Letters: An <i>eruv</i> in the Hamptons

Re “Boundaries of religious freedom,” Opinion, Aug. 15

As long as the Orthodox Jewish community in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., pays for the eruv to be built, why does anyone care about an almost invisible string?

What I don’t understand, though, is having religious conviction and then manipulating one’s environment to make that religion more convenient to practice. If there is a prohibition on carrying keys and pushing strollers during the Sabbath, then don’t carry keys or push strollers.

Who said religion was supposed to be easy?

Carole Lerner

Santa Monica

My late wife was a Holocaust survivor who spent several years in two ghettos in Poland before she was shipped at the age of 13 to a slave labor camp. Ghettos were not something that Jews or anyone else imposed on themselves.

When our children were ready for school, my wife said we should join a temple to give the kids a Jewish education. We finally settled on a Reform congregation. Because her background was Orthodox, I asked her if she would be comfortable in a synagogue with an organ and much of the service in English. Her response was that Hitler made no distinction between Jews, and neither would she. She said that they were all her people.

It would be nice if Estelle Lubliner and Arnold Sheiffer, two Hamptons residents who oppose the eruv, had the same feelings toward their fellow Jews.

Norman D. Redlich

Woodland Hills

The entire concept of an eruv lays bare the hypocrisy of modern religion, which claims to understand the will of God just enough to make it easier to follow his law. Somehow I doubt that the Lord intended the 405 Freeway to be used as a boundary to codify his will. But then again, miracles never cease.

David Higgins

Los Angeles

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