The faith of Orthodox Jews forbids them from pushing or carrying objects outside their homes on the Sabbath and on Yom Kippur. In accordance with a religious convention practiced for over 2,000 years, however, Orthodox Jews are relieved from such prohibitions within an eruv, which is a ritual demarcation of an area.

Centuries ago, an eruv would have been built using ropes and wooden poles. Nowadays, as described several years ago by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, an eruv is an unbroken delineation of an area created by using telephone poles, utility poles, wires, and already-existing boundaries, and by attaching “lechis” to the sides of the poles. See East End Eruv Ass’n v. Town of Southampton, No. CV 13-4810 (AKT) (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 24, 2014). Lechis are typically hard plastic strips of the type generally used to cover wires on utility poles. Unless one knows which plastic strips are lechis and which are utility wire covers, it may be virtually impossible to distinguish the two.

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