Haverstraw Agrees to Settlement Allowing Shul Construction

By Reuvain Borchardt

HAVERSTRAW, N.Y. — The Town of Haverstraw has agreed to drop its fight with an Orthodox Jewish congregation seeking to build a shul on a private-home lot, saying preventing the shul’s construction would violate federal law and result in costly litigation. The settlement agreement raised the ire of some area residents vocally opposed to the shul who say they are concerned about changes to the nature of the suburban community brought by a house of worship, but whom the Orthodox Jewish supporters of the shul accuse of engaging in thinly veiled antisemitism.

The settlement agreement allows K’hal Bnei Torah of Mount Ivy to build a shul at 62 Riverglen Drive, with slight modifications to its plans, and with the town reimbursing the congregation $235,000 for attorneys’ fees.

Mount Ivy is a neighborhood in Haverstraw, a Rockland County town that approximately 300 Orthodox Jews have moved into during the last five years, located five miles from heavily-Orthodox Monsey.

K’hal Bnei Torah first submitted its application to convert and expand the home into a shul, to the Town Planning Board in January 2021.

During the approval process, the congregation agreed to make modifications including adding parking spaces, retaining walls and other improvements, and reducing the size of the proposed shul from 200 seats to 107 seats.

The congregation planned to create a parking lot in an area that required a conservation easement due to environmental conditions.

According to the congregation, the Town Planning Board initially indicated support for the easement as the conservation area “no longer served its intended function”; the Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously granted all variances necessary for the construction to go forward, related to conditions on the property and its conversion to a house of worship; the Planning Board declared last June, by a 4-1 vote, that the shul’s construction plan “will not result in any significant adverse environmental impacts”; and the Planning Board’s attorney “drafted a proposed resolution granting final site plan approval to the project.”

But at the Planning Board meeting last August, the proposed resolution to allow the plan to go forward failed by a 3-2 margin; two of the “no” votes had voted in June that the shul would not have an adverse environmental impact.

The congregation filed a federal lawsuit against the town, the Planning Board and the three individual Planning Board members who voted “no.”

The suit alleges violations of the U.S. and New York Constitutions’ rights to freedom of religion, due process and equal protection; and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which prohibits government from applying a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person or institution and where there are no adequate alternatives.

The congregation alleged that the Planning Board voted against the resolution due to pressure from residents who had showed up to Board meetings at which the plan was discussed.

The meetings grew heated at times, with some accusing those speaking in sharp opposition to the shul of engaging in antisemitism.

One particular meeting in November 2021 made national news, when a resident who identified himself as Nick Colella of 45 Riverglen Drive — across the street from the proposed shul — fantasized about running his car over Jews.

At the start of a public meeting Monday night, first the Planning Board and then the Town Council voted, 5-0 each, to adopt the settlement agreement, on the advice of its attorneys who said it could not win the lawsuit and that continuing to fight it could cost the town millions.

 “We have a team of attorneys,” Kenneth Pitcoff, whose law firm was hired by the town’s insurance company to defend the suit, said at the meeting Monday. “We all looked at this, and we all came to the conclusion pretty quickly that the case was not defensible, and frankly, it wasn’t a close call.” Pitcoff’s comments — as well as the comments of other officials during the evening — were interrupted by jeers and negative comments from the assembled crowd, nearly all of whom appeared to oppose the shul. “I think if you asked 100 attorneys who do this type of law, I think 100 out of 100 would have said the same thing. It’s not a close call under the (RLUIPA) law as it exists.”

According to Pitcoff, if the town had lost the case “which we believe it almost certainly would have,” it would have been subject to the congregation’s economic damages and attorneys’ fees, which he estimated at as much as $2 million, and the Planning Board members “could have been made to pay punitive damages personally, out of their own pocket.”

Pitcoff noted that in a similar RLUIPA case in New Jersey, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the municipality — which may result in the DoJ “installing someone as part of the Town Board in the future, which I don’t think anybody wants. So legally it was our opinion that this is absolutely the right move to do and to do now.”

Town Supervisor Howard Phillips, who chaired the meeting, strongly supported the settlement with the congregation while scuffling with the rowdy assemblage.

“We have a sworn oath to uphold the Constitution of both the United States and the State of New York,”  said Phillips. “Without question, RLUIPA has been upheld by the courts. It is law.”

This was the latest RLUIPA-related case that has arisen in various towns in upstate New York and in New Jersey, as Orthodox Jews have moved into the towns for the first time.

Typically, the cases arise after the towns deny the Jews permits to erect an eruv, a school or a shul. The town leaders, and the residents who support them, refuse these permits on the grounds that they violate local laws — and sometimes the towns enact new zoning laws as Orthodox populations grow. More broadly, some residents complain that allowing increased construction would lead to overdevelopment and change the suburban nature of the areas. But the Orthodox communities allege that the residents are engaging in thinly veiled, or at times overt, antisemitic rhetoric and actions, passing and enforcing laws that serve to restrict Orthodox growth.

