K'hal Bnei Torah Sues Haverstraw After Planning Board Rejects Application

by M.C. Millman

Members of K'hal Bnei Torah in Thiells filed a lawsuit against the Town of Haverstraw on November 10 after their application to convert a single-family home into a shul was rejected in August. 

The federal lawsuit claims the planning board conspired to block K'hal Bnei Torah of Mount Ivy's plans to convert a single-family home on a residential street into a synagogue and "succumbed to toxic anti-Semitic rhetoric from an angry group of their neighbors in response to Plaintiff's efforts to establish a house of worship in the Town of Haverstraw."

The lawsuit additionally cites antisemitic comments from a neighbor during a planning board hearing that was on such an offensive scale that it drew rebuke on the local, state, and national levels.

The comments were flagrantly spewed on November 10, 2021, when, during a public meeting when resident Nick Colella told the planning board that if he were to hit a frum Jew with his car, he would "of course back over them again."

At this time, the investigation into the incident is closed. Colella suffered zero consequences for his hate-filled speech other than being condemned by the governor and the state attorney general.

As a result of that offensive comment which drew no condemnation from the planning board at the time and instead elicited applause from many in attendance, the federal lawsuit was symbolically filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on the first anniversary of that planning board meeting.