“There is also the opinion that even full mechitzos are not enough for an open area where the public gathers. Rav Moshe expands this opinion and then says his shtikkel about Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim was fully enclosed but yet had a rsh”r inside it. This seems to uphold this opinion. And it is clear that there were times that putting up an eruv in a metropolis is not a given. And this that the minhag is to be zealous about putting up eruvin that is because they understood that there needs to be 600,000 for a rsh”r. All eruvin that were put up were in cities without 600,000. And we have no minhag to be lenient about this. This is clearly Rav Moshe’s psak not to put up an eruv without precedence.”
Major conflation of the issues. Rav Moshe maintains (O.C. 1:139) that mechitzos would not be sufficient for sratyas. Rav Moshe also states that we do not have a minhag regarding sratyas in cities containing shishim ribo. Rav Moshe argues that they did no establish an eruv for Yerushalyim even though it is a chiyuv to establish one, was because they did not want that those who come to Yerushlayim should establish eruvin in cities that are prohibited. Manhattan he compares to Yerushalyim, and Brooklyn he says is possibly like Yerushalyim regarding this issue.
Later Rav Moshe writes (O.C. 4:87-88, and Hapardus) that the minhag was to establish eruvin in cities containing shishim ribo, and hence, he sets forth his chiddush of three million over a 12 mil by 12 mil area. He also admits that the population of a 12 mil by 12 mil area is reckoned for a srtaya, and not the entire city. Rav Moshe also writes regarding Manhattan that once the rabbanim establish an eruv he would not make use of his argument regarding Yerushalyim.
There is no three million people over an area of 12 mil by 12 mil in Brooklyn. There is no sratya that services a 12 mil by 12 mil area that contains shishim ribo. If Manhattan after the establishment of the eruv, Yerushalyim was not a concern, how much more so regarding Brooklyn where he questioned if it can even be compared to Yerushalyim.
[Rav Moshe’s argument regarding Yerushalyim is puzzling. In fact there is no ciyuv to make an eruv for an entire city, only maavaos and chatzeiros. Some Rishonim actually state that an eruv was made for the maavaos and chatzeiros of Yerushlayim.]
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