April 15, 2003 New shul or bust By URIEL HEILMAN NEW ROCHELLE Rats. Anti-Semites. Christian corpses. There is a storm brewing in the Queen City of the Sound. New Rochelle, a picturesque suburb in New York's affluent Westchester County, just north of the city, is the site of a heated battle over construction of a new synagogue that is pitting members of a burgeoning Orthodox congregation against neighbors, city hall, and some of its own congregants. Charges of anti-Semitism and anti-Orthodoxy by one side are being met with accusations of intimidation by the other, and the intensity of the dispute, which has set neighbor against neighbor, is reaching a level usually reserved for spats like the Arab-Israeli conflict, not suburban squabbles. The story of the Young Israel of New Rochelle and its decade-long effort to erect a new synagogue seems to be as much about the difficulty of reaching consensus among Jews as it is about hostility toward Jews. What is certain is that the issue has ignited passions in this otherwise quiet city, hindering an Orthodox synagogue's plans to build a new edifice large enough to accommodate its congregation and raising the ire of city residents sufficiently so that lawsuits, grass-roots protests and stormy public meetings have been the result. Now, a fight that has been nearly 20 years in the making-since the Young Israel first began considering expansion plans-is nearing its apex. Synagogue officials behind the construction plans are vowing to defeat a pair of lawsuits that seek to block construction. Those behind the legal action, some of whom have been branded anti-Semitic or anti-Orthodox, are challenging a recent decision by the city's zoning board to allow the new synagogue to be built-a ruling that took the board nearly five years to reach. And at least a few community members are saying the best way to ward off community ill-will toward the synagogue is to uproot Christian corpses from a gravesite adjacent to the existing shul and rebuild the synagogue there. "It's a very poorly designed plan," said Eric Turkewitz, who is behind one of the lawsuits against the project. "It represents a problem to everybody in New Rochelle." The controversial plan calls for a $9 million, 30,000-square-foot facility to be built on a 35,000 square-foot (about four-fifths of an acre) parcel of land on one of the city's main thoroughfares, across the street and about a block away from the existing synagogue. The property, home to an old house and situated between the parking lot of an expansive country club golf course and a residential district, was purchased several years ago with the idea of using it to build a new, 600-seat house of worship for the congregation. Synagogue members said it is understandable for those who live near the new site to oppose construction-no one wants to live next door to a synagogue-but community opposition extends far beyond the immediate vicinity. "It would make one wonder how a building which affects three people can draw such an amount of protest," a member of Young Israel's building committee, David Kalman, said. "To draw so many people out makes one wonder what is the motive." The motive, many suspect, is anti-Orthodoxy. "There are many who are against the furtherance of the Orthodox community in New Rochelle," a former president of the synagogue, Myron Eagle, said. One congregant said he was told by a neighbor, "I moved out of Brooklyn to get away from people like you." Opponents of the plan say their objections stem from traffic concerns, not anti-Orthodoxy or anti-Semitism. "My big concern is traffic and parking," said Nicole Crosby, a member of the project's main opposition group, Neighbors of New Rochelle, which filed one of the lawsuits. "The zoning board is letting all New Rochelle residents down. How many variances can they ask for and still say you're anti-Semitic if you oppose this? I think that's a ploy to stop people from speaking out, and I won't be intimidated by that ploy." Like many architectural proposals, the one for the new synagogue building required a variety of zoning variances. Opponents urged city officials to hold the synagogue to high zoning, environmental and regulatory standards, and the extent to which their efforts influenced the municipality is a matter of debate. Some of their demands were met, like their petition that the city require the synagogue to undertake an expensive environmental impact study, which cost more than half a million dollars and had the potential to doom the project. Other efforts, such as the campaign to have the property's house designated as a historic dwelling, failed. At one point, the city council proposed a law that would have required special permits to hold prayer services outside of existing houses of worship and mandated stricter parking restrictions for synagogues than for adult entertainment clubs. The legislation was withdrawn after community members protested. After years of wrangling, the city's zoning board finally gave approval to the synagogue project three months ago. Lawsuits against the city and the synagogue followed almost immediately. Everybody seems to agree on at least one thing: the Young Israel of New Rochelle, with 275 member families, is bursting at the seams. Housed in a 100-year-old church with a sanctuary shaped like a