A cyclist demands change after a wire stretched across Lincoln Memorial Drive by an Orthodox Jewish group fell and hit him in the neck.
Rabbi Yisroel Lein, of Chabad on the East Side, said the wire was repaired quickly and that he will abide by any changes Milwaukee County officials dictate about the wire’s placement. It’s part of a mile-long perimeter of cables around Milwaukee’s east side that Lein said are inspected weekly.
The eruv, as the perimeter is called, eases the Shabbat restrictions of Orthodox Jewish residents. It is in response to a Torah law that prohibits carrying items outside a private space, such as a home, on Saturdays. The perimeter acts as a symbolic boundary that extends the ‘house’ into the wider neighborhood, allowing Orthodox families to push strollers, walk dogs, and carry bags.
Yet Ronald Ekker, the injured cyclist, claims the thin wires pose a “risk to public safety” if they fall.
“Public safety must be prioritized regardless of one’s religious beliefs,” Ekker said.
Ekker said he was riding his electric bicycle down a hill on Lincoln Memorial Drive near the Linnwood Water Treatment Plant on September 18, going up to 25 miles per hour, when a wire got caught around his neck. It was attached to a light pole at one end and had come loose from another anchor on the other side of the dual carriageway.
So when he ran into it, the entire 60-foot-long wire skated over his neck, he said, leaving marks on the front, side and back of his neck.
“It happened so quickly that you couldn’t really see it because it was so thin,” Ekker said. “To be honest, I thought I was going to be beheaded.”
Ekker knew nothing about the eruv and thought for days that it was a booby trap or some sort of prank. He spoke to local TV news stations about the wire without knowing it was placed there for religious reasons.
Lein called Ekker to apologize personally, and Ekker accepted his apology, but he was not swayed from his belief that thin, nearly invisible wires, like the one that injured him, “defy common sense.”
More: A new eruv being established on the north coast will ease Shabbat restrictions for Orthodox Jews
The wire perimeter includes 5 square miles on the east side, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay
The eruv strung along the east side was built up over several years and completed in 2023, according to the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. The piece of wire Ekker came across had been on the ground for three years, Lein said.
Lein suspects that a large truck transporting equipment to the road construction area at the corner of Lincoln Memorial and Lake Drives struck the wire and caused it to fall. Normally there are no large trucks in that area, he said.
“It was really a freak accident,” Lein said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have everything under control.”
This is the third time an eruv wire has fallen over east side roads in recent years, Lein said. In the other two cases, a truck and a tree branch were to blame.
“Every time a cable break occurs somewhere, it is repaired immediately,” Lein said. He added that a group of people check the eruv weekly to ensure it is intact, because a broken boundary would mean Orthodox residents would not be able to move outside on Shabbat.
The east side eruv covers about 5 square miles, according to the Jewish Chronicle, and includes the east side, Shorewood and part of Whitefish Bay. There are also eruvs in Mequon, Bayside, Glendale and Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood.
Because the land where Ekker was injured is managed by Milwaukee County, Lein said county attorneys will determine whether a wire over the road would pose undue liability. If it is, and they ask him to move it, he will, he said.
“We will certainly do everything we can to limit the risk of injuries,” he said.
Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter covering religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at scarson@gannett.com or 920-323-5758.
This article originally appeared in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: After fallen wire injures cyclist, Orthodox Jewish group apologizes
