The History of Eruvin and Carrying in Crown Heights

For decades before 2016, the Chabad community in Crown Heights lived without an accepted neighborhood eruv. The practical result was a settled communal practice: on Shabbos, the community did not rely on a neighborhood eruv to carry in the streets or to push strollers from one private domain to another through the street. The same no-carrying practice applied on Yom Kippur.

That established practice did not begin with the controversy of 2016. Long before a new eruv route was publicized, the position appears in the earlier rabbinic record and, with unusual clarity, in practical instructions issued by the Crown Heights Beis Din itself in 2015. What changed in 2016 was the physical situation. An eruv was constructed and publicized by people outside the local Chabad Beis Din framework. The local Rabbonim responded that its construction did not change the psak or the practice of Crown Heights.

The years that followed brought new arguments, new boundary arrangements, and renewed publicity. The Beis Din addressed the subject again in 2021, 2023, and 2025. Through 2026, the central historical fact has remained the same: an eruv has been built and promoted in and around Crown Heights, while the Crown Heights Beis Din has continued to rule that it is not accepted as an eruv permitting Anash to carry in the neighborhood streets.

The earlier Crown Heights practice

The earlier history is clearest from the tenure of Rabbi Zalman Shimon Dworkin, the longtime mara d'asra of Crown Heights. In Kislev 5739, late 1978, a public warning was issued under the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada against establishing eruvin in New York and Brooklyn. The surviving reproduction has printed rabbinic names rather than visible autograph signatures, and Rabbi Dworkin's name appears among them.

More important for the specifically Crown Heights history is how the local Rabbonim later described that earlier ruling. In Sivan 5776, after the new Crown Heights eruv had been publicized, Rabbi Avrohom Osdoba and Rabbi Shlomo Yehuda Halevi Segal referred expressly to a clear Kislev 5739 psak of Rabbi Dworkin, together with the other American and Canadian poskim led by Rav Moshe Feinstein, as the earlier ruling governing the community. Their 2016 notice therefore did not present the prohibition as a new response created for that year's dispute. It identified the ruling of an earlier Crown Heights mara d'asra as its precedent.

There had also been earlier discussion of whether an eruv should be made in Crown Heights. In a recorded conversation in 2023, Rabbi Mendy Chitrik recalled a story he had heard directly from his grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Aizik, known as R. Hirshel Chitrik. His grandfather wanted an eruv so that his wife, who had young children, could go to shul on Shabbos. Rabbi Chitrik recalled his grandfather saying that when he raised the idea with the Rebbe, the Rebbe did not agree to a public Crown Heights eruv and spoke instead of an eruv that would remain hidden. According to the account, that did not meet the practical purpose for which his grandfather wanted the eruv, and he did not build it.

Rabbi Chitrik also recalled a later conversation with his grandmother, after his grandfather had passed away, in which she independently remembered the Rebbe's answer as a reason the neighborhood eruv had not been made. This account is valuable because it preserves a family memory from a proposed Crown Heights eruv well before 2016. It is still a later recollection, not a transcript of the original yechidus, and the recording does not establish a firm date for the original discussion.

During the years of Rabbi Yehuda Kalman Marlow as mara d'asra, Crown Heights continued without an accepted neighborhood eruv. Later Beis Din rulings describe the local position as a continuous one. No separate eruv ruling in Rabbi Marlow's own words is necessary to state that historical continuity, and no particular halachic argument should be attributed to him on the strength of later recollection alone.

The 2015 guides: before the new eruv was publicized

One of the simplest pieces of evidence for the established practice comes from an ordinary source rather than a polemical one. In Tishrei 5776, September 2015, the Crown Heights Beis Din published its regular halachic guides for the month. At the end of both the first and second Hebrew installments, it included practical instructions for the many guests visiting Crown Heights.

The fourth instruction said plainly:

כאן בשכונה אין עירוב, ואסור לטלטל בשבת וביו״כ.

Here in the neighborhood there is no eruv, and carrying is forbidden on Shabbos and Yom Kippur.

The guide then separately noted the rules of carrying on Yom Tov. The importance of the passage is chronological. It was published months before the 2016 Crown Heights eruv became a public issue. It was not written as an answer to that construction project. It shows the practical direction already being given by the Beis Din to residents and guests: Crown Heights had no eruv to rely upon for carrying on Shabbos or Yom Kippur.

