Why do orthodox jews walk in the street

Having an eruv does not mean that a city or neighborhood is enclosed entirely by a wall. In practice, then, the eruv is a symbolic demarcation of the private sphere, one that communities come together to create.

To many people, the eruv sounds like a legal fiction, a way to circumvent the spirit and possibly letter of the law against carrying. To them, the eruv risks making the entire Jewish legal process seem absurd to non-Jews and non-observant Jews. The talmudic Rabbis, however, were concerned with maintaining the integrity of the halakhic Jewish legal system while ensuring that the law is livable.

Though the eruv makes use of a legal technicality, the fact that it is used — rather than allowing people to just carry anything, anywhere — is itself considered a form of respect for and submission to a legal system that is central and indispensable to traditionalist Jewish life.

With an eruv, Shabbat events are available to all families — young and old, mobile and less mobile — and individuals are able to carry house keys, reading glasses, or books outside their homes. The wire above signifies an eruv in Bnei Brak, Israel.

Public domains are defined by Jewish law as non-residential areas, including streets, thoroughfares, plazas open areas , and highways. Private domains are residential areas, and were originally referred to as homes surrounded by a wall, considered closed off from the surrounding public domains. A designated space may be considered a private domain only when several conditions are met: It must cover an area of at least 12 square feet and must be somehow demarcated from its surroundings — either by a wall of some kind or by its actual topography it must be all lower or all higher than its surroundings.

And an eruv cannot encompass two separate public spaces, so for instance, it may not cross over a river that cuts through town. When eruvim the plural of eruv or parts of eruvim are constructed as opposed to using pre-existing structures , they generally consist of a wire surrounding the designated area.

As we pass by a soup kitchen, our guide takes advantage of the opportunity to offer words of praise to Haredi society. No other society in Israel takes care of its own like this one.

Comic book rabbis. On the main commercial drag, we stop at a bookstore — which, like almost all bookstores on this street, sells religious books almost exclusively. Barlev sneaks us to the back where we discover what appears to be a pile of comic books. He proceeds to point out a shelf full of books with colorful jackets, very different from everything else on display. They pretty much all have the same plot: Something bad happens to a family; the members pray to God for help; God answers their prayers, and the crisis is resolved.

One Haredi woman who dared show a little more creativity and have someone die at the end of her book was forced to change the ending under pressure from the community, Barlev tells us. Next stop is a music shop, where we listen to Hasidic songs on the sound system and hear from Barlev about recent offshoots of this genre — like Hasidic rock and reggae — among the special contributions of the former hippies and musicians who have joined the ultra-Orthodox community.

Stands full of framed portraits of elderly rabbis are stationed on the sidewalks outside many of the shops. These portraits are classic wall decorations in ultra-Orthodox homes, Barlev explains. Our guide hesitates. Is it also possible to know what ultra-Orthodox group they belong to by the way they look and dress? He passes around pictures of women with kerchiefs wrapped around their heads, others with women in long-haired wigs, and still others featuring women with hats atop their wigs.

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Devorah Lipner, a year old ultra-Orthodox woman who runs a non-profit organisation in Jerusalem, said she may have to quit her job since she does not expect her husband to stop his Torah studies. The Haredi community and some analysts have urged the government to not enact policies that may ultimately backfire and force women out of the workforce at the expense of men.

Eitan Regev, deputy chief executive of the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, sees poor pay as an obstacle to rapid integration - many ultra-Orthodox men cannot command high salaries as they never studied English, maths and science. State support for the Haredim and exemptions from military service have long been an irritant to many Israelis.