Planning for San Carlos neighborhood eruv

January 31, 2020

Other items in this column include:
*A page of Talmud a day
*Political bytes
*Coming our way
*Recommended reading

By Donald H. Harrison

Tentative boundaries for an eruv in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego

SAN DIEGO — Young Israel of San Diego, located in a small shopping center at 7291 Navajo Road, is exploring the possibility of erecting an eruv, which under halacha, Jewish law, extends the area of people’s homes, enabling Shabbat-observant Jews to carry packages or push baby carriages with the eruv’s boundaries.

Rabbi Chaim Hollander told San Diego Jewish World that the Orthodox congregation in the San Carlos neighborhood “is still in the beginning of the process” and has not determined the exact boundaries of the area for which it would seek City of San Diego permission to construct the eruv, which typically involves stringing a tiny filament between telephone poles and existing structures to create an enclosed boundary.  However, he said, it is likely to stretch at least from Jackson Drive to the west of the congregation and Golfcrest Drive, just slightly to the east.

Eddie Rosenberg, president of the congregation, said the southern boundary might be near Murray Park Drive, while the northern boundary could be Mission Gorge Road.

There are many laws governing how an eruv must be constructed, Hollander said.  Primarily, an eruv is for the benefit of couples “so they can wheel baby carriages to the shul,” said the rabbi, who is both the spiritual leader of Young Israel of San Diego and a longtime teacher of Judaism at Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School.

Three existing eruvim within the City of San Diego are in La Jolla, University City, and the San Diego State University area.  Currently, Orthodox families who want to be able to wheel their babies to Shabbat services at a nearby synagogue are more likely to settle in those areas than in the San Carlos neighborhood of Young Israel, thus limiting Young Israel of San Diego’s potential growth.

Erecting an eruv can be a costly affair, what with the necessity of city permits, hiring a religious authority as a consultant (it’s a specialized field), and paying for labor and materials.  Estimates are that it might run higher than $50,000, according to Ron Schottland, a member of Young Israel’s leadership team.

Asked if the small congregation can afford that, Schottland expressed optimism.  He said some years ago when the congregation commissioned a new Torah, it raised between $50,000 and $60,000.  To fundraise for an eruv, he said, the congregation plans a gala in May; a Go Fund Me page; a calendar with advertising; and person-to-person appeals to donors.  More information may be obtained via the congregation’s website or by calling Schottland at (619) 300-7257.

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A page of Talmud a day
Rabbi Josh Dorsch of Tifereth Israel Synagogue and some congregants have taken the Daf Yomi pledge: to read a page of Talmud a day every day for 7 ½ years until the entire Talmud has been read.  In his synagogue’s monthly bulletin, Dorsch explained the attraction for him.  “The Talmud is one of the reasons that I became a rabbi,” he wrote.  “When I began college, I always thought that I would go into law school. That was until I took my first Talmud class as an undergraduate student at the Jewish Theological Semi nary.  The complexity of the layers of understanding the context of the text, combined with the combination of Aramaic, Hebrew, and rabbinic shorthand, made for a complicated, albeit rewarding, experience. Studying the unpunctuated, often unclear and ambiguous text with my classmates often led to heated disagreements over the meaning.  In the Talmud, I found intense legal debates, logic-driven arguments, and puzzles, all things that attracted the law professional, albeit in wht was for me a more meaningful and fulfilling context.”

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Political bytes
*Columnist Michael Smolens of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Ammar Campa-Najjar, the leading Democratic candidate in the heavily Republican-registered 50th Congressional District, is declining to say whether as a House member he would have voted to impeach President Trump.  He said that he did not have access to the information that House members had, only to news reports.

* San Diego City Council President Georgette Gomez, a candidate in the 50th Congressional District, says she knows the pain of not being able to afford housing.  Born in the United States after her parents immigrated from Mexico, “We were poor.  At one point, we had to stay with another family because we couldn’t afford rent.  In junior high, I remember helping my mom clean offices at the buildings that stand across from San Diego City Hall.  I never imagined I’d be presiding as City Council President just across the street from the buildings I once worked at as a young girl.”

*Hollywood is becoming involve in the election of delegates to the World Zionist Congress.  Actor Josh Malina, who many remember for his portrayal of Will Bailey in the television series West Wing, has endorsed the Hatikvah slate, which includes representatives of various progressive organizations such as J*Street and the New Israel Fund and which is highly critical of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s policies.  A portion of its platform reads: “We fiercely oppose the current policy of permanent occupation and annexation. It is unjust and will end Israel’s democracy. The occupation is sustained by ongoing policies of repression that only serve to exacerbate conflict and require daily violence to maintain it. We proudly stand with those Israelis searching for peace with Palestine. Their understanding, broadly shared at the highest levels of Israel’s security services, that the current policies ultimately harm Israel’s security, needs to be supported publicly and energetically so that a meaningful peace process can gain the popular support necessary to nurture and develop it.”

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Coming our way

Isabel Schechter teaches a course on Tamar and Ruth: Initiative and Redemption, from t to 7:30 p.m Tursdays, Feb. 20 through March 26, at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, 6660 Cowles Mountain Boulevard. Fee: $100 Tifereth Israel members; $120 non-members. Register via this website.

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Recommended reading
Front Page Magazine writer Ari Lieberman accuses Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) of retweeting a “blood libel” against Jews – a false report that Israeli settlers kidnapped an 8-year-old girl and threw her down  well, when in fact Qais Abu Ramila fell into a cistern and died despite heroic efforts by Israeli paramedics to rescue her.

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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com