Shame on the shofar ban

Brett Freeman

The Supreme Court has been clear: when a public space is open to secular expression, it must also be open to religious expression. This is Civics 101. Yet Mount Kisco’s response to this controversy has been to hire outside counsel and defer action. That is hedging, not leadership.”

Note: The Village of Mt. Kisco has reversed course. See the updated story HERE. 

In 1790, George Washington wrote a now-famous letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. In it, our first president set down in plain language the promise of America:

"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens..."

Those words still reverberate today. They were written not as a courtesy but as a covenant: that Jews, and all Americans, are not guests in this nation, subject to the goodwill of the majority, but full citizens whose rights are not negotiable.

More than two centuries later, that promise has been put to the test in the Village of Mount Kisco (See story about the controversy). The town’s Recreation Commission has denied Chabad of Bedford a permit to hold “Shofar in the Park,” a short, peaceful, open-air service marking Rosh Hashanah. For years, this event has taken place without incident: a prayer, the sounding of the shofar, and the casting of breadcrumbs into a pond. No structures. No amplification. No disruption.

This year, however, the commission invoked a park deed to prohibit “religious events.” Yet the same park has hosted Easter egg hunts. To permit one observance while denying another is not neutrality; it is selective enforcement. And selective enforcement against a minority religion at a time when Jews are the number-one target of religiously motivated hate crimes in America is particularly dangerous and tone-deaf.

At the heart of this controversy lies a persistent misunderstanding of religious freedom. Too often, it is miscast as freedom from religion in public spaces, when in fact it is the freedom of religion, an equal right to participate fully in public life. Human beings are wired to worship something: a deity, the dollar, government, or any number of causes. Politicians, whether they acknowledge it or not, always legislate from some moral framework, whether its roots are religious or secular.

The Constitution does not