This is a map, written in Hebrew and Russian, of the city of Odessa, Ukraine. The 460 x 492mm map indicates the boundaries of the eruv that was constructed in the city. One neighbourhood is marked “outside of the eruv.” The map indicates the telegraph and telephone wires in the city that mark, together with other designated wires and ropes, the border of the eruv. Although the exact date of the map is not known, it is thought to be from a date no earlier than 1894. This map indicates the areas in Odessa where large observant Jewish communities lived. The words הים השחור, meaning the Black Sea, are marked towards the top of the map.
An eruv is an enclosure bordered with string or existing wires that enables observant Jews to carry objects outside of their homes on Shabbat.
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The Jewish Community of Odessa – Jews first arrived in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1789. The Jews of Odessa were involved in trade, industry, banking, and academic professions. The community consisted of Jews of different groups, but Odessa was a centre of the Enlightenment (haskala). Zionist groups were becoming popular in Odessa and prominent Zionist leaders lived in the city: for example, Meir Dizengoff, Leon Pinsker, Ahad Ha’am, Menachem Ussishkin, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Joseph Klausner. Despite the flourishing of Jewish culture, the 1800s were also characterised by several violent and fatal pogroms that involved all segments of the Ukrainian society. The Russian revolution of 1917 brought an end to the Jewish activities in Odessa and much of the leadership moved to Constantinople and Kiev and other destinations. By the beginning of World War II, the Jewish population of Odessa reached 180,000 – nearly a third of the city’s population. About half of the Jewish community was able to escape Odessa before the German and Romanian invasion in 1941. The remaining Jews were persecuted, deported, and murdered, including an incident in October 1941 when close to 20,000 Jews were rounded up near the harbour where they were shot and burned alive. When the Soviet Army regained control of Odessa in 1944, only a few thousand Jews were living in the city, many hiding in homes or catacombs. After the Holocaust, Jews returned to Odessa but were not allowed by the Soviet authorities to practice Judaism openly. During the year of the communist rule of the Ukraine, the Jewish community declined significantly. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Ukraine most of the remaining Jews left the country, mostly moving to Israel. Currently there are about 45,000 Jews living in Odessa. The Joint Distribution Committee and Chabad have contributed to organizing communal life for the Jewish community. Religious life is centered in the Malbish Arumim Synagogue which is now called the Chabad synagogue. The city also has educational institutions for children of different ages, a Jewish library, a cultural society, and a welfare organisation.
Jewish Community of Ukraine – Jews first arrived in Ukraine in the ninth century seeking refuge from Byzantium, Persia, and Mesopotamia. Jews were allowed to practice Judaism openly and prospered during this period. In the 1500s, a large influx of Jews from Western Europe arrived in Ukraine, which became an important centre of Jewish life. However, in the ensuing periods, anti-Semitic sentiment grew in Ukraine, and the Cossack uprising of 1648 resulted in the murder of over 20,000 Jews and the departure of many others to more tolerant countries. At the end of the eighteenth century, Ukraine was made a part of the Russian Pale of Settlement. Although this was a difficult period for Ukrainian Jews, new ideas and organisations developed such as Hasidism, the Haskalah (the Jewish enlightenment), and Zionism. As a result of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Pale of Settlement was dissolved and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews moved to other parts of the Soviet Union. Under communism, Jewish and Zionist activity moved underground as the party did not allow such activity. During the Holocaust, it is believed that a million Jews were killed in Ukraine, including those killed in a large massacre at Babi Yar and others murdered by the Einsatzgruppen. The Germans were joined by Ukrainian collaborators, and according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator.” After the war, Jews who returned to their former homes in Ukraine were met with hostility by the local population. In the 1980s and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many Ukrainian Jews emigrated to Israel and other countries. Currently, Ukrainian Jewish life is being rebuilt, with various Jewish denominations active. Today, the Jewish community of Ukraine is the fourth largest Jewish community in Europe and the eleventh in the world, with an estimated population of up to 140,000 people.
Eruv – According to Jewish law, objects may not be carried outside of a private domain on Shabbat. This includes a prohibition on carrying keys, books, and even children who cannot walk on their own, outside of the home. The rabbis of the Talmud understood the practical difficulties of these restrictions and devised a way for objects to be carried on Shabbat while still observing the laws of Shabbat. This involved erecting an eruv, a system of partitions or wires that delineate the public domain and turns the enclosed area into one large private domain, in which people are able to carry objects. Many cities in Israel and neighbourhoods with large Jewish communities in cities such as New York, London, and Melbourne have an eruv. However, erecting an eruv has also been a matter of controversy in some parts of London, Melbourne, Strasbourg, New York, and others, as there are those who fear that the series of wires can harm wildlife and others who believe that an eruv gives an undesirable sense of enclosure and segregation.
