Hundreds of Charedi families in Stamford Hill and Tottenham are set to benefit on Shabbat as the area’s first town eruv is due to go live on Friday.

The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregrations has finally approved the borders of the eruv zone which will run from South Tottenham Synagogue in the north and cover a sizeable part of the east of Stamford Hill.

While there had been growing grassroots pressure for a local eruv in recent years, it was the confinement of families during lockdown that eventually swayed the presiding rabbinate.

In a notice to the community, the Union’s rabbinate explained that both its current leader, Rabbi Ephraim Padwa and his predecessor, his father, had had halachic doubts about an eruv in London.

“However, after recent discovery that the Tottenham area is surrounded by three mechitzos [partitions], amongst other halachic findings, it has become possible to carry this out in this area,” the rabbinate explained.

The decision was also taken due to the “increasing and large families living in small confined apartments”.

The area is bounded on three sides by the overground railway, the River Lea and Springfield park. Permission was obtained from the relevant councils to mark out the rest of the boundary inside which it is permitted to carry certain items or push prams on Shabbat.

A map setting out the boundaries is being distributed to residents by the recently established Union eruv committee headed by Rabbis Mordche Eisner and Mordche Zvi Pesach.

While the principle of the eruv had been approved last month, it took several more weeks for the rabbis to finalise the borders

The committee will “also erect notices at the streets, bearing the seal of the Beis Din, at the end of the eruv boundaries. It will be forbidden to carry in any location outside those boundaries".

The eruv zone will include many synagogues such as the Belz community in Craven Walk, although it will not now cover the New Synagogue in Egerton Road, which is the home of the Bobovs.