set in the Middle East centuries ago.

The congregation's members say that fellowship is greatly strengthened by the eruv. They say Judaic laws are important to follow, even when benefits aren't clear.

Tania Schweig, 34, who has three children, hadn't been able to attend synagogue for six years before the eruv. She made Sabbath an event inside her home, inviting others to join her family. But she forgot the rhythms and phrasings of prayers and felt disconnected from the faith she'd first embraced on a two-year stay in Israel in the 1990s.

"I can't say there weren't moments of feeling angry or resentful," Schweig said one recent Friday afternoon amid a whirl of cooking, cleaning and other Sabbath preparations. "I can't pick and choose. Instead of being an imposition, the rules create a holy space that's invisible but it exists in time."

Schweig recalled taking the moment when her daughter, Nava, 5, picked flowers on the Sabbath to teach her about not "carrying" anything on the day.

"If you're not guarding that practice, you don't have Shabbat anymore," said Schweig. "If you don't look out, you don't have a special place in time anymore. All of those restrictions are like a building: They are walls that contain that holiness.

"There's no feeling I can compare to the moment when it all stops," she said. "When I light the candles, there's a moment of complete transformation."

What is an eruv?

The Torah requires that Jews not carry anything in public on the Sabbath in tribute to God. This created such hardship that the court of King Solomon created a symbolic domain where some carrying is allowed.

The eruv

The eruv in Berkeley and Albany uses existing physical features to delineate a spiritual territory for their community. But its unusual shape owes to different factors:

1 To avoid underground power lines near schools.

2 Extended to include several members of Congregation Beth Israel.

3 To follow above-ground BART tracks