An Orthodox synagogue is suing the city that tried to shut it down
By Stewart Ain October 31, 2021
The synagogue is a hazard, charge officials in a Cleveland suburb — with live wires hanging from the ceiling and no fire exits. Earlier this year, the city tried to shut it down.
But the Aleksander Shul, an Orthodox congregation in University Heights, is fighting back in court, and last month filed a lawsuit accusing the city of violating its rights to religious expression and harassing congregants by sending, on Rosh Hashanah, a private investigator to spy on it.
“On one of the holiest days of Jewish year, the private investigator sat for hours in a suspicious unmarked vehicle across the street from the Property,” the lawsuit reads. “Because of the recent rise in hate crimes against Jews, many Jewish residents and members of the Aleksander Shul were frightened by the presence of a suspicious man in an unmarked vehicle.”
Get our free daily news update.
The Aleksander Shul opened in 2009 when Rabbi Shnior Zalman Denciger began inviting neighbors to pray in his home, an unassuming house in a residential neighborhood. It’s the only option for many Orthodox Jews to pray in a minyan, the lawsuit reads, since they may not drive on Shabbat and certain holidays.
Earlier this year University Heights issued the synagogue a cease-and-desist order to block its operations.
But a Cuyahoga County judge in July issued another order that allowed the Aleksander Shul to continue to hold services on Shabbat and the High Holidays through Sukkot, with a maximum occupancy of 36 people. The city has alleged that the synagogue exceeded that limit on Rosh Hashanah.
Its mayor said he respects the Jewish community, but University Heights has a responsibility to uphold fire and zoning regulations.
“First of all this is a house, this is not a commercial building, this is not a house of worship, this house does not fulfill the building standards set forth by the state,” Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan said at a September City Council meeting, where some council members apologized for the investigator hired to watch the synagogue.
Brennan also said that he would like to resume negotiations with the synagogue and find a resolution to the dispute.
In the lawsuit suit, filed in federal court, the congregation asks that the city permit it to continue to operate, and for unspecified damages.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
