Chaptzem Blog!      

Toms River will not appeal a federal judge's finding that it broke state and federal laws against religious discrimination when it required a zoning variance for a Jewish center run by a rabbi at his home on Church Road, the township's lawyer said Thursday.

Deputy Township Anthony Merlino said the township would not appeal the Feb. 5 ruling, which stemmed from a 2016 lawsuit by Rabbi Moshe Gourarie and the Chabad Jewish Center of Toms River Inc. Gourarie filed the suit after the Toms River Board of Adjustment rejected his appeal of a decision by local zoning officials denying him permission to use his home as a religious gathering place.  

Gourarie's lawyer, Roman Storzer, said his client was pleased with the ruling and would abide by parking and other conditions imposed by the judge on the Chabad center. Storzer confirmed that he and his client had received the $122,500 in damages and legal fees that U.S. District Court Judge Freda Wolfson had ordered the township to pay. 

"Rabbi Gourari is very happy with the ruling and the outcome," Storzer said. "This is his home, and the Constitution allows people to freely worship at their home."    

The township's decision to accept Wolfon's ruling puts to rest -- legally, at least -- a dispute that exposed what the mayor of Toms River acknowledged to be strains of anti-Semitism among some residents who felt threatened by the growing Orthodox Jewish community in that corner of Ocean County.

"The circumstances brought out the worst in people," said Mayor Thomas Kellaher, who had prosecuted bias crimes as a former Ocean County prosecutor and condemned anti-Semitic social media posts surrounding the dispute. "Anti-Semitic attitudes never solve anything."

The two-story, 50,040-square-foot building would replace an existing mosque owned by the Muslim Society of Jersey Shore.

For the most part, Kellaher said, Toms River is a tolerant community that includes a Hindu temple not far from the Chabad center.

Even so, a local mosque's pending application to build an Islamic school has faced community opposition.

It's not only residents who have expressed religious bias, according to the Chabad suit. Township officials changed the zoning in the area of Church Road around the Chabad center in 2009 to ban houses of worship and, the suit charged, since then the township had tried to block expansion the Orthodox community from neighboring Lakewood.

"These recent actions to shut down the Chabad took place during a rising tide of anti-Semitism among the Toms River government and population, fearful that the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community located in adjacent Lakewood Township will extend into Toms River," the suit asserted.

In forcing the rabbi to seek a variance, Wolfson found that Toms River Board of Adjustment violated the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, and other federal and state laws.

In a concession to concerns about traffic and parking along Church Road, Wolfson stipulated that the center "will inform any guests that there is no parking to be allowed on Church Road."

Storzer said that wold not be a problem, since the property totaled eight acres with plenty of room for parking, and because many of the visitors would be walking.