Why the Manhattan Record Matters to Other Large Cities

Manhattan's importance to the modern-city eruv question extends beyond the fact that many leading Rabbonim lived in New York or were asked to rule there. Manhattan had physical features that could strengthen an enclosure: surrounding water, substantial waterfront walls, and bridges and tunnels that passed through defined crossings. Rav Moshe Feinstein and the Rebbe examined those features closely.

The large-city questions remained. How is shishim ribo counted? Does the city as a whole matter, or only one street or crossing? What status do bridges and tunnels have? When are doors required? Can a vast area be treated as enclosed when its boundaries are not readily visible? What happens when enormous numbers of residents, commuters, and visitors move through the city and its surrounding neighborhoods?

The later rabbinic material expressly carried the Manhattan discussion into that wider setting.

The Union's large-city language

A Union of Orthodox Rabbis proclamation from Kislev 5739 begins by recalling the Manhattan prohibition issued on 18 Sivan 5722. After restating that history, it adds a sentence whose wording is broader than Manhattan:

וכמובן שאיסור הנ״ל כולל כל עיר גדולה ואין חילוק בין מאנהעטען לעיר אחרת.

“And of course, the above prohibition includes every large city, and there is no distinction between Manhattan and another city.”

The notice continues with a warning against establishing an eruv in a city contrary to the position of the Rabbonim on the proclamation. Fifteen names are printed beneath it. Rabbi Zalman Shimon Dworkin appears with the identification Av Beis Din Lubavitch, and Rabbi Meir Greenberg is also listed.

The surviving image is a later reproduced copy with highlighting and a watermark, and the names beneath the proclamation are typeset. Rabbi Dworkin's name is therefore present on the proclamation, while this copy does not show his handwritten signature.

The large-city language is not about Manhattan's coastline

The quoted sentence cannot be reduced to an argument about islands. The proclamation refers back to Manhattan and then states a rule concerning a large city. Its language treats the Manhattan prohibition as having application beyond the particular bridges, rivers, and toll barriers that had occupied so much of the earlier technical discussion.

That broader application fits important parts of Rav Moshe's analysis. In Igros Moshe, Orach Chaim I:139, Rav Moshe argues that shishim ribo in a city need not mean six hundred thousand people passing through the same individual street. He considers the city's population and those entering it each day. He also raises a concern about a city attracting visitors from many places, because carrying learned in the enclosed city could be copied in nearby or home communities that lacked the same halachic enclosure.

Those ideas concern the character and use of a major city as a whole, including its public roads and openings.

Physical advantages still have to be evaluated

The large-city proclamation does not make the physical details irrelevant. Rav Moshe's own Manhattan responsum spent many pages on them. The Rebbe's 5714 notes required investigation of the bridges, tunnels, toll barriers, water boundary, and the visibility of the perimeter. A later application to another city therefore cannot be made by ignoring its actual streets and boundaries.

Strong physical features do not end the inquiry in a large modern city. Existing mechitzos must be continuous and valid. Openings must be treated according to their status. The definitions of reshus harabim and shishim ribo have to be applied to the actual pattern of public use. The relevant Rabbonim must know the local facts.

This is also consistent with the Rebbe's correspondence. In 5722, concerning a city eruv, the Rebbe wrote that because many halachos are involved, it should not be undertaken without a Rav specifically expert in them. In the 5724 letter to Rabbi Eliyohu Jung, the Rebbe expressly declined to decide whether Manhattan itself qualified for an eruv and placed that determination with Rabbonim who had thoroughly investigated the pertinent details.

The relevance to Crown Heights

Crown Heights does not depend on Manhattan for its local psak. The Crown Heights Rabbonim ruled directly on carrying in the neighborhood, and those rulings stand on their own authority and local application.

Manhattan supplies a significant earlier chapter in the same large-city halachic world. A city with unusually favorable natural and built boundaries still generated extensive analysis, a refusal by Rav Moshe to permit the proposed eruv, a formal Agudath HaRabbonim prohibition, a later reaffirmation, and eventually an explicit Union statement extending its prohibition to every large city.

For that reason, statements about modern cities cannot safely be reduced to a single traffic counter, a single shoreline, or a general assertion that ordinary urban structures necessarily remove the possibility of a reshus harabim. The Manhattan material shows how many separate halachic and physical questions can remain even where the perimeter begins with unusually strong features.