RA: In a move that some local Waterbury Conn. Orthodox Jews see as a blow to their growing community, the Zoning Board of Appeals has denied a request to turn a small Roseland Avenue home into a place of ritual purification.”It’s definitely a setback, because the mikvah is really important for the growth of the community,” said Shalom Siegfried, vice president of an Orthodox religious school called Yeshiva Gedolah that opened at the former University of Connecticut campus on Hillside Avenue in 2001.Since the school opened, more than 100 Orthodox families have settled in Waterbury, earning praise from some quarters for investing in declining housing stock. In order to sustain this community, three things are needed, Siegfried said: a school, a synagogue and a mikvah.A mikvah is essentially a place with a large pool for immersion and changing rooms for prayer and preparation. Women are required to visit a week after their menstrual cycles. Men visit before high holy days.
Waterbury already has one mikvah, at the B’nai Shalom Synagogue on Roseland Avenue. But community members say it’s small and overtaxed by the growing population. Members of the community bought a small house at 186 Roseland with the intention of rehabbing it for this purpose.
As a religious use, the group could locate virtually anywhere in the city, but the property is only about one-fourth the size typically required by building regulations, which were written with churches and larger places of worship in mind. So the group sought a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals, which unanimously turned down the proposal Wednesday.
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About a half dozen neighbors supporting the proposal either wrote letters to the board or attended the hearing. But nearly an equal number came out to protest. These neighbors contended that the mikvah would exacerbate parking problems, and complained that the Jewish community did a poor job maintaining the nearby B’nai Shalom synagogue property.
Ultimately, board members turned down the proposal, citing unanswered questions as to how many people would use the property and at what hours. Without this information, the board couldn’t assess possible negative impacts on the city, ZBA Chairman Joseph Caiazzo said.
“Before this came up, I had never even heard of a mikvah, I didn’t know what it was,” Caiazzo said. “They really couldn’t pinpoint what it was going to do, so there was a lot of uncertainty.”
Caiazzo and other board members suggested they would be more comfortable if the mikvah were slated for a commercial building.
Despite the denial, the mikvah proposal is still alive. Caiazzo said he will allow the project proponents to return to the board’s September meeting to try and better plead their case.
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