Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Australia Council Refuses To Allow Eruv

Jewish leaders in Sydney are irate after a local council denied an application to build an eruv.

Ku-ring-gai Council, on Sydney’s north shore, voted Tuesday night to reject a plan to build a 12-mile symbolic boundary that would allow Orthodox Jews to push strollers and carry objects on Shabbat.

The Northern Eruv Group already has applied to the New South Wales Land and Environment Court to have the decision overturned, its chairman, David Guth, confirmed.

New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies President Yair Miller said, “The tone of the meeting was unpleasant and there is no doubt in my mind that unease exists with the multicultural aspect of the application.”

In a letter to a local newspaper Wednesday, New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies Chief Executive Vic Alhadeff wrote: “This was a sad day for us. Not because the application to install an eruv was knocked back, but because of the bigotry that has emerged from some of the opponents to the eruv.”

The opponents to the plan, which would include the erection of 26 poles, have been vehement. “This is not New York, it’s not Bondi, this is St. Ives and Ku-ring-gai,” one local councilman at the meeting said.

A petition opposing the eruv has been signed by some 1,200 residents; some have said the eruv would create a “ghetto of Jewish people” and “pollute the environment.”

An eruv already exists in Bondi, where the majority of Sydney’s Jews live, as well as in Melbourne and Perth. The north shore community has been trying to establish one since 2006.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.