Sabbath eruv zone plan for Greater Manchester Jews

Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag's believes the eruv will make life 'less restrictive'

Jewish people in Bury have submitted a planning application to create an "eruv" zone that will permit them to carry and push on the Sabbath.

Torah-observing Jews are forbidden from pushing their children or carrying keys outside of their homes on the Sabbath.

The square mile in the Philips Park area of Whitefield will be the first outside London to effectively widen the home boundaries into a public space.

The boundaries will be partly made up of the M60 and Metrolink lines.

'Less restriction'

The application by the Whitefield Hebrew congregation to Bury Council is for the erection of three 1.1m-high posts at strategic points around the proposed eruv to complete its perimeter.

Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag said that the eruv would enable Jewish people to push their children and disabled relatives to the synagogue on the Sabbath and to live with "less restriction and difficulty".

He said: "The rules are that I'm allowed to carry in my own house and own garden with walls and a fence around it and therefore if we can designate an area out in the street that likewise has a devoted boundary around it, then that too is a house in a larger sense - and a private domain.

"It's not bending the rules, it's merely an understanding of them and an application of them."