Rabbi Mendel Bogomilsky and his wife, Rivkah, were reported ready to ask permission to combine their home at 1 Jefferson Ave. in Millburn with property next door and turn them into an official house of worship to resolve a dispute with the township.
Photo by Robert Wiener
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July 2, 2009
A zoning dispute between the township of Millburn and the Chai Center appears to be settled, with the township agreeing to reduce fines against the Chabad-affiliated center if it agrees to seek status as a house of worship.
Rabbi Mendel Bogomilsky and his wife, Rivkah, were reported ready to ask permission to combine their home at 1 Jefferson Ave. with property next door and create an official house of worship.
In exchange, the town will reduce some $500,000 worth of fines against the Bogomilskys to $1,000 and waive a requirement that their synagogue be sited on three acres of land.
The agreement is a departure for the Bogomilskys, who have long insisted that their home was not serving as a synagogue.
Nevertheless, both sides continue to disagree over police monitoring of those who came to worship at the center (see sidebar).
The dispute centered on the Bogomilskys’ insistence that despite the worship services and Jewish educational and social activities run out of their home, the address served as their place of residence and not a house of worship. The township disagreed, saying the center was functioning as a house of worship and needed to comply with local ordinances because of the volume of people making use of the house.
In February, the township cited the Chai Center for failing to seek zoning board approval for prayer services it held on its property.
The couple countersued, claiming they were denied due process and were made victims of a “conspiracy for the purpose of depriving them of their constitutional rights.”
Both sides claimed victory as they put the finishing touches on their written agreement.
“This is exactly what the town wanted from the beginning — not to be punitive, but to get the rabbi before the board,” said Michael Kates, the Hackensack attorney who represented the township.
The Chai Center’s attorney, Philip Pfeffer of Manhattan, said the center is seeking to merge properties at 1 Jefferson Ave. and the adjacent lot at 7 Jefferson Ave.
The latter lot will be donated to the Bogomilskys “by one of his supporters, subject to us getting the variance,” Pfeffer said.
Once the two lots are combined, the Bogomilskys intend to expand the house at 1 Jefferson Ave. to include a formal sanctuary.
“We are planning on making this structure into a formal house of worship, which is what the township says it wants,” Pfeffer said.
While the zoning application is pending, he agreed that the Chai Center “would not materially increase the frequency and scope of the current, regularly scheduled prayer meetings.”
Despite the agreement, both sides continue to treat each other warily.
“[Bogomilsky] cannot have a bar mitzva there every week,” town attorney Kates insisted. “It is not yet a house of worship.”
“Do 13-year-old boys occasionally come up and get their first aliya? Yes, they do,” Pfeffer responded. “Unfortunately…people like Mr. Kates and his clients think a bar mitzva has to be a major, gala event with music, lots of fanfare, and dancers. That is not how a bar mitzva is celebrated by all. Mr. Kates was surprised when I told him that the Bogomilskys don’t play music on Shabbos.”
Kates, who has worked on the case for the past year, said it was not a particularly difficult one to resolve.
“People of good will can work things out,” he said. “I found cooperation on the other side and, as I said to my opposing counsel, ‘I hope I never see you again.’”
Pfeffer is not so sure.
“Nothing in the settlement can be construed in any way to limit the Bogomilskys from hosting social gatherings in their home,” he said. “ Those are the terms everyone is going to have to live by. The rabbi wants to be a good neighbor but, as the property owner, has the right to invite people to his home for social gatherings as often as he likes. If people in the neighborhood don’t like the fact that the rabbi regularly invites guests to his home for social events, I can’t help them.”
Lawyer objects to police monitoring
The lawyer representing the Chai Center says the township violated the law when it deployed police to monitor traffic in and out of the property on 1 Jefferson Ave.
Philip Pfeffer said documents show that members of the police department monitored cars on and around the Bogomilskys’ property and recorded the license plates of those who visited the home.
They also, on occasion, ran criminal background checks of the individuals who visited the center, which also serves as the home of Rabbi Mendel and Rivkah Bogomilsky, said Pfeffer.
Documents provided to NJ Jewish News show a police report identifying the driver of a car parked on the Bogomilskys’ driveway and requests for background information on two other visitors police had filed with the state Division of Motor Vehicles and the National Crime Information Center.
“The police are reporting to the town who is visiting the rabbi. They are not allowed to know the names. What’s the point?” asked Pfeffer.
“They are looking to see if it is a wanted person. Then they say, ‘Who is this person?’ They have their height and weight and what they look like and date of birth and Social Security numbers. Then they access the NCIC data base to determine if there are any criminal backgrounds,” he said.
“This is a clear violation of the law,” said Pfeffer. “These are clear privacy violations, violations of NJ Supreme Court precedent and are tactics that go beyond any normal police power.”
“For their purposes, I don’t know why they had to do anything except count cars.”
Michael Kates, the attorney representing Millburn, acknowledged the police monitoring of the Chai Center.
“I think he is overreacting,” said Kates in response to Pfeffer’s charges. “It is something the police were doing only in response to the complaints of neighbors. They weren’t doing it on an ongoing basis. It was reactive to the neighbors’ complaints about seeing tents going up on the property and/or cars. It is not a criminal investigation.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it police surveillance,” said township business administrator Tim Gordon, who ordered the monitoring.
“We get calls from neighbors who have concerns about cars parked on the street and all over the lawn. When they call, we have to respond to that,” he told NJ Jewish News.
Gordon said the police responded to individual complaints and were not stationed outside the Bogomilsky house on an ongoing basis.
“But if a staff person such as myself goes by Jefferson Avenue and sees that cars are blocking the street so that a fire engine can’t go by — which happened on a Saturday with me — that is how it is addressed. If a construction official is driving past the property and sees some construction going on and there is not a permit, it is their obligation to investigate, much as we would any other property.”
Gordon denied Millburn police were violating the privacy of people visiting the Bogomilskys.
“We don’t do any criminal background checks. If they abide by the zoning and go through the process, that is all the town is asking any property owners to do,” he said.
Although he said the complaint about the police activity will not stop the Bogomilskys from resolving their zoning issues with the town, Pfeffer said the dispute between Millburn and the Chai Center is far from over.
“If we don’t get what we want before the zoning board, this litigation is coming back harder than it was before, and you can bet your bottom dollar that this multi-year, abusive, and illegal surveillance operation will be added to the long list of discriminatory practices that the township has engaged in over the last 15 years to deprive the Bogomilskys of their constitutional rights,” he said.
“I would have no comment on that,” Gordon replied.
— ROBERT WIENER
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