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Article Courtesy of The Palm Beach
Post
By Frank
Cerabino
Published
March 28, 2011
A two-year battle over an attempt to turn a suburban
West Palm Beach condo into a makeshift synagogue came to a head Wednesday
as hundreds of Century Village residents packed a county code enforcement
hearing room, turning what could have been a dry disputation of code
regulations into more than four hours of community theater.
"If you want to laugh and shout and clap,
there's a big parking lot out there where you can do that," special
magistrate Carolyn Ansay said in one of her many futile attempts to impose
some kind of silent decorum on the large, restless and irrepressible crowd
of retirees.
| Some had arrived at 8
a.m. for the 10 o'clock hearing, which swamped the
320-person capacity in the hearing room, and caused county
officials to open two extra rooms where a closed-circuit
feed of the hearing was broadcast.
The crowd, resembling more of a
studio audience than court watchers, provided a gasping,
clucking, moaning, chattering, muttering soundtrack to the
proceedings. A kind of Greek chorus, minus the Greeks.
When one of the lawyers tried to
elicit testimony from one of the residents who was going
to give his opinion on the matter - an opinion which
apparently would start with a World War II story - Ansay
brought things to a merciful halt.
"It's not open mic night,"
the magistrate said. "I can't start letting people
give their opinions."
Magistrate seeks refuge |
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A
full gallery watching a Palm Beach County code enforcement hearing
on Wednesday, March 23, 2011, regarding the use of one unit at
Century Village where Issac Feder regularly met with other Jews to
pray in Suburban Palm Beach County. Special Magestrate Carolyn Ansay
found that there was enough evidence the unit had not been used in
accordance with the county regulations.
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Ansay said it was hard enough trying to avoid getting
waylaid by commentary during the breaks, an obstacle that forced her to seek
a distant restroom.
Nearly all the crowd had come hoping to put an end to
the practice of one of their neighbors, Issac Feder, who bought a second
unit in Century Village and turned it into a place of daily prayer for
Orthodox Jews.
The county, responding to complaints by neighbors,
many of whom are Jewish, cited Feder for using a residential unit as a place
of assembly, which would require a new certificate of occupancy.
| Leaflets were passed out
in Century Village to attend Wednesday's hearing, which was
a continuation of a hearing postponed from earlier in the
month.
The star of the day was clearly
Harriet Bluming, the 91-year-old retired schoolteacher who
received a thunderous round of applause after her testimony.
Bluming lives across the hall from Feder's makeshift
synagogue, and provided some key reconnaissance information
from the vantage point of her kitchen sink.
"I watch because at my age I'm
always going to the sink to take pills," she said.
"I mean legal pills."
The case hinged on whether the prayer
meetings Feder holds at his Golf's Edge apartment were the
primary use for the condo. If he actually lived at Golf's
Edge, then having daily prayer sessions wouldn't have
triggered the county code enforcement action, Assistant
County Attorney Amy Petrick said.
Feder's neighbors claimed he clearly
lived in the Kingswood Building, and not at Golf's Edge.
"He
never gets any mail in the mailboxes," |
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Issac
and Judith Feder talk during a Palm Beach County code enforcement
hearing on Wednesday, March 23, 2011, regarding one of their
apartments at Century Village.
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Bluming
testified. "But for the rest of us, that's an important part of the day
when the mail comes."
Feder, 64, testified that he bought the second condo
because a pair of strokes prohibited him walking to a synagogue on the
Sabbath, so he thought he could use a nearby second unit to pray. When the
county began its action against him last year, he bought a daybed for the
second condo and said that he and some of his 10 children and guests have
used the extra unit as a place to occasionally live.
He testified Wednesday that he slept "12 to
14" nights in his spare condo this year.
Foot traffic and cigarette butts
"There's a lot of coming and going,"
testified Golf's Edge neighbor Lloyd Zirker. "It's kind of like a Motel
7 ."
The makeshift synagogue puts a stress on the
building's parking lot and swimming pool, and amounts to a public facility
in a residential building, neighbors complained, as strangers come and go
day and night.
Bluming, who is on the building's landscape committee,
said some of the people who come there to pray with Feder smoke outside the
unit and leave their cigarette butts on the lawn. And she's sometimes irked
by the questions these visitors ask her.
"One of the women asked me why I don't go to
services," she testified. "I said, 'Only in New York. I'm here on
vacation.' "
Feder's lawyer, Esther Zaretsky, tried to establish
that Bluming really didn't know who slept in Feder's Golf Edge unit because
Bluming took her final pill of the day at 10 p.m.
"Do you usually go to bed after your last
pill?" Zaretsky asked.
"I usually watch a little TV, then take care of
myself," Bluming answered. "There's a lot to do when you get
older."
In the end, the magistrate ruled that Feder's use of
his spare condo violated the residential code, and she told him he had 30
days to stop holding prayer services there, or he would be fined $100 a day.
But for now, the outcome was already made moot by its
timing.
Feder, who has a summer residence in Monroe, N.Y., has
already left Florida for the season, and his lawyer said he will certainly
appeal, and may even file a religious discrimination suit in federal court
by the time he's back in Century Village for next season.
For now, though, Feder said his short-term plans were
simple.
"I'm
going to pray more," he said.
Condo's turmoil over makeshift synagogue spills over at code enforcement hearing
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