Here is the latest incident of discrimination against Orthodox Jews by a municipality in Rockland County. This time it is the village of Suffern, NY. There is Jewish charitable organization in our community called Bikur Cholim. Its purpose is to provide, free of charge, services for those who have been hospitalized as well as for their relatives who come to visit them. Our local hospital is Good Samaritan Hospital located in the village of Suffern. Although it is a Catholic hospital it is extremely friendly and accommodating to all Jewish patients as well as their families. The hospital is located 7 miles from the nearest Orthodox Jewish community and the problem arises when a patient must remain in the hospital over the Jewish Sabbath when his or her family are not allowed to travel by car to visit. For the past 2 years, Good Samaritan Hospital has given Bikur Cholim 2 dormitory style rooms (one for men & one for women) where a patient's family could eat and sleep over the Sabbath. These were called "Shabbos Rooms". Recently however Good Samaritan has built a new cardiac care unit and needed this particular space for this purpose. As a result Bikur Cholim has to go elsewhere for sabbath accommodations. They got a rich benefactor to donate money to purchase a house one block from the hospital on Route 59 and for the past 3 months they have been using this as a "Shabbos House" for families visiting loved ones. It is only occupied from sundown of Friday until after sundown on Saturday night. Problem solved ? That is what we thought. Enter, the bad guys, in the form of the Zoning Board of the Village of Suffern and Town Attorney Terry Rice. They served Bikur Cholim with an injunction and a violation order, claiming that the area is only zoned for single family homes and that there are as many as 17 people at one time staying at the Shabbos House during Friday night and Saturday. It its reply, Bikur Cholim, through its attorney Paul Savaad pointed out that there already exists on the same block a Monestary as well as a Salvation Army Center, both of which have Dormitory facilities as well as an office building. Therefore how can the village claim that the Shabbos House changes the character of the neighborhood.   Attorney Rice replied that these other facilities have existed for over one hundred years, and pre-date the village government and the zoning regulations, and are therefore exempt from the law. Bikur Cholim calls this blatant discrimination because Christian facilities are allowed to exist but a Jewish one is not. They have filed suit against the Village of Suffern under the Federal RLUIPA (Religious Land Use & Instituionalized Persons Act) and have retained the services of The Rutherford Institute of Fairfax, VA and their noted attorney John Stepanovich who will be handling the case pro-bono. This case will probably make it all the way to the Supreme Court. I would like to get the opinions of the folks on this forum (both pro & con) on this highly controversial issue.
                                                SOL ZELLER