Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-17T13:06:23.628Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The difference a wire makes: planning law, public Orthodox Judaism and urban space in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2021

Mareike Riedel*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: riedel@mmg.mpg.de

Abstract

This paper considers a planning dispute that surrounded the construction of a Jewish religious installation (called an eruv) in the public urban space of an Australian suburb. The aim of this case-study is to examine the role of law in regulating Jewish difference – a topic that has to date received little attention in the socio-legal literature concerned with the governance of religious diversity. In analysing residents’ objections to the eruv, the paper explores long-standing anxieties about Jewish particularity in Australia and beyond as they surfaced in opposition to the eruv. It shows how the law continues to exclude certain forms of Jewish difference that are perceived as transgressing dominant religious and racial norms. Moreover, the paper highlights the particular ways in which planning law assigned value to these anxieties and legitimised the marginalisation of Orthodox Jews, emphasising the significance of local law as a site for exclusion and inequality.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamski, K (2008) Siege over imaginary wall, North Shore Times, 19 September 2008.Google Scholar
Aly, A and Walker, D (2007) Veiled threats: recurrent cultural anxieties in Australia. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 27, 203214.10.1080/13602000701536141CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batnitzky, L (2011) How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400839711CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaman, LG (2012) Battles over symbols: the ‘religion' of the minority versus the ‘culture’ of the majority. Journal of Law and Religion 28, 67104.10.1017/S0748081400000242CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhandar, B (2009) The ties that bind: multiculturalism and secularism reconsidered. Journal of Law and Society 36, 301326.10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00469.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birnbaum, P and Katznelson, I (1995) Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blomley, N (2007) How to turn a beggar into a bus stop: law, traffic and the ‘function of the place’. Urban Studies 44, 16971712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brady, F (2011) Four years on, still eruv uncertainty, North Shore Times, 26 August 2011, p. 8.Google Scholar
Brodkin, K (1998) How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, W (2006) Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in an Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bugg, LB (2013) Citizenship and belonging in the rural fringe: a case study of a Hindu temple in Sydney, Australia. Antipode 45, 11481166.Google Scholar
Burchardt, M (2019) Religion in urban assemblages: space, law, and power. Religion, State & Society 47, 374389.10.1080/09637494.2019.1652020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charlesworth, H (1993) The Australian reluctance about rights. Osgoode Hall Law Journal 31, 195232.Google Scholar
Chavura, S and Tregenza, I (2014) Introduction: Rethinking secularism in Australia (and beyond). Journal of Religious History 38, 299306.10.1111/1467-9809.12078CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiodelli, F and Moroni, S (2017) Planning, pluralism and religious diversity: critically reconsidering the spatial regulation of mosques in Italy starting from a much debated law in the Lombardy region. Cities 62, 6270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, J and Iveson, K (2014) An eruv for St Ives? Religion, identity, place and conflict on the Sydney North Shore. Australian Geographer 45, 429446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, D (1996) Talmudic territory? Space, law, and modernist discourse. Journal of Law and Society 23, 529548.10.2307/1410479CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornwall, D (2010) The eruv, ABC News, 9 July 2010. Available at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-07-09/the-eruv/899286 (accessed 8 December 2020).Google Scholar
Dandy, J and Pe-Pua, R (2010) Attitudes to multiculturalism, immigration and cultural diversity: comparison of dominant and non-dominant groups in three Australian states. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 34, 3446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, M (2011) The future of secularism: a critique. In Hosen, N and Mohr, R (eds), Law and Religion in Public Life: The Contemporary Debate. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 5266.Google Scholar
