An eruv (literally, “merger”) is an elaborate fiction in Jewish law that allows the observant to skirt the prohibition on carrying objects out of doors on the Sabbath. Usually involving the symbolic enclosure of an area of a city with telephone poles and strings, an eruv tends to require the cooperation of municipal authorities. Simon Rocker explains how English Jewry’s attitude toward this institution has changed in recent years:

Unsurprisingly, British Jewry, not given to drawing too much attention to itself, did not go in for eruv building until recently. When the first metropolitan eruv was launched 21 years ago, covering a significant area in north-west London, it was transformative, liberating in particular young buggy-pushing parents. Its creation signaled a new self-confidence and its success inspired others; there are now more than a dozen eruvim operating across the country.

So normal a part of the Anglo-Jewish landscape have eruvim becme that it’s easy to forget how controversial the first initially proved. It took more than a decade from initial planning to the erection of the first poles. Objections poured into the local council. Some liberal Jews feared that the device would encourage a “ghetto” mentality. Secularists decried the intrusion of religious apparatus into the public square.

It is a sign of change that whereas the inaugural eruv faced a planning battle, the new Golders Green eruv went through almost on the nod.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.