There’s a holy war raging in the Hamptons.
A Southampton Town zoning board barred the installation of a
symbolic Jewish boundary out of sheer anti-Orthodox Jewish prejudice, a new
federal lawsuit alleges.
An East End group has been fighting for years to erect an
eruv, an extension of the Jewish home that allows Orthodox Jews to carry out
tasks on the Sabbath that are otherwise forbidden, such as pushing strollers
and carrying keys.
The religious perimeter is demarcated by the placement of
small plastic markers at the tops of telephone poles.
But the Suffolk town’s Zoning Board of Appeals ruled this
month that the markers — all but invisible from the street — were prohibited
because signs of any sort are not permitted to be placed on telephone poles.
Filed yesterday in Brooklyn, the suit quotes language from
the ruling in making its claims of discrimination and accuses the zoning
appeals board of being “motivated by discriminatory intentions and animus
towards observant Jews.”
“The requested variances will alter the essential character
of the neighborhood,” the decision reads.
The ruling also tells eruv backers that restrictions on what
they can do derive “not from the town’s zoning regulations but from Jewish
law,” according to the suit.
The decision also suggests that use of an eruv exploits a
religious loophole and is “motivated by the personal desire . . . to be freed
from the proscriptions of Jewish law,” according to the suit.
Southampton Town attorney Tiffany Scarlato declined to
comment.
Much of New York City is encircled by an eruv that allows
Orthodox Jews to move more freely on the Sabbath.
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