Rabbi Hirshel Chitrik's Family Testimony Concerning a Crown Heights Eruv
Members of the Chitrik family publicly related that Rabbi Hirshel Chitrik asked the Rebbe about making an eruv in Crown Heights and was told not to proceed.
A Crown Heights eruv proposed in yechidus
Rabbi Hirshel Chitrik was active in Crown Heights communal life. The family account relates that the practical difficulty of taking young children to shul led him to consider establishing an eruv in the neighborhood.
He brought the proposal to the Rebbe in yechidus and was told not to proceed. Rabbi Chitrik accepted that instruction, and the eruv was not established.
The account heard within the family
In a 2023 episode of Chatting Rabbis, a Chitrik grandson said that he had heard the episode repeatedly from his grandfather. He also described hearing the same essential point from his grandmother, who stressed that the proposal could not go forward after the Rebbe had rejected it.
The two relevant passages begin at approximately 15:07 and 18:32. Hearing the surrounding conversation makes clear that the speaker is recounting a family memory, not reading a prepared polemic.
Its place in the Crown Heights history
The Chitrik episode predates the route publicized in 5776, but it concerns the same basic proposal: creating a public eruv in the Rebbe's neighborhood.
It stands alongside Rabbi Groner's direct statement and the later Beis Din rulings. Together they explain why Crown Heights did not treat the new project as the restoration of an earlier accepted eruv.