Eruv row turns ugly in UK town

A small town outside London has seen angry accusations of a Jewish takeover over the town’s approval of an eruv.

The eruv is a Jewish ritual boundary, often a wire tied between utility polls, that delineates a location for the purposes of Jewish law. For example, on the Sabbath one is allowed to carry objects within a location, but not between them. So communities establish an eruv that demarcates their entire community as a single place in order to be able to carry items throughout the area on the Sabbath.

But the English town of Bushey has seen stiff resistance from some residents to the Jewish community’s efforts to establish such an eruv.

After the Bushey eruv was approved by local government on March 24, local resident Gay Butler, of the “Bushey Residents Group” which formed to fight the eruv, wrote a letter in the local Watford Observer newspaper that charged a local synagogue with attempting “to socially engineer and substantially grow the Jewish community.”

The letter, reprinted on Tuesday on the website of the Jewish News newspaper, is titled “Bushey synagogue will regret eruv.” It charges that the eruv “has disturbed what has always been a lovely community where people of different faiths or none have happily co-existed for years.”

It railed against the “powerful Jewish lobby in Hertsmere Borough Council” and charged that members of the local Bushey & District Synagogue “have been manipulative and misled the people of Bushey as to the true reason for the eruv – i.e., to socially engineer and substantially grow the Jewish community, thereby identifying Bushey, like Golders Green, as a Jewish area.”

“Our secular peaceful community has no history of the religious dogma now to be imposed upon us… Jewish law is greatly incompatible with true democratic hard fought for freedom and equality.”

The letter urged changes to planning laws to prevent “such abuse” in other communities and charged that “While Jewish law can discriminate against a disabled wheelchair user, this is a criminal offence under English law. Why are Jews exempt from the law?”

Stephen Roston, chairman of Bushey & District Synagogue, told Jewish News he was “disturbed that the newspaper felt this hurtful letter was fit for publication, containing as it does profoundly unpleasant anti-Semitic themes.”

“We are deeply concerned that anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head and that Gay Butler has publicly declared that she and the Bushey Residents Group hold such repellent views,” said Roston.