cross and, until recently, a gigantic organ behind the Torahs' ark, the Young Israel holds four different services on many Saturday mornings. Often, they are standing room only. On high holidays, the synagogue has to erect an outdoor tent to house the overflow of worshippers, and the rabbi regularly juggles his time between services so he can deliver the requisite sermons in each one. Bordered by a church and an old cemetery on one side, an apartment complex on two others, and the street and a small gravesite on the fourth side, the synagogue seemingly has no place to grow. But appearances are deceiving, say proponents of an alternative plan. "No effort was made to examine the alternatives on the existing site," said Moshe Sukenik, a Young Israel member who lives near the planned site and is promoting an alternative proposal at the synagogue's existing site that involves building a parking garage over part of the nearby condominium's property and disinterring remains at a small family gravesite adjacent to the synagogue. "Whether the idea works or not, the whole problem is it was never pursued and it merits being pursued," he said. A descendent of those buried at the gravesite, a Christian woman named Patricia Reed Perry, says she is amenable to exhuming her family's remains and moving them to the Methodist church next door. But synagogue officials say they still would have to acquire the plot from the city after the remains were disinterred-a laborious and uncertain prospect at best. What's more, they say, they do not want to go into the business of digging up graves. "The reaction when people in the congregation heard about that scheme was aghast at the moving of graves," synagogue president David Blumenthal said. "Those buried are people who were almost founders of New Rochelle-and to dig up their bodies? How would it look if it were the reverse and Christians decided to dig up a Jewish cemetery?" As for building a parking garage at the apartment complex next door, Blumenthal said, "That's already been rejected by the condominium, so there's nothing further to discuss." In any case, synagogue officials said, it's too late for alternative plans. The synagogue already has spent more than $1 million defending its construction plans for the new site against regulatory, legal, and communal challenges. "The expense of starting from scratch and the time entailed is simply too much given our present dire needs," Blumenthal wrote in a letter to congregants in February. "Our resources are needed for constructing new space, not going through the approval process again, and we need to be in new space as soon as that can happen. We cannot afford more delay." When, several years ago, the Young Israel in neighboring Scarsdale launched a campaign to expand and renovate its existing facility, the synagogue met no community opposition, the shul's rabbi, Jacob Rubenstein, said. "There was a very amicable series of meetings in the city," he said. "We encountered no negativity." But the Young Israel of New Rochelle, whose members range from black-hatted men to mini-skirt-clad women, has been up against community hostility for years. When the Young Israel first purchased the property for the new synagogue, a deluge of letters poured into the mayor's office protesting the synagogue's plans. "Most of the letters were based on its impact on the neighborhood and on an environmentally sensitive area near the proposed building," the mayor, Timothy Idoni, said. A few of the letters, he said, were anti-Semitic. Some of the letters railed against "the Brooklynization" of New Rochelle and the detrimental commercial impact of the growing Orthodox presence in the city, according to Meyer Koplow, an erstwhile shul president and one of construction plan's most ardent proponents. One letter warned that since Orthodox Jews consume large amounts of food, the new synagogue would produce excess trash and attract rats to the neighborhood. In 1999, when the city's zoning board first began considering the Young Israel's petition for structural variances, flyers appeared around town decrying the plan to build the new synagogue as a secret scheme to construct a "huge catering facility" that would bring rats, traffic and destruction to the neighborhood. "Save Our Neighborhoods!" proclaimed the flyer. "The building of a huge catering facility on North Avenue threatens our quality of life." The new building, it said, will result in "Rats - more garbage will bring more rodents! Traffic - no on-site parking means unsafe streets for our kids!" and "Creeping Commercialization of North Avenue - where does it stop?" Many of the city's Jews were outraged, describing the leaflet as thinly veiled anti-Semitic and anti-Orthodox propaganda. "Substitute the word 'rats' for 'Orthodox Jews,'" one Young Israel member said. "That's what they really mean." A member of the city's Conservative synagogue, Carol Diament, said she was incensed. "That's really bordering on anti-Semitism of the worst kind," she said. "This kind of language is infuriating. The Young Israel has a right to build a shul." Diament said she knew of members of her own synagogue, Beth El, who opposed construction of the new Orthodox synagogue even though they lived kilometers away from the proposed site. "There's a tinge of anti-Orthodoxy-definitely-and