2016: a physical eruv is erected

The history changed in early 2016 when an eruv began to appear on the ground. On March 29, a contemporary Crown Heights report described a newly erected route covering a large section of northern Crown Heights, from roughly Atlantic Avenue to Sterling Place and from Albany Avenue to Nostrand Avenue. It was then being called the Brower Park Eruv and connected on its western side to an existing eruv farther west. At that stage, the publication said it had not identified the people responsible for the new route or a rabbinic authority certifying it.

The local Rabbonim soon issued their own responses. On 2 Iyar 5776, Rabbis Aharon Yaakov Schwei and Yosef Yeshaya Braun signed a notice stressing that an eruv affecting a community had to be decided by the local Rabbonim who knew its physical and halachic conditions. Their practical conclusion was unambiguous: carrying in the streets of the neighborhood on Shabbos remained forbidden, and the claimed eruv was to be treated as nonexistent.

Rabbi Avrohom Osdoba's first public intervention, dated 4 Iyar, addressed a narrower point. He wrote that construction of an eruv required a highly qualified Rav experienced in eruvin and the endorsement of the mara d'asra. He also stated that no community Rav or person holding an official communal position had approached him about the project. That first letter should be read according to what it actually said. It set requirements of expertise and local rabbinic approval; it did not itself contain the fuller prohibition that Rabbi Osdoba issued several days later.

On 8 Iyar, Rabbi Osdoba published a clarification. He wrote that he had received a detailed letter from Rabbi Yehuda Leib Groner, who related the Rebbe's position concerning an eruv in Crown Heights. Rabbi Osdoba stated that he had never contemplated agreeing to the proposed neighborhood eruv and ruled that no one should assist or support its construction. The Rebbe wording in this letter comes through Rabbi Groner's recollection to Rabbi Osdoba, rather than from a recovered Crown Heights-specific written response of the Rebbe himself.

The Greater Crown Heights Eruv

By June, a broader route was publicly announced. Congregation Kol Israel in Prospect Heights said that it had completed what it called the Greater Crown Heights Eruv, connected with the network of eruvin serving Brownstone Brooklyn. Contemporary reports described a route extending through a large portion of Crown Heights, with Pacific Street toward the north, Clarkson Avenue toward the south, and sections reaching east toward Buffalo Avenue, Rockaway Parkway, Rutland Road, and Utica Avenue.

The people responsible for that eruv also made an important communal distinction. Rabbi Elkanah Schwartz of Kol Israel said that it had been created for people who were not part of the Chabad community. Naftali Hanau, speaking for the project, similarly said it was intended for their shul and its families. Their stated purposes included enabling families with young children to go out together and helping people who needed to carry on Shabbos. Those needs were real parts of the history. They did not, however, produce an agreement with the Crown Heights Beis Din over whether this route could be relied upon by the Chabad community.

The local response continued through Sivan. Rabbi Osdoba and Rabbi Shlomo Segal issued a signed notice addressed to Crown Heights residents and guests. Its accompanying free translation begins:

In this community there is no kosher eruv. It is therefore forbidden for anyone to carry outdoors, both on Shabbos and Yom Kippur as the Torah instructs.

The same notice cited Rabbi Dworkin's Kislev 5739 ruling as the earlier local precedent. Rabbis Schwei and Braun then issued further letters on 20 and 23 Sivan concerning the authority of the local Rabbonim and the role of outside rabbinic opinions. The detailed halachic question of jurisdiction belongs in its own treatment; historically, these letters show that the dispute over the newly built route did not cause the Beis Din to recognize it.

The practical instruction carried into the next Tishrei. The Beis Din's Tishrei 5777 guides again told visitors that there was no eruv in the neighborhood and that carrying was forbidden on Shabbos and Yom Kippur. By then, a physical route had already been erected and widely publicized. The continued wording therefore had a different historical significance from the identical instruction of 2015. In 2015 it described the existing practice before the construction dispute. In 2016 it reaffirmed that practice after the new eruv was already present.

