A Few Words About Greengate

For many years now, it has always been my hope to write to you about the Greengate and Summit Chase communities and finally make a happy announcement that these sections have been incorporated into the greater Baltimore Eruv. Despite the tremendous effort that our organization has been making to make this project a reality, I’m sorry to say that we have not yet arrived at that hoped for conclusion.

For those of you who are either new to the community or unfamiliar with the lay of the land, these communities lie to the east of Greenspring Avenue, (just ‘across the street’ from the Quarry) – and are further defined by being north of Green Summit Road/Old Pimlico Road, south of Old Court Road, and west of Interstate-83. You can look on Google maps to visualize this area. Current Eruv boundaries run along Greenspring Avenue and Green Summit Road, and do not include the areas in question to their east and north, respectively.

Why aren’t these areas included in the Eruv, and what efforts are being made to bring them within the Eruv borders?

In a recent email written to fellow Eruv Board members, one of our esteemed Board members (who is intimately involved in this project) writes: “Our long-term efforts to include these areas have been quite challenging. The various halachic, physical, and legal limitations have made it very difficult.”  Indeed.  Eruv of Baltimore, Inc. has been trying for years to solve this problem. So, what’s holding things up?

In order to enclose an area with an eruv, you must have eruv boundaries that define that area. It is beyond the scope of this letter to explain the intricacies of the halachos of eruvin and of tzuras hapesach that define those boundaries. However, simply put, we rely upon telephone poles and wires to serve as the main infrastructure of the Baltimore Eruv. A tall-enough fence can also function as an eruv boundary.

There are no telephone poles that run through the Greengate community. Seemingly, the next best thing would be to use the telephone poles that run east/west along Old Court Road, and then join up to the fence that borders I-83.  However, in the northeast corner of this newly defined space, there is a river (the Jones Falls) and other bodies of water that would invalidate the entire Eruv!

We have looked extensively into building our own eruv poles across private lands in that northeast corner of the projected expanded eruv – but we have repeatedly been denied access. We have made in-depth inquiries into building across private and public lands within the Greengate community itself (there are at least three different types of landowners we need to contend with); the challenges and problems that have come up along every step of the way have been daunting.

In addition to routing and construction issues, don’t forget that any new (or old) eruv boundary must be checked each and every week. You can’t just put up a string that runs through a forest or across a backyard; we must also consider accessibility for checking, especially in bad weather. There is also the issue of getting ironclad rights to any eruv we would construct on private land. Without those rights, the landowners could at some point in the future change their minds and decide to dismantle the Eruv, and then where would the homeowners in the Greengate community be? What happened to the eruv!?

Chashuvah Rabbonim (including our Rav Hamachshir, HaRav Moshe Heinemann shlit”a, an expert poseik in the laws of eruvin), community leaders, lawyers, and many individuals have all been involved in our quest to make this project a reality. We have invested a great deal of time (as well as money) towards this goal. Even as I write this letter, there is no stone that is being left unturned.

We get calls all the time from real-estate agents, from people wanting to move into the Greengate community, and from people who are already living in that community, pleading with us to make this project a reality. We feel your pain and understand your concerns!

The only answer we can give to you now is that this is a work in progress. We have the best possible team of Rabbonim, civil engineers, and askanim working on it! They are all extremely motivated and devoted to making this happen. Although we cannot guarantee success in this endeavor, nevertheless we are working diligently and steadfastly towards this goal. BS”D we hope to share good news with you in the near future.

Avraham Cohen, President, Eruv of Baltimore Inc.