This chapter is the first of two that examine the legal encounter with Jewishness in public space by focussing on the Orthodox practice of the eruv. The eruv is a distinctly Orthodox practice and fault lines here do not run simply between Jews and non-Jews but also between different Jews. In the modern secular legal arena, questions of non-establishment and the boundaries of religious freedom serve as the dominant legal frames, turning the eruv into a matter of excessive religiosity to be contained by law. Yet underneath the lofty language of constitutional separation often lurk concerns about national and local identity as well as sovereignty and ownership. Moreover, while circumcision has often galvanised Jews of different denominations, the eruv exposes internal Jewish rifts about Jewish identity and difference in contemporary societies. Indeed, some Jews themselves have not shied away from mobilising the authority of secular law to enforce their vision of what they consider the acceptable boundaries of Jewishness today.

In Sydney’s north, planning for an eruv began in the early 2000s by a group of Shabbat-observant Jews. What looked like an innocent project that did not involve much more than erecting a couple of poles in inconspicuous colours with wire attached to them, most of them on private land with the consent of the owners, became a several years-long dispute in which the imagined boundary turned into a real one for many residents, which they sought to prevent by recourse to planning law. This chapter explores how residents and councillors in St. Ives mobilised planning law to draw the acceptable boundaries of Jewishness. By analysing public documents, including a survey on the eruv commissioned by the Local Council as well as Council meeting minutes, media reports, and submissions to local newspapers, I trace the implicit religious and racial boundaries of belonging in this Australian suburb that the eruv rendered visible and I examine how the planning law regime participated in protecting these boundaries, thereby affirming White Christian settlers as rightful inhabitants of this suburban land.