In nearly all these suits, the Orthodox communities have either won or received favorable settlements, but often only after protracted and acrimonious legal battles.

Following the vote at Monday night’s meeting, some residents spoke, reiterating their opposition to the shul that many of them have voiced in meetings during the past two years.

“The congregation knowingly came into a neighborhood where there were no houses of worship,” said one resident, who runs a group called Citizens United to Protect Our Neighborhoods (CUPON). “Why did they do that? If their rule is that they have to walk [on the Sabbath], why did this religious group come in to come into our neighborhood and try to transform it?”

“This is not the community or the town that we expected to live in,” said the first resident who spoke. “Once you transform a home into a place of worship, they get an exemption from paying taxes. Where does that tax burden go? To us, the homeowner.”

Some residents complained that the Orthodox were driving prices down, others that they were driving prices up. Some said their opposition was based on a house of worship’s tax exemption, or an influx of cars or garbage that comes along with crowds attending a house of worship. The shul’s supporters allege these are all excuses for opposing Orthodox Jews moving into the community.

The speakers took pains to mention that they were Jewish, or had Jewish relatives or friends, and were not motivated by antisemitism.

“You have a lot of families’ lives in your hands, and because some applicants say the word ‘antisemitism,’ everyone is afraid,” said one speaker. “Everyone is afraid to be marked as antisemitic when … that’s totally not the case. Everyone could live with everyone. I just don’t feel that the best interests of us, the community has been taken into account.”

All the residents who spoke Monday night — approximately 20, some of whom spoke more than once, over the course of two hours — opposed the shul. There were fewer than 10 Orthodox Jews in attendance. One Orthodox resident told Hamodia that the Orthodox community specifically did not show up to the meeting, so as to avoid confrontation and knowing the  settlement would  pass anyway.

“You saw a lot of people animated against the community, all claiming they are not antisemites and they love Jews – but their complaints were not about Khal Bnei Torah, but about the Jewish community at large,” said the Orthodox resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Many of them don’t live anywhere near the proposed shul.”

“As for the complaints themselves, these are just excuses for antisemitism. Is there more garbage? Last week when there was a big windstorm, yes, my garbage ended up on my neighbor’s lawn — but his garbage ended up on mine, too, and I did not complain. And nobody is blocking any resident’s driveways. Some residents are unhappy that they no longer have a big buffer zone around their driveway and actually have to look for other cars when backing out.”

“But not everyone’s who’s complaining is antisemitic,” the Orthodox resident said. “Some people are just afraid of change.”

One resident who spoke in opposition to the shul said, “My neighborhood has just changed in the past like three, four years. You know, there’s probably four or five families on my block left, and that’s it. All the rest have changed hands.”

Another resident, noting the growing Orthodox population, asked, “Does that mean we’re going to have to build more or they’re going to ask for more? Where does this end?”

“It’s very sad, and it’s hard, when you feel like you’re being pushed out,” said another resident.

One speaker pointed to the town’s logo, on the wall behind the Council members,  which says the town was established in 1616. “You know what comes to my mind?” the man said. “2023, we’re done.”

Phillips, the Town Supervisor who has supported the shul’s application, at times appears sympathetic to some of the residents’ complaints — particularly about houses of worship being exempt from taxes — but repeatedly reiterated that the congregation had the law on its side.

“They have cases that show that they’re entitled to have a house of worship,” Phillips said. “We may disagree with that, we may not like it, but they have the law on their side. And it’s unfortunate that we have to have a divided community. But if you listen to the congregation, they say, ‘This is our right. You’re keeping us from practicing our religion.’ You may not agree with it. But the courts have … By G-d, we’re going to go and abide by the law. We’re not going to go down that path other municipalities have and they wind up paying millions of dollars back to whoever sued them.”

Many of the speakers said they wished to see RLUIPA overturned, and three town residents who live on the block of the proposed shul have indeed filed  a federal lawsuit seeing to overturn the law, which passed both houses of Congress by unanimous consent and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

The suit says RLUIPA is unconstitutional because “it is irrational and arbitrary in that imposes a potential death sentence on all State regulation of land use applications”; it “conflicts” with the “present test” for religion cases by the current Supreme Court; it “unreasonably discriminates in favor of, and endroses, religion and religious practice over secular conduct and secular practice; and “it is irrational and arbitrary in that it is utterly devoid of congruence and proportionality to its alleged ‘remedial or preventive object.’”

Josh Blackman, a conservative constitutional scholar who teaches at South Texas College of Law Houston, told Hamodia, “I don’t think this claim will go very far,” noting that RLUIPA was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005.

The current Supreme Court is considered the most supportive of religious liberties of any in decades, if not longer.

Yehudah Buchweitz, attorney for the congregation, told Hamodia the suit “has no merit and we will move to dismiss it.” His initial motion is due next week.

The settelement agreement is available here

The lawsut challenging RLUIPA is available here

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rborchardt@hamodia.com