The Rebbe's Position on Eruvin and Carrying in Large Cities
The Rebbe's correspondence on eruvin returns to several practical concerns: the city must be examined as it actually exists, the question belongs with Rabbonim expert in hilchos eruvin, and publicizing an eruv can create a habit of carrying that continues after the boundary fails. In Crown Heights, the testimony is direct: the Rebbe opposed making an eruv in the neighborhood.
Crown Heights
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Groner, the Rebbe's longtime mazkir, wrote that the Rebbe strongly opposed making an eruv in Crown Heights and conveyed his words: “I will not permit an eruv to be made here in the neighborhood.”
Rabbi Hirshel Chitrik had considered an eruv so that his wife and other mothers could bring young children to shul. His grandson Rabbi Mendy Chitrik relates that Rabbi Hirshel raised the proposal in yechidus and was told that a public eruv should not be made; he heard the account repeatedly from both grandparents.
The local Rabbonim later cited the Rebbe's position while issuing their own psak. Their ruling does not depend on a reconstructed conversation: in their own authority, they prohibit carrying and treat the publicized eruv as nonexistent.
Publicizing an eruv
Writing to Rabbi Yosef Dovid Moskowitz, the Rebbe opposed announcing the completion of a city eruv because the original permission would become widely known while later damage might not. The people who learned to carry could continue after the basis for the heter was gone.
A typed response later published by Rabbi Sholom Dovber Levin is even more explicit: eruvin “frequently become damaged”, notice reaches only a minority, and few stop carrying once they are accustomed to it. The response says that where there is no reshus harabim de'oraisa and the place is otherwise suitable for an eruv, it is worthwhile to make one “on condition that it not be publicized at all.”
Those two halachic conditions come before the policy of secrecy. Quiet construction is not a way to validate a city that cannot be enclosed.
Local facts and an expert Rav
In his letter to Rabbi Pinchas Weberman, the Rebbe directed the question to a Rav with particular expertise in hilchos eruvin. In the Melbourne response, he called for the local conditions to be investigated thoroughly by qualified Rabbonim.
City streets, walls, openings, population, public use, communal rights, and the proposed route cannot be decided from a general endorsement of eruvin. The Rav giving the public heter must know how the sugyos meet the physical city.
Modern city facts
In the fourth sicha of Yud-Beis Tammuz 5745, the Rebbe challenged an inherited description of a contemporary city by pointing to its present population. The city is not named in the recording; the stated point is that current facts cannot be replaced by what may once have been true.
In his discussion with Israel's Chief Rabbis the following year, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu spoke about Yerushalayim, the Old City walls, shishim ribo, and the curved streets of the newer city. The Rebbe interjected lo mefulash. The exchange is a local Yerushalayim discussion, not a Crown Heights ruling.
Other Chabad communities
Kfar Chabad has an accepted local eruv. Melbourne, Miami, Yerushalayim, Doncaster, and Crown Heights raised different questions. The Rebbe's answers do not turn one city into a precedent that supplies another city with walls, gates, population figures, or local psak.
Rabbi Shmuel Zajac reports that when Rabbi Shmuel Tuvia Stern mentioned the Miami eruv, the Rebbe asked whether Miami had shishim ribo. The question itself places the status of the city before the construction of the route.