5 Tammuz

Last night, just around 8:30PM, while most of us finished dinner and settled into a relaxing evening, two young men were on their way to Culver City to pick up our Eruv truck and head out to make repairs through the evening. There were ten repairs that needed to be made.

• At 4th Street and the 10 Freeway they installed a replacement section of fencing.
• At Burnside and Apple they needed to patch a chain-link fence which had been cut apart.
• At Carmona and the Freeway the crew repaired a broken “doorway”.
• At Redondo and the Freeway a fence needed to be tightened.
• In Hollywood, off Vine, they had to repair a line and trim bushes that were threatening our lines.
• Then it was off to the Valley where there were three areas that needed tree trimming, and a Lehi that had to be adjusted.

Following along behind, our Rabbinic inspectors — who evaluated our lines and fences earlier in the week — made the repairs and adjustments needed to ensure that the eruv is available for you and your family this Shabbos. Every week, our Rabbis inspect, every Thursday our crews work through the night, and every week we get to tell you that the “Eruv is UP”.

The very idea of Eruv is the blending together all of our households into a single community. The absolute opposite of social distancing — the idea of Eruv is to create a holy shared space where we can gather together and share each other’s lives. These past few months we have all discovered how painful it is to be held apart. How bitter it is not to share in the simchas of our friends, neighbors and even the acquaintances who share this community with us.

Without an Eruv, every Shabbos would be like this. No strollers, no children’s programs, no kids services. No shared family meals or Shabbos play dates or long walks. In many ways it would be even harder. Just isolation.

We are grateful to be able to support our community by providing an ongoing, reliable Eruv. We are honored to be able to contribute something useful to lifting the lives of our families, our friends and our neighbors.

This Shabbos is our annual Eruv Shabbos appeal. This is the week we reach out to you, our neighbors and our friends and ask you to help us in this mission. We can’t do our job without your assistance. We need to raise about $70,000 towards our annual budget and capital reserves over the next week.