a worry that the neighborhood would be Brooklynized," she said of the communal opposition. "I think there's a fear of that." Beth El's rabbi, Melvin Sirner, said that such concern prompted him at one point to speak to his congregation about the importance of supporting positive Jewish religious expression. "I thought, as Conservative Jews we should be supportive of the growth of other religious institutions in the community," he said. "It was not my position that every aspect of a projected building program I was categorically endorsing." The synagogue project's opponents maintain that they are interested in historic preservation of the site's house, traffic concerns, and possible environmental damage to wetlands behind the site. They say synagogue officials have used accusations of anti-Semitism in order to silence opposition. "The response that it's anti-Semitism is like the boy who cried wolf," Sukenik said. "There's enough real anti-Semitism out there. Save it for the right circumstance." "It's not a Jewish issue. It's a car issue and a safety issue," Turkewitz explained. "There's no parking. For what they're proposing with respect to the catering hall, on a street that's already dangerous, it represents a danger. So there's a lot of concern from people even who do not live there." The synagogue was granted a variance that allows it to provide less on-site parking than normally required for a structure of its size. Opponents say they're worried that the institution's size will attract more weekday visitors who will park their cars on the street, endangering pedestrians' safety and creating traffic headaches. But synagogue members point out that the existing site, which is on the same street, has no parking at all; therefore, the 43-spot underground garage planned for the new site actually will take cars off the street. This winter, a man was struck by a car and killed on his way to services while crossing the street from his parked car. "How many people are going to be killed before somebody says 'Maybe this wasn't such a good idea'?" Freddi Finegood, a member of Neighbors of New Rochelle, said. "This is not an issue of anti-Semitism, or Jewish people not wanting other Jewish people in the neighborhood." The Young Israel's dire space needs reflect the growing Orthodox Jewish presence in New Rochelle. In recent years, the booming religious population in the north end of the city has spawned half a dozen kosher eateries and a Judaica store. The proprietors of one local barbershop say that religious Jews make up such a significant proportion of their clientele that business suffers during the annual Jewish mourning periods when traditional Jews abstain from cutting their hair. The city has five major synagogues-three Orthodox, one Reform and one Conservative-but only the Orthodox ones have skyrocketing membership figures. The Young Israel of Scarsdale, an Orthodox congregation on the New Rochelle-Scarsdale town line, expanded a few years ago to accommodate its growing membership. The rabbi at the Orthodox synagogue downtown, Congregation Anshe Shalom, located several miles away from the concentration of Jews at the north end of the city, says his congregation has almost doubled in size over the last six years. And the Young Israel of New Rochelle, with 275 member families, outgrew its current building years ago. Since Orthodox Jews do not drive on the Sabbath and none of the city's Orthodox synagogues is within walking distance of any other, each has grown independently and sustains a community of its own. Despite the overcrowding at the Young Israel of New Rochelle, there isn't much talk about starting a breakaway synagogue. "People want to be part of the community," the synagogue's rabbi, Reuven Fink, said. "Part of the beauty of the shul is that it's very diverse. It's just that it's one community that finds itself under extraordinary pressure because of overcrowding." Before the neighbors and municipal authorities became the reasons for delays in construction, the biggest impediment to building was the synagogue membership itself. Members fiercely debated nearly every decision concerning the new synagogue. Three different architects at varying times were hired to draw up building plans, and congregants took so long to debate the configuration of the new shul that the first architect dropped dead before members could come to an agreement. "We spent so much time trying to accommodate people in the seating," building committee member Kalman said. Some wanted the women's section to be a balcony; others wanted it alongside the men's section. There were more arguments about the size and cost of the proposed structure. After years of haggling-and the hiring of architect Graham Gund, who designed a building with a $9 million price tag-the members finally gave the committee the go-ahead. The irony is that since the expansion plans were first conceived in the mid-1980s and finalized in the mid-1990s, the congregation has grown so rapidly that there may be far less room for growth in the new shul than first anticipated. That has some wondering whether it's worthwhile keeping the old synagogue building-just in case. "We don't know what we're going to do with it," Koplow said. "We might sell it. We might keep it. It all depends on whether we need the money."