Many parts of town have boundaries drawn around them. These boundaries are usually in people’s minds. They mark the end of one activity, one kind of place, and the beginning of another. In many cases, the activities themselves are made more sharp, more vivid, more alive, if the boundary which exists in people’s minds is also present physically in the world.–A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander

I was looking around on flickr recently, and I came across a photo set called something like “Wires on the light poles.” This was a set of photos that documented the photographer vandalizing an eruv in New York City to accumulate evidence of suspicious wires on utility poles. In his words: “Is this fiber optic? Are they transferring information? Is it a trap for tall trucks?”

Not that I’m such a well-informed goy that I know the difference between a matzoh ball and a meatball, but I live in a neighborhood with the Midwest’s largest Jewish Orthodox population—and an eruv.

On the Sabbath and Jewish holidays, Orthodox Jews observe a number of prohibitions, among these is no carrying from a private domain into a public domain and vice versa. This means no carrying of car keys, sun glasses, or pushing baby strollers or wheelchairs—a drag if you want to get out on the Sabbath and walk to temple with your nonambulatory baby or bring a bottle of Manischewitz over to the neighbor’s for Shabbos dinner.

The Hebrew word eruv means “mixture” or “joining together,” as in the joining together of public and private space. An eruv integrates private and public properties into one larger private domain. So the boundaries between private and public are enlarged and carrying is permitted. By some complicated process involving symbolism and thousands of years of Jewish law, an eruv is a wall that is a series of doorways.

If that still doesn’t tell the not-a-Jews among us what an eruv is, look up. No, not look it up. Look up up up. An eruv is an actual physical construction, usually formed by nonconductive wire or cable strung between light or utility poles. Yeah, those wires.

I had been intending to write about boundaries for this column, those visible and invisible, how we mark where we belong and how we formalize our community, the gateways we pass through, the significance of our boundaries being recognized or not, what we carry with us…

The things we carry. That’s what I’m writing about.

The West Rogers Park eruv exists physically in the world and its existence demarcates a community and the activities of that community become “more sharp, more vivid, more alive” because of that demarcation. Boundaries construct our identities and clarify what we can carry, whether keys or babies, whether the key is a green card or a bank card, whether the baby is carried across the border on her mother’s back or rides in a Burley, whether we are on our way to pray, on our way to a new life, or just on our way to a decaf latte.

[I]t seems that whatever it is that is holy will only be felt as holy, if it is hard to reach, if it requires layers of access, waiting, levels of approach, a gradual unpeeling, gradual revelation, passage through a series of gates. –A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander

And when our walls are built, when we stand at the doorways, how do we enter the holy? Where are my own boundaries between private and public enlarged? What do I carry within these borders? Do I go to pray with just a key in my hand?

We carry resentment and longings; our nephew flipping his hair, a fat old orange cat, homegrown tomatoes. We carry water bottles and cell phones, lipstick and sunscreen, notebooks and pens, umbrellas, chips and nuts and little candies, Xanax, Vicodin, and aspirin; condoms, the latest New Yorker, a Swiss Army knife, a pair of channel lock pliers, a flashlight. We fill our pockets and carry purses and backpacks, roller bags and black plastic trash bags. We carry our ethnic and national identities, our imagined versions of ourselves, our higher educations, our diagnoses, diseases, and addictions; our redemptive desire. We carry cigarettes and identification, latex gloves, memorial cards of the dead, a spent shotgun shell, loose change, sugar-free gum, a note that reads: “East is toward the lake. Feta cheese. Read Emerson.”

Tim O’Brien wrote about what soldiers carry in war. They carry guns and love letters, the New Testament. I carry abundance and impatience, a Metro card and Life Savers.

Within my borders—West Rogers Park, the 50^th Ward—I pass through a series of gateways–the Georgian bakery on Devon, Warren Park where the dogs run, the empty Z Frank Chevrolet dealership on Western, the halal and kosher grocers. I am enclosed and enlarged by the walls around me. My hands are empty. Invisible wires guide me. I look up.