Dunn, K (2001) Representations of Islam in the politics of mosque development in Sydney. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 92, 291308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, K (2005) Repetitive and troubling discourses of nationalism in the local politics of mosque development in Sydney, Australia. Environment and Planning D 23, 2950.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, K et al. (2001) Multicultural policy within local government in Australia. Urban Studies 38, 24772494.10.1080/00420980120094623CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, C (2008) Religion as politics not law: the religion clauses in the Australian Constitution. Religion, State & Society 36, 283302.10.1080/09637490802260369CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, SM (1998) Please Don't Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Fonrobert, CE (2015) Installations of Jewish law in public urban space: an American eruv controversy. Chicago-Kent Law Review 90, 6377.Google Scholar
Forrest, J and Dunn, K (2006) ‘Core’ culture hegemony and multiculturalism: perceptions of the privileged position of Australians with British backgrounds. Ethnicities 6, 203230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freimark, P (1983) Eruw/‘Judentore’: Zur Geschichte einer rituellen Institution im Hamburger Raum (Und Anderswo). In Freimark, P et al. (eds), Judentore, Kuggel, Steuerkonten. Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, pp. 1055.Google Scholar
Gale, N (1994) A case of double-rejection: the immigration of Sephardim to Australia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 20, 269286.10.1080/1369183X.1994.9976423CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guggenheim, M (2010) The laws of foreign buildings: flat roofs and minarets. Social & Legal Studies 19, 441460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hage, G (2000) White Nation. Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. New York/London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ham, BK (1997) Exclusionary zoning and racial segregation: a reconsideration of the Mount Laurel Doctrine. Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal 7, 577616.Google Scholar
Herman, D (2006) ‘An unfortunate coincidence’: Jews and Jewishness in twentieth-century English judicial discourse. Journal of Law and Society 33, 277301.10.1111/j.1467-6478.2006.00358.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, D (2011) An Unfortunate Coincidence: Jews, Jewishness, and English law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heschel, S (1999) Revolt of the colonized: Abraham Geiger's Wissenschaft des Judentums as a challenge to Christian hegemony in the academy. New German Critique 77, 6185.10.2307/488522CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hess, JM (2002) Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Horsburgh, B (1999) The myth of a model minority: the transformation of knowledge into power. UCLA Women's Law Journal 10, 165202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hubbard, P (2012) Kissing is not a universal right: sexuality, law and the scales of citizenship. Geoforum 49, 224232.10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.08.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hubbard, P and Prior, J (2018) Law, pliability and the multicultural city: documenting planning law in action. The Geographical Journal 184, 5363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huffer, J (2010) Song and dance over carols, North Shore Times, 22 October 2010, p. 5.Google Scholar
Jivraj, S (2013) The Religion of Law: Race, Citizenship and Children's Belonging. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judd, R (2007) Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843–1933. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kalman, M (1997) The trouble begins when Jews stop being invisible, The Independent, 31 May. Available at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/the-trouble-begins-when-jews-stop-being-invisible-1264355.html (accessed 8 December 2020).Google Scholar
Knoll, DD (2016) Protecting religious freedom and places of worship – the example of the eruv. Solidarity: The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics 7, 118.Google Scholar
Ku-ring-gai Council (2016) Agenda for Ordinary Meeting, 8 November 2016.Google Scholar
Ku-ring-gai Council (2011a) Agenda of Ordinary Meeting of Council, 23 August 2011.Google Scholar
Ku-ring-gai Council (2011b) Minutes of Ordinary Meeting of Council, 23 August 2011.Google Scholar
Ku-ring-gai, Planning Panel (2011) Agenda, 6 April 2011.Google Scholar
Levey, GB (2004) Jews and Australian multiculturalism. In Levey, GB and Mendes, P (eds), Jews and Australian Politics. Brighton/Portland: Sussex Academic Press, pp. 179197.Google Scholar
Levey, GB (2012) Multiculturalism and Australian national identity. In Levey, GB (ed.), Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism. New York/Oxford: Berghahn, pp. 254276.Google Scholar
Levi, J (2011) St Ives eruv turned down by council, The Australian Jewish News, 25 August. Available at https://ajn.timesofisrael.com/st-ives-eruv-turned-down-by-council/ (accessed 4 January 2021).Google Scholar
Levi, J (2012) Eruv now only one pole away, The Australian Jewish News, 22 March 2012. Available at https://ajn.timesofisrael.com/eruv-now-only-one-pole-away/ (accessed 4 January 2021).Google Scholar
Mancini, S (2009) The power of symbols and symbols as power: secularism and religion as guarantors of cultural convergence. Cardozo Law Review 30, 26292669.Google Scholar
