Eruv Enmity - Take II

This article, about the efforts on the part of a Hamptons Orthodox community to build an eruv, is outrageous. It has a lot in common with a similarly offensive story I posted about some time ago that shows a proposal for an eruv eliciting wild overreaction and disinformation regarding its impacts and properties. Some choice bits from a story about this year's version of the eruv battle - over a proposal to install one in Westhampton Beach:

The negative e-mails started soon after word spread that the Hampton Synagogue was asking the tony Village of Westhampton Beach for a proclamation permitting it to erect an eruv, or symbolic boundary, around the synagogue.

It would, one e-mail said, “allow the Jewish people to pass through people’s property on their way to temple. ... It is the beginning of a ‘push’ by the rabbi to create another Tenafly or Lawrence [both have large concentrations of Orthodox Jews]. Shopkeepers have already been asked rather strongly to please close their stores on Saturday.”

Another claimed that the “natural outcome of a designated area would alter the real estate complexion and property values within the area. ... What is to stop the Orthodox from demanding that Christians, within the eruv, not put up say Christmas ornamentation on their properties within the eruv?”

There were also those who insisted that “people would not be able to drive cars in the eruv ... and that [Jews] don’t like to walk on sidewalks within the eruv because of the cracks in the sidewalk,” said Clint Greenbaum, a member of the synagogue’s eruv committee.

"Allow Jewish people to pass through people's property on their way to temple"? Stopping Christians from putting up Christmas ornamentation on their properties within the boundaries of the eruv? Where do people come up with these unfounded fears? And of course, no article about the encroachment of the Orthodox into a community would be complete without vague, unproven allegations of "Shopkeepers have already been asked rather strongly to please close their stores on Saturday" (previous versions of this canard here). While an eruv doesn't have any of the magical properties its opponents seem to ascribe to it, it does seem to have an almost magical ability to make reasonable people lose their rationality completely.

Oh, and who can ignore this particular tidbit, a fun little dig at our own South Shore community of Lawrence by a member of the Westhampton Beach eruv committee:

Joel Cohen, a member of the synagogue’s eruv committee, said he agrees that withdrawing the request was a prudent step.

“When a segment of a greater community feels threatened by an ethnic or racial group, the best way to gain acceptance is to explain it so there is no fear,” he said. “Shoving it down one’s throat leads to enmity. ... There is no intention by the rabbi to create a shtetl or another Lawrence.”

Sweet.