NEWS & POLITICS

checkered history, I’ve dubbed it the Stone Free Bridge, after the eponymous Jimi Hendrix song.

After the ceremony, Chicago Department of Transportation staff members pointed out a squarish steel archway on the east side of the bow truss bridge that I hadn’t noticed before. They said the structure was added to the span at the behest of Orthodox Jews as a portal to the West Rogers Park Eruv.

An eruv (pronounced “AY-roove”) is a symbolic enclosure around a Jewish community within which activities are permitted that would otherwise be banned during the Sabbath, Friday sunset to Saturday sundown (called Shabbat in Hebrew and Shabbos in Yiddish), as well as on Yom Kippur. An eruv is typically bounded by existing walls, utility poles, and wires, with additional infrastructure added if necessary to complete the circuit according to halakha, Jewish religious law. There’s also an eruv that straddles Lakeview and Lincoln Park by the lake, plus others in the northern suburbs of Lincolnwood, Skokie, Bu alo Grove, Northbrook, and Highland Park.