Odes to Toco Hills · Track 6 · middle
The Eruv: Invisible Boundary, Visible Community
The Toco Hills eruv — the symbolic wire boundary that encloses the neighborhood, allowing observant Jews to carry items outside the home on Shabbat, the way the eruv is checked weekly by volunteers, the way a 12-mile loop of fishing line creates an invisible community room. Sisukiro at the eruv check.
Lyrics
Thursday. Four-fifteen in the afternoon. The air smells of hot asphalt off LaVista Road. And pine needles and cut grass. I'm talking to you again. The line. The thin idea. Just a filament, really. Twelve miles of monofilament fishing line, thirty-pound test. Stretched from a gray PVC pipe pole to a Georgia Power telephone pole. Fastened with a simple plastic zip tie. You run over the shingles of a brick ranch on Sheridan, the one built in 1962, where the aluminum ladder is always propped against the eaves, waiting for you. You are made of nothing special. Just what a man can buy at the hardware store on a Tuesday. But you are the wall that isn't a wall. You are the room without a ceiling. You draw the line that lets us carry. A key in a pocket. A book for shul. A push-toy for a child. You make the outside, inside. For twenty-five hours. An invisible boundary for a visible life. Here comes Avi Goldstein. His Thursday walk, his sacred duty. He checks you for breaks, for sags, for wear. His eyes follow your path against the humid Georgia sky. He's looking for the place you might have failed. A fallen oak branch, a squirrel's tooth, a gust of wind. He tugs gently, here and there. The whole neighborhood holds its breath and doesn't know it. His email will go out before sundown. "The Toco Hills Eruv is kosher for Shabbat." And you are the wall that isn't a wall. You are the room without a ceiling. You draw the line that lets us carry. A key in a pocket. A book for shul. A push-toy for a child. You make the outside, inside. For twenty-five hours. An invisible boundary for a visible life. You cross North Druid Hills Road by the tire shop. You skirt the edge of the woods behind the JCC pool. You are a quiet, legal fiction. A rabbinic permission. A loophole woven from plastic and ancient belief. You don't keep anyone out. Or anyone in. You just let us be together, differently. A single, unbroken thought that holds a community. The sun is going down behind the Kroger. The check is done. You hum over the cars on LaVista. Ready for the quiet. Ready for the Sabbath walk. You're ready.