This shiur was inspired by Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin's [_Make America an ‘Eruv’ Again_](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/make-america-an-eruv-again). The parsha introduces the idea of מלאכת שבת as defined by the tasks that were needed to make the משכן: {:he} ><b>א</b> ויקהל משה את כל עדת בני ישראל ויאמר אלהם; אלה הדברים אשר צוה ה׳ לעשת אתם׃ <b>ב</b> ששת ימים תעשה מלאכה וביום השביעי יהיה לכם קדש שבת שבתון לה׳; כל העשה בו מלאכה יומת׃...<b>י</b> וכל חכם לב בכם יבאו ויעשו את כל אשר צוה ה׳׃ <b>יא</b> את המשכן את אהלו ואת מכסהו; את קרסיו ואת קרשיו את בריחו את עמדיו ואת אדניו׃ --שמות פרק לה But there is one מלאכה that doesn't seem to fit: הוצאה, carrying. It's the one that starts the mishna's discussion of the מלאכות, and tosfot says that is because it is so exceptional: {:he} >יציאות השבת, שתים שהן ארבע בפנים, ושתים שהן ארבע בחוץ. --משנה שבת א:א {:he} >מפרש ר"ת...הוצאה הוצרך לשנות טפי משום דמלאכה גרועה היא. --תוספות, שבת ב,א, ד״ה יציאות השבת שתים שהן ארבע The fact that carrying, הוצאה, is a kind of מלאכה comes from later in the parsha. Moshe tells them to stop doing מלאכה, and they stop bringing stuff: {:he} ><b>ד</b> ויבאו כל החכמים העשים את כל מלאכת הקדש איש איש ממלאכתו אשר המה עשים׃ <b>ה</b> ויאמרו אל משה לאמר מרבים העם להביא מדי העבדה למלאכה אשר צוה ה׳ לעשת אתה׃ <b>ו</b> ויצו משה ויעבירו קול במחנה לאמר איש ואשה *אל יעשו עוד מלאכה* לתרומת הקדש; *ויכלא העם מהביא*׃ --שמות פרק לו <blockquote lang=he><p>הוצאה גופה היכא כתיבא? א״ר יוחנן דאמר קרא (שמות לו) ”ויצו משה ויעבירו קול במחנה“. משה היכן הוה יתיב? במחנה לויה; ומחנה לויה רה״ר. הואי וקאמר להו לישראל: לא תפיקו ותיתו מרה״י דידכו לרה״ר...אשכחן הוצאה; הכנסה מנלן? סברא היא: מכדי מרשות לרשות הוא, מה לי אפוקי ומה לי עיולי. מיהו, הוצאה אב הכנסה תולדה...ותו מעביר ד׳ אמות ברה״ר מנלן דמחייב? אלא כל ארבע אמות ברה״ר גמרא גמירי לה.</p> <footer class=source> שבת צו,ב</footer></blockquote> We understand the מלאכות שבת as representing our "job" as creators in the world; we do the work for 6 days and then "rest", just as ה׳ "rested" on שבת from His creation. But what sort of creation is carrying? It evidently is important enough that ירמיהו considers it the exemplar of חילול שבת: {:he} ><b>יט</b> כֹּה אָמַר ה׳ אֵלַי הָלֹךְ וְעָמַדְתָּ בְּשַׁעַר בְּנֵי הָעָם אֲשֶׁר יָבֹאוּ בוֹ מַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה וַאֲשֶׁר יֵצְאוּ בוֹ; וּבְכֹל שַׁעֲרֵי יְרוּשָׁלִָם׃ <b>כ</b> וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵיהֶם שִׁמְעוּ דְבַר ה׳ מַלְכֵי יְהוּדָה וְכָל יְהוּדָה וְכֹל יֹשְׁבֵי יְרוּשָׁלִָם הַבָּאִים בַּשְּׁעָרִים הָאֵלֶּה׃ <b>כא</b> כֹּה אָמַר ה׳ הִשָּׁמְרוּ בְּנַפְשׁוֹתֵיכֶם; וְאַל תִּשְׂאוּ מַשָּׂא בְּיוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת וַהֲבֵאתֶם בְּשַׁעֲרֵי יְרוּשָׁלִָם׃ <b>כב</b> וְלֹא תוֹצִיאוּ מַשָּׂא מִבָּתֵּיכֶם בְּיוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת וְכָל מְלָאכָה לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ; וְקִדַּשְׁתֶּם אֶת יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִי אֶת אֲבוֹתֵיכֶם׃ --ירמיהו פרק יז Hirsch explains: >...הוצאה is an affair purely of the social world. The whole idea of social life, of living not isolated, but in a community, in a state, can not be represented more fully than by the relation of the individual to the community...If accordingly, the איסור of the other מלאכות expresses the idea that Man subordinates the use of his powers over matter to the will of G-d, the איסור of הוצאה, may well express the idea of Man's placing his social life too, under the dictates of the Law of G-d. --Hirsch Pentateuch, Exodus XXXV:1 So what we are resting from on שבת is the creation of private spaces. ששת ימים תעשה מלאכה means that we *should* define רשות היחיד and רשות הרבים, then recognize those limits on שבת. Now, the Torah only prohibits carrying within a רשות הרבים, a completely public area, or from a רשות היחיד, a private space, into a רשות הרבים.