Manhattan and the Modern City Eruv Question

Manhattan occupies an important place in the halachic discussion of large-city eruvin because it presented an unusually strong case for relying on existing physical boundaries. It is surrounded by water. Much of its shoreline was bordered by substantial retaining walls. Its bridges and tunnels passed through defined openings, and in the period when the question was being debated some crossings also had toll barriers and other structures that could potentially matter in hilchos eruvin.

These features were taken seriously. Rav Moshe Feinstein devoted a long responsum to Manhattan in Igros Moshe, Orach Chaim I:139, after discussing Brooklyn in the preceding siman. The Rebbe, in detailed notes written in 5714 to Rabbi Hertze Eisenstadt, likewise addressed the water boundary, bridges, tunnels, toll barriers, shishim ribo, and even the question of whether a perimeter must be visible from within the enclosed area.

The importance of Manhattan is therefore quite specific. This was not a case in which the physical enclosure was dismissed without analysis. The very features that could make an island easier to enclose were examined in detail, and serious questions remained about whether the resulting arrangement could permit carrying in a city of this size and use.

An island can have strong boundaries and difficult openings

Rav Moshe began his Manhattan discussion with a significant point. He regarded the retaining structure rising from the water around the city as a genuine halachic wall. He wrote that the wall rising from the water to the higher ground, more than ten tefachim, which surrounded the city, was certainly a complete mechitza. He also discussed why much of it could be regarded as having been made for residential use.

That did not end the question. A surrounding wall has to be considered together with every place where public traffic passes through it. Manhattan was connected to Brooklyn, New Jersey, and elsewhere through bridges and tunnels. Rav Moshe therefore spent much of the responsum analyzing the status of those crossings and what form of closure would be required at them.

The number of people using the crossings led directly into the question of shishim ribo. At one stage Rav Moshe notes that if the traffic is divided among Manhattan's thirteen bridges and additional tunnels, six hundred thousand people would not pass over each individual bridge every day. He then develops a broader approach to the number itself. In a city, he writes, the relevant six hundred thousand need not all pass through one particular street. A city containing that number, including people entering it each day, can satisfy the condition according to the view that requires shishim ribo.

That distinction changed the bridge question. If a bridge was treated as part of the city, the city's population and use could affect its status. If it was treated as an external road, its own traffic could become the relevant calculation. Rav Moshe considered both possibilities rather than treating a raw traffic count at one crossing as the entire issue.

Read more about Manhattan's water boundaries, bridges, and tunnels.

Walls and toll barriers were part of the halachic discussion

The Rebbe's letter of 15 Iyar 5714 is especially instructive because it shows how the physical facts were being examined. Responding to a proposed Manhattan eruv, the Rebbe wrote that the assertion that the streets were unquestionably a Torah-level reshus harabim required further investigation. He observed that Manhattan's streets eventually reach bridges and tunnels which, as he understood the situation, were closed by a tzuras hapesach, a partition, or barriers used for collecting tolls. He marked the point explicitly as requiring clarification.

The Rebbe also required investigation of the water boundary itself. A sea or river does not become a usable halachic boundary merely because a map shows water around the city. The physical form of the bank, changes in the shoreline, the possibility of exposed ground, and the continuity of the perimeter all matter. He therefore wrote concerning the water discussion that the various parts of Manhattan's perimeter described in the proposal had to be examined.

The same letter rejects an easy solution to another enclosure problem. The proposal apparently argued that Manhattan's boundary could be seen from the tops of high buildings. The Rebbe wrote that he could not accept the idea that constructing a very tall building in the middle of an enormous area could thereby transform the entire area from a Torah-level public domain into a private domain. If visibility of the enclosing walls was required, he reasoned, the relevant visibility would have to be from the ground.

The physical advantages of Manhattan were thus substantial, but each one generated its own halachic questions.

Continue with the discussion of walls, gates, and former toll barriers.

Rav Moshe's conclusion

Igros Moshe Orach Chaim I:139 is not a short prohibition followed by reasons. Rav Moshe sets out grounds that could support leniency, competing views that required stringency, the status of the bridges, the meaning of shishim ribo, the size of an enclosed city, and the example of Yerushalayim.

His later responsum to Rabbi Eliyohu Jung, Orach Chaim IV:89, makes his practical conclusion unmistakable while preserving an important distinction. Rav Moshe wrote that Manhattan was unlike the ordinary places where eruvin had traditionally been permitted and that, in his judgment, there was no basis to permit it against the views that prohibited. He also repeated that he did not claim authority to stop qualified Rabbonim who reached a different halachic conclusion. They were entitled to act according to their own ruling. Rav Moshe himself wrote that he could not assist them.

That distinction between declining to protest another qualified posek and personally permitting the eruv became important in the subsequent Manhattan discussions. On 18 Sivan 5722, Rav Moshe joined four other leading Rabbonim in the Agudath HaRabbonim ruling that carrying in Manhattan remained prohibited. In March 1964, after further meetings over the proposed eruv, he sent Rabbi Norman Lamm a telegram stating that in his own opinion the Manhattan eruv was osur and instructing him: “Do not cite my name as one upon whom you rely.”

Two years later, a Union of Orthodox Rabbis notice printed in HaPardes reported on an emergency meeting during Chol Hamoed Pesach 5726, with Rav Moshe participating as a member of its presidium, and reaffirmed the Union's position concerning the Manhattan eruv.

Read Rav Moshe's Manhattan responsa in context.

The Rebbe's correspondence

The Rebbe's Manhattan correspondence addresses a different layer of the question. His 5714 notes deal closely with the physical and halachic assumptions of the proposed Manhattan eruv. In 5722, writing to Rabbi Pinchas Weberman about a city eruv, the Rebbe stated that because many halachos are involved, it should not be undertaken without the participation of a Rav specifically expert in those halachos.

The letter to Rabbi Jung during Chol Hamoed Pesach 5724 states the Rebbe's general principle that where an eruv can be instituted according to halacha, it should be. The same letter adds two decisive qualifications. The Rebbe warned of the practical danger that an eruv could become invalid while many people continued carrying, and wrote that if such an eruv were halachically feasible it should be kept from public attention. He then said expressly that his general statement offered no ruling on whether Manhattan itself qualified for an eruv. That determination belonged to Rabbonim who had thoroughly investigated the actual details in accordance with hilchos eruvin.

The full letters and their individual contexts belong in the Rebbe's Manhattan correspondence section. For the Manhattan question here, their significance is straightforward. Physical details had to be checked, the halachic classification of the city could not be assumed, and a general statement about the value of an eruv did not decide whether Manhattan could have one.

Why Manhattan matters beyond Manhattan

The later communal material made the large-city application explicit. A Union of Orthodox Rabbis proclamation from Kislev 5739 restated the 5722 Manhattan prohibition and said expressly that its prohibition included every large city, with no distinction between Manhattan and another city.

Among the fifteen names printed beneath that proclamation is Rabbi Zalman Shimon Dworkin, identified there as Av Beis Din Lubavitch, as well as Rabbi Meir Greenberg. The surviving copy is a later reproduction, and the names beneath it are printed rather than autograph signatures.

The sentence is broader than Manhattan's particular shoreline. It places the earlier Manhattan dispute inside a question about large cities generally. The detailed halachic reasons still have to be applied to the actual city under discussion, and Crown Heights has its own local psak from its Rabbonim. Manhattan remains important because the great urban questions were already being confronted there: whether a city can be treated as enclosed, what happens at major traffic openings, how shishim ribo is counted, and whether the physical advantages of an existing perimeter are sufficient in a major modern city.

Continue with why the Manhattan material was applied to other large cities.