Rockland County, NY - Orthodox Groups in Defense of Bikur Cholim Shabbos House

Rockland County, NY - In response to the Village of Suffern’s attempt to use zoning laws to close down an Orthodox Jewish health service agency’s Shabbos hospitality house. A coalition of Orthodox groups has filed a friend of the court brief in federal district court in support of the house, charging the village with violations of the U.S. and New York Constitutions and the federal Religious Land Use.

issue is the use of a single family home situated across the street from Good Samaritan Hospital. Rockland County Bikur Cholim, a private health service agency, purchased the house as a place where Orthodox family members of patients in the hospital could reside over Shabbossos and Yomim Tovim, in order to be able to visit their sick relatives over the course of those days.

The village cited the facility as illegal, defining it as a “transient motel,” even though the service is provided free and only to patients’ family members.

Also cited in the brief is the apparent discrimination against Orthodox Jewish observance inherent in the village’s permitting of “houses of worship” in the same zoning district where the Bikur Cholim facility functions, even though it, too, serves as a Shabbos house of worship.