[bscphil]

> That said, your comment contains several significant misconceptions, and you are far too confident despite not having any idea what you are talking about.

Sorry, the intent of my comment was actually not to state any kind of conception at all - rather, I wanted to indicate exactly why it is that most people are approaching it from this angle. I understand that none of the sources here are necessarily reliable, but the fact that they're the resources available to most people in the thread are the reason there's so much misunderstanding. (I've made a small edit to my comment to try to make this a little more clear.)

So what I wanted to get at was the fact that anyone reading the Wikipedia article would likely pick up on the obvious implication it contains that eruvin are an attempt to weasel out of a set of rules with legalism.

> They are an elegant extension of the rules that simultaneously uphold the letter and the spirit of the law in the face of changing circumstance.

I would be curious to learn more about this, if the process can be made clear to a non-Jew. For example, how does an eruv help uphold the spirit of the law? If the spirit of the law is what matters, one would intuitively think that you wouldn't need a symbolic "wall" around the community, because the distinction that counts (excluding public spaces) already exists, just not with a physical wall around it. Intuitively, one gets the impression that the wire only needs to exist in order to satisfy a specific rule that has been inherited but no longer matters very much for "spirit-interpretation" today.

[benchaney]

The reason I say that eruv uphold the spirit of the law is because it is permissible to carry within walled cities. If it wasn't the intention of the law to make carrying outdoors completely off limits, then it is hard to see why an eruv violates the spirit of the law.

As for why it is necessary to have the physical construction: Just as the law doesn't intend to forbid carrying everywhere, it doesn't intend to permit it everywhere. The actual existence of a physical boundary prevents the perceived permissibility of carrying from expanding constantly. Without it, there would need to be some other equally arbitrary seeming rule about what constitutes a single community.

I also think it is important to mention that both the spirit and the letter of the law are quite important. Even setting aside the question of the spirit of the law, they are still necessary because they are mandated in a legalistic sense.

[bscphil]

Thanks for explaining, I think I see the idea more clearly now.