2021: the Beis Din states the continuity explicitly

The question returned publicly in 2021 amid a broader discussion about city eruvin. On Erev Sukkos 5782, Rabbis Avrohom Osdoba and Yosef Yeshaya Braun issued another signed Crown Heights Beis Din letter. This time they addressed the historical continuity directly.

They wrote that the position of the local Rabbonim and members of the Beis Din had already been publicized, naming the current Rabbonim, the late Rabbi Schwei, and, before them, Rabbi Dworkin. They described that position as one of "absolute rejection." They again emphasized that the Rabbonim who know the actual conditions of a place are the ones who must decide its eruv questions, and they concluded that carrying in the Crown Heights streets remained absolutely forbidden and that the claimed eruv was treated as nonexistent.

The 2021 statement is signed by Rabbis Osdoba and Braun and describes the Beis Din's continuous position across the succession of local Rabbonim. The earlier Rabbonim are named in the body as part of the position inherited by the serving Beis Din; they are not signers of the 2021 page.

2023: the exterior-wall argument

The physical and halachic arguments did not remain the same as those of 2016. In later years, attention increasingly turned to existing walls and other substantial boundaries around a wider area. If enough of a perimeter consists of valid halachic walls, the argument can become very different from one based mainly upon ordinary tzuras hapesach. This is the background of the later claim that the enclosure was omed merube, with the standing walls greater than the open portions.

On 20 Teves 5783, in January 2023, Rabbis Osdoba and Braun issued another signed letter. It expressly referred to publicity about supposed walls outside the neighborhood that were being presented as a reason the earlier conclusion should change. The Beis Din answered that these claims did not alter its ruling. It again stated that carrying in the streets was forbidden and the claimed eruv was to be treated as nonexistent.

That letter is historically significant because it shows that the Beis Din was no longer responding only to the physical arrangement first publicized in 2016. The argument had developed. The Beis Din knew that walls were now being advanced as a new basis and addressed that point directly. Whether particular walls, fences, structures, openings, and measurements satisfy the detailed halachos of omed merube is a separate technical subject.

2025: a broader eruv is promoted again

By 2025, the eruv being promoted publicly was described as covering Crown Heights together with Brownsville and East Flatbush. Its promoters presented it as a carefully maintained enclosure, checked weekly, and asserted that most of its perimeter was made up of walls. Public advertisements described the eruv as kosher and even mehudar.

On 4 Tishrei 5786, September 26, 2025, the Crown Heights Beis Din again issued a signed public ruling, this time in response to advertisements that could lead residents and the many Tishrei guests to believe that the practical ruling had changed. Rabbis Osdoba and Braun wrote, in the publisher's free translation:

On Shabbos Kodesh and Yom Kippur, it is absolutely and categorically forbidden to carry in the streets of Crown Heights and its vicinity.

The Hebrew original carries their visible signatures. The postscript again places the ruling within the earlier history, referring to the Rebbe's position and to the earlier psak concerning New York and Brooklyn. For the practical history of Crown Heights, the central point is simpler: nine years after the first 2016 construction was publicized, the local Beis Din was still telling residents and visitors that the existence of an advertised eruv did not permit carrying in the neighborhood streets.

The position through 2026

The eruv did not disappear after the 2025 ruling. During 2026 it continued to be actively promoted, with a public route map, construction material, weekly status notices, and claims that the enclosure relied heavily on walls and was maintained under expert guidance. A 2026 publicity release also described a rabbi touring the route and speaking positively about its construction and upkeep. Those developments are part of the history because they show that the eruv is a functioning project with people who rely upon and support it, rather than a proposal that ended in 2016.

They also do not amount to a reversal by the Crown Heights Beis Din. As of August 2026, the most recent public Crown Heights Beis Din eruv ruling in this chronology is the signed ruling of 4 Tishrei 5786. Its practical instruction remains that carrying in the streets of Crown Heights and its vicinity is forbidden on Shabbos and Yom Kippur.

The history therefore has two developments running alongside one another. Since 2016, physical eruv arrangements in and around Crown Heights have been constructed, maintained, altered, expanded, and defended on increasingly detailed halachic grounds. Throughout those same years, the Crown Heights Beis Din has repeatedly stated that those arrangements do not change the psak for the Chabad community. The established Crown Heights practice of not carrying in the neighborhood streets has continued under that ruling through 2026.