The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

The article really neglects to explain what an eruv is and why you would want it. Wikipedia's much more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv

Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "home" so you can do things like, say, take your baby for a weekend stroll on a nice day or walk outside with a cane. It's more nuanced than this, there's a whole bunch of rules about what you can't do and about how big an eruv can be and what you have to do to make it valid.

(I am not Jewish so do not ask me for any further details on this.)

In the Jewish tradition, nobody is tricking God. There's a long history of legalism in the religion - God sets out his commandments in language and you take that language at face value. Exact interpretation of that text is then debated by religious scholars, but the meaning of the words is entirely contained in the text.

For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.

Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.

Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.

It's not about tricking G-D it's about rationalizing one's own beliefs. Jews have to have their own personal understanding about the relationship. We already know from the story of Jonah that there is no tricking G-d. This more about community understanding.

God didn't make a mistake when writing the Torah. That "one weird trick" as you call it is as fundamental a part of his will as every else.

Also most Jewish laws don't come from God. Instead, they come from the confluence of two doctrines: first we develop fence laws to keep ourselves from accidentally violating the actual laws. But, once we have been doing something long enough, they become Minhag and given more or less the full force of law. Naturally, this leads to new fence laws being developed around them, and the cycle continues.

Frankly, almost no Jewish law comes from God, and he has no business telling us what to do.