The Rebbe and an Eruv in Crown Heights
The Rebbe opposed establishing an eruv in Crown Heights. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Groner preserved an explicit statement; the Chitrik family relates what Rabbi Hirshel Chitrik was told when he raised a practical proposal in yechidus; and the Crown Heights Rabbonim included the Rebbe's position when they prohibited reliance on the later route.
Rabbi Yehuda Leib Groner
Rabbi Groner, one of the Rebbe's longtime mazkirim, states that the Rebbe strongly opposed making an eruv in Crown Heights and that no one had been given permission to do so. He gives the Rebbe's words: “I will not permit an eruv to be made here in the neighborhood.”
The words concern making an eruv in Crown Heights itself, before the details of the later publicized route arose.
Rabbi Hirshel Chitrik's proposal
Rabbi Hirshel Chitrik considered an eruv as a practical help for his wife and other mothers who wanted to bring young children to shul. His grandson Rabbi Mendy Chitrik relates that he brought the idea to the Rebbe in yechidus.
According to the family account, the Rebbe said that a public eruv should not be made and referred to the danger of people continuing to carry if it later failed. Rabbi Mendy said that he had heard the episode repeatedly from his grandfather and then asked his grandmother separately; she told him that she had been present and repeated the same essential account.
Rabbi Yoel Kahn
Rabbi Yoel Kahn wrote during the Crown Heights controversy that the Rebbe's position concerning public eruvin in large cities was clear from his correspondence. His letter centers the danger that publicity will turn a disputed arrangement into ordinary public carrying.
As the Rebbe's principal chozer and a leading editor of his Torah, Rabbi Kahn was explaining how he understood the written sources and the Rebbe's public policy. His signed letter supports the Crown Heights testimony, while the direct practical psak belongs to the local Rabbonim.
The Crown Heights Rabbonim
The local Rabbonim place the Rebbe's position alongside the established psak of Crown Heights. They do not rely on testimony alone: they rule in their own authority that the advertised eruv is treated as nonexistent and that carrying is prohibited.
For practical halacha, the two points stand together. The Rebbe opposed making an eruv in the neighborhood, and the Beis Din responsible for the neighborhood ruled that no eruv may be relied upon.