A suit alleging racial discrimination against Orthodox Jews has been filed against the town of Haverstraw after its planning board allegedly conspired to block plans by K’hal Bnei Torah of Mount Ivy to turn a single-family home into a shul.
The lawsuit specifically points a finger at three planning board members – Glenn Widmer, Joseph Michalak, and Robert Sambrato – who it says “succumbed to toxic anti-Semitic rhetoric from an angry group of their neighbors in response to Plaintiff’s efforts to establish a house of worship in the Town of Haverstraw.”
The lawsuit made specific note of anti-Semitic comments made by Haverstraw residents during a hearing last November. One resident drew widespread condemnation after going on an anti-Semitic tirade at the hearing, saying that if he struck an Orthodox Jew with his vehicle, he would “of course back over them again.”
The lawsuit, filed exactly a year after that hearing, accuses the planning board of denying shul members their right to freely exercise their religion in violation of state and federal law.
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3 Responses
When will they learn? They try this in every town that Jews move into and they lose every time. Pomona, Airmont and Chestnut Ridge have big, beautiful and vibrant Kehilos and Shuls in spite of the all out discrimination tried against them by the original residents. The toxic things that were said by the meetings in those villages would all be CNN headlines were they said publicly against black people who were moving into their communities. The double standard is orchestrated מן השמים .
עוצו עצה ותופר
this is how you create more antisemites