‎ חז״ל extended that in two ways: they consider *any* area that is not a רשות היחיד as public, even if not a רשות הרבים (this intermediate area is called a כרמלית), and forbade carrying in it; and they forbade carrying even in a רשות היחיד unless it is surrounded by a halachic wall, מחיצות. They also created a תקנה, a positive injunction, that made carrying on שבת easier: if all the inhabitants of an area that includes multiple רשיות היחיד and כרמלית join together (by having a common food source), the whole area is now considered a single רשות היחיד. This "mixing together" is called an ערוב. Note that the רשות היחיד still requires מחיצות, and in common parlance the "eruv" refers only to those walls. Dovid Bashevkin writes a column for Tablet magazine about the Daf Yomi, and he wrote the following after completing מסכת ערובין: >Tractate Eruvin, the portion of the Talmud we completed reading this week and which deals with setting up a clearly defined boundary for the purpose of carrying objects on Shabbat...is, to the untrained eye, as thrilling as a tax return and as comprehensible as the list of ingredients on your favorite highly processed junk food. Notorious for its difficulty—if yeshiva boys were into wearing T-shirts instead of white button-downs, they’d print ones that say stuff like “I Survived Eruvin”—the tractate is chock-full of geometric calculations so complex they’re often delivered with detailed illustrations that look more like an architectural blueprint than a religious text. --Dovid Bashevkin, [_Make America an ‘Eruv’ Again_](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/make-america-an-eruv-again) But the eruv is much more than a list of minutiae about strings and poles. It was an ancient תקנה, from the time of Shlomo: {:he} >אמר רב יהודה אמר שמואל: בשעה שתיקן שלמה עירובין ונטילת ידים, יצתה בת קול ואמרה (משלי כג:טו): בְּנִי אִם חָכַם לִבֶּךָ יִשְׂמַח לִבִּי גַם אָנִי. ואומר (משלי כז:יא): חֲכַם בְּנִי וְשַׂמַּח לִבִּי וְאָשִׁיבָה חֹרְפִי דָבָר. --ערובין כא,ב {:he} >מפני מה תיקן שלמה דבר זה: כדי שלא יטעו ויאמרו, כשם שמותר להוציא מן החצרות לרחובות המדינה ושווקיה, ולהכניס מהם לחצרות--כך מותר להוציא מן המדינה לשדה, ולהכניס מן השדה למדינה; ויחשבו שהשווקים והרחובות, הואיל והן רשות לכול, הרי הן כשדות וכמדברות, ויאמרו שהחצרות בלבד, הן רשות היחיד; וידמו שאין ההוצאה מלאכה, ושמותר להוציא ולהכניס מרשות היחיד לרשות הרבים. --משנה תורה, הלכות עירובין א:ד >Shlomo, the idealized king of Israel, sought to unify the people around the /Bais Hamikdash/ that he had built, and thus instituted Rabbinic enactments to strengthen the מלכות ישראל that he was perfecting... > Rambam explains that people did not understand that the מבואות and even the cities they shared were in fact רה״י . They did not understand that they were in a state of partnership with the thousands, and theoretically millions, who lived in a walled city. In truth, the people themselves are the בעלים and responsible for the governance of their city... > Underlying the section of Jewish law dealing with the interaction of men in society is the principle that it is man’s duty to create partnerships with his fellow men and to promote their mutual interests through the organs of civilization. Shlomo’s /takanah/ of /eruvin/ was intended to strengthen the awareness of this concept amongst his people. Rambam’s language, and his entire presentation of the mitzvah of /eruvin/, makes clear that communities are expected to make eruvin. Life in the ancient world would have been very difficult if carrying was prohibited locally on Shabbos, and the intent of the takanah was not to prohibit it. Moreover, the very process of making the eruv in which would שכולנו מעורבין ואוכל אחד לכולנו ואין כל אחד חולק רשות מחבירו draw the people into שותפות (partnership)―a relationship that in fact is a goal of the mitzvos of the Torah and the intent of Shlomo’s /takanah/. --Rabbi Asher Benzion Buchman, [_ King Solomon’s Takanah: Rambam’s Eruv_](http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%203%20Buchman.pdf) The Yerushalmi says that the aim of the eruv is not so much to carry as it is to create community: {:he} >א"ר יהושע: מפני מה מערבין בחצירות? מפני דרכי שלום. מעשה באשה אחת שהיתה דבובה לחבירתה, ושלחה עירובה גבי ברה. נסתיה וגפפתיה ונשקתיה. אתא ואמר קומי אימה. אמרה: הכין הוות רחמה לי ולא הוינא ידעה! מתוך כך עשו שלום. הדא הוא דכתיב (משלי ג:יז) דְּרָכֶיהָ דַרְכֵי נֹעַם; וְכָל נְתִיבוֹתֶיהָ שָׁלוֹם. --ירושלמי ערובין ג:ב כ,ב Charlotte Fonrobert, a professor at Stanford, points out that the eruv specifically requires us to deal with our neighbors, even our non-Jewish neighbors: >[This article deals with] the relationship between insider and outsider, between (rabbinic) Jews and non-Jews that the eruv designs. What is of interest here is not primarily the general relationship between Jews and non-Jews, about which much has been written, but specifically the residential relationship within the neighborhood. That is, the non-Jew is not just the generic type of Other but is the next-door neighbor. The questions to be considered here are what kind of neighborhood and what kind of neighborhood relations the rabbinic texts construct. --Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, [_The Political Symbolism of the Eruv_](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236826249_The_Political_Symbolism_of_the_Eruv), p.12 The mishna presents a problem: we don't want people sharing food with non-Jews; we discourage socialization. The non-Jew cannot be part of our eruv. The tosefta solves this by asking the non-Jewish neighbor to "rent" their property to the community of the eruv: {:he} >ישראל נותן רשות ומבטל רשות, ובנכרי עד [שעה] שישכור. --תוספתא עירובין ה:יד >The act of symbolic renting introduced in the Tosefta, however, allows the (rabbinic) Jews in the neighborhood to establish an eruv community, and the symbolic unification of the (Jewish) neighborhood can proceed. One might even think about this ritual innovation as a unification of the residential neighborhood “with a difference”: Jews by (symbolic) food, and Jews and non-Jews by (symbolic) monetary transfer, and thus they are all potentially part of the same project of forming a collective ritual intent. > ...[T]he rabbinic theorizing of the eruv community, or the ritual system of the eruv, can be read as a powerful way to think about the importance of neighborhood for conceiving of community. This, I would add, has particular importance in a diaspora situation. That is, a nationalist concept of collectivity assumes sovereign control over territory, and this control functions as a guarantee for the construction (or imagination) of national identity by the population living within the borders of that territory. The eruv does construct a collective identity with respect to space, but it does so in the absence of having control or any form of sovereignty over that space. On the contrary, it maps a collectivity symbolically into space over which it does not claim control, political or otherwise. It maneuvers around the existing structures of control...I would suggest that the eruv offers a powerful model of a territoriality without sovereignty and, as such, would have much to offer to the current discussions about diaspora cultures. --Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, [_The Political Symbolism of the Eruv_](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236826249_The_Political_Symbolism_of_the_Eruv), p.24 Rabbi Bashevkin sees this model of social interaction, of private spaces where things remain private, but public spaces where we interact in explicitly limited ways, as a positive way to live our lives. >Perhaps more than anywhere else, our online discourse reflects a world where /reshus harabim/ and /reshus hayachid/—our public and private identities—have become befuddled. To live on social media is to live in a world where community insists on sovereignty...Eruvin envisions a different sort of world. Instead of sovereignty, we can create community with symbolism and purpose. Instead of trying to “own them,” Eruvin imagines a discourse where you can be right (or wrong) without infringing on the shared humanity of the public square. --Dovid Bashevkin, [_Make America an ‘Eruv’ Again_](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/make-america-an-eruv-again) >Chabon [in 2018 author Michael Chabon gave a speech decrying Jewish singularity] singles out the Shabbat <em>eruv</em> for ridicule</strong> three times in his speech. For him, an <em>eruv</em> is just another boundary, another way for Jews to mark who is in and who is out. But the word literally means “mixture” or “combination.” The legal theory behind it is that many different private and semiprivate domains can be combined into a single household so that one can carry things from one to another on Shabbat. Creating an <em>eruv</em> involves negotiation with all those, including non-Jews and nonobservant Jews, who share that space. The “walls” of the <em>eruv</em> are, in fact, generally not walls at all. They are comprised only of posts and wires, on the premise that two posts with a lintel form a doorway. The <em>eruv</em> circumscribes a community with walls that are entirely doors. -- Elli Fischer, [_Michael Chabon’s Sacred and Profane Cliché Machine_](https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/3239/michael-chabons-sacred-and-profane-cliche-machine/) Rabbi Bashevkin points out that it is specifically מסכת ערובין that teaches us the principle of אלו ואלו דברי אלקים חיים: {:he} >שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים נֶחְלְקוּ בֵּית שַׁמַּאי וּבֵית הִלֵּל, הַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים: הֲלָכָה כְּמוֹתֵנוּ, וְהַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים: הֲלָכָה כְּמוֹתֵנוּ. יָצְאָה בַּת קוֹל וְאָמְרָה: אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים הֵן...תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: שְׁתֵּי שָׁנִים וּמֶחֱצָה נֶחְלְקוּ בֵּית שַׁמַּאי וּבֵית הִלֵּל. הַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים: נוֹחַ לוֹ לְאָדָם שֶׁלֹּא נִבְרָא יוֹתֵר מִשֶּׁנִּבְרָא, וְהַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים: נוֹחַ לוֹ לְאָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא יוֹתֵר מִשֶּׁלֹּא נִבְרָא --ערובין יג,ב >Is it better to be a global citizen or a member of tribe? Is it better to have not been created and remain connected to the Source of all humanity or to have been created and live in our fractured and divisive world? /Eilu v’eilu divrei elokim chaim/—these and these are the words of the living G-d. To be alive, to be living, to have some modicum of engagement in the ultimate /chaim/—life itself—is to be engaged in these negotiations...To connect and preserve, to unify and divide, to be joined while also remaining separate. And Eruvin shows us how to build this complex notion of self and community. Through the doorways of the eruv, we can see the other and they can see us. And as we peer through the synthetic divisions of the eruv, we are reminded that no matter which side you may find yourself—these and these are the worlds of the living G-d. --Dovid Bashevkin, [_Make America an ‘Eruv’ Again_](https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/make-america-an-eruv-again)