Somebody at a fishing line company won salesman of the month.

Visible on Google maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MvPQhHgjkKMJpPws5

Full line boundary on maps: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0...

original NPR article: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...

For people without exposure to Hasidic Judaism, it's way more "deranged cult" and way less "Jewish people". I don't know any Jews who have anything good to say about them. Nor does anyone else for that matter.

You may argue I'm being antisemitic, but I'd counter that they don't get to hold a religion hostage so they can be totally off the wall insane.

Christians: the symbol of the fish represents Jesus

Jews: Hold my beer, guys. We need to do something.

Same thing around the ex-island of Amsterdam: https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=1K9JpabMj1Wgdjy6O41T...

Learned about that years ago when I ran into one of the maintainers on a walk. It's... not something I understand, but do respect, given that it's ancient history that is older than, well, most living people, and entirely well-intentioned and harmless to non-believers.

The biblical idea is that you're supposed to stay home. The first level of cheat was that multiple buildings surrounded by a wall could be defined as "home". The next cheat level was that the concept of "wall" was defined down. I'm surprised that some clever religious type hasn't figured out a cheat to define the whole planet as "home".

It's all kind of tacky, like kosher elevators and kosher light switches. You're supposed to suffer a little.

As others have pointed out, as long as they're inventing rules and then imagining technicalities to avoid rules, they should just tie a string around a stick and make everything outside the stick inside the eruv. It would make just as much sense.