Deal gives synagogue privileges for $1 a year
Boulder soon will feature an eruv, a thin filament strung on utility poles, to accommodate Orthodox Jews
BOULDER, Colo. – The city of Boulder has given permission for a string to be connected to utility poles so members of an Orthodox Jewish congregation to carry on their lives while following the multitude of Sabbath laws they believe come from God.
The city has approved a plan that will encompass an area of about one square mile, between Canyon Boulevard and Iris Avenue, and between 9th and 29th streets, according to a report in the Denver Post. It will allow Jews to treat the entire area as their "home."
Rachel Sacks told the newspaper the 5-2 city council approval of the plan means she will be able to tend her children better, and her family will be able to attend the synagogue on "a day of rest instead of a day of extreme stresses."
"The most wonderful thing in the world would be for my family to take walks with the children in the stroller on the Sabbath," she told the council.
The feature is called an eruv and it is a symbolic fence that has been used by other Jewish congregations in Colorado. Denver has several such locations, and Greenwood Village and Glendale also have allowed the boundaries.
The "fence" specifically benefits the 65 members of the Aish Kodesh synagogue, where Rabbi Gayriel Goldfeder said it is essential to helping the small congregation survive.
Orthodox Jews who follow the laws of the Sabbath are not allowed to carry anything – including their children or their wallet – outside their homes on the Sabbath.
By creating the special fencing, in this case a couple of miles of thin, nearly invisible Kevlar line which will be strung from 20 to 40 feet high on utility poles, the area encompassed is considered the "home" under such law, supporters said.
The city lease for the project is a token of a dollar a year for a decade, officials said.
Council members Macon Cowles and Lisa Morzel opposed the plan, the newspaper said, with Cowles questioning whether the project would raise First Amendment issues.
But Yaakov Watkins, a Jewish faith consultant in Denver who has worked on other eruvs in Colorado, said no such arguments ever had successfully defeated an eruv project in the United States.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs confirms there are about 80,000 Jews in Colorado, and Orthodox Jews make up about 10 percent of that.
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