Mancini, S (2012) Patriarchy as the exclusive domain of the other: the veil controversy, false projection and cultural racism. International Journal of Constitutional Law 10, 411428.10.1093/icon/mor061CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meer, N (2013) Racialization and religion: race, culture and difference in the study of antisemitism and Islamophobia. Ethnic and Racial Studies 36, 385398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michelmore, K (2012) Court to decide on religious structure, ABC Sydney, 19 March. Available at http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/02/07/3424598.htm (accessed 8 December 2020).Google Scholar
Moran, A (2011) Multiculturalism as nation-building in Australia: inclusive national identity and the embrace of diversity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34, 21532172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piggin, S (2014) Power and religion in a modern state: desecularisation in Australian history. Journal of Religious History 38, 320340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rapana, J (2016a) Ku-ring-gai Council takes on prominent Jewish community over St Ives eruv, North Shore Times, 30 June 2016. Available at https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/north-shore/kuringgai-council-takes-on-prominent-jewish-community-over-st-ives-eruv/news-story/c7e0176213109548d295e61cdb01f4e3 (accessed 4 January 2021).Google Scholar
Rapana, J (2016b) Nazi sign ‘hatred at its worst’, North Shore Times, 30 September 2016, p. 7.Google Scholar
Razack, SH (2007) The ‘sharia law debate’ in Ontario: the modernity/premodernity distinction in legal efforts to protect women from culture. Feminist Legal Studies 15, 332.10.1007/s10691-006-9050-xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Razack, SH (2008) Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Ruming, K and Houston, D (2013) Enacting planning borders: consolidation and resistance in Ku-ring-gai, Sydney. Australian Planner 50, 123129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutland, SD (1997) Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia. Rose Bay: Brandl & Schlesinger.Google Scholar
Rutland, SD (2003) Postwar anti-Jewish refugee hysteria: a case of racial or religious bigotry? Journal of Australian Studies 27, 6979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandercock, L (2000) When strangers become neighbours: managing cities of difference. Planning Theory & Practice 1, 1330.10.1080/14649350050135176CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlör, J (2005) Das Ich der Stadt: Debatten Über Judentum und Urbanität 1822–1938. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stratton, J (2000) Coming Out Jewish. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stratton, J (2016) Whiteness, morality and Christianity in Australia. Journal of Intercultural Studies 37, 1732.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Susman, AL (2009) Strings attached: an analysis of the eruv under the religion clauses of the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class 9, 93134.Google Scholar
Thorpe, A (2017) Between rights in the city and the right to the city: heritage, character and public participation in urban planning. In Durbach, A and Lixinski, L (eds), Heritage, Culture and Rights: Challenging Legal Discourses. Oxford/Portland: Hart, pp. 121147.Google Scholar
Tovey, J (2010) Residents draw line over Jewish boundary, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 July 2010. Available at https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/residents-draw-line-over-jewish-boundary-20100702-zu5p.html (accessed 4 January 2021).Google Scholar
Trudeau, D (2006) Politics of belonging in the construction of place-making, boundary-drawing and exclusion. Cultural Geographies 13, 421443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turnbull, MJ (1999) Safe haven: records of the Jewish experience in Australia. National Archives of Australia, Research Guide No. 12. Available at https://www.naa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-06/research-guide-safe-haven.pdf (accessed 4 January 2021).Google Scholar
Valverde, M (2005) Taking ‘land use’ seriously: toward an ontology of municipal law. Law Text Culture 9, 3459.Google Scholar
Valverde, M (2012) Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance in an Age of Diversity. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Villaroman, NG (2012) ‘Not in my backyard’: the local planning process in Australia and its impact on minority places of worship. Religion and Human Rights 7, 215239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, S (2005) Symbolic spaces of difference: contesting the eruv in Barnet, London and Tenafly, New Jersey. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23, 597613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, C (2006) The public interest: we know it's important, but do we know what it means. AIAL Forum 48, 1225.Google Scholar
Williams, G (2002) Human Rights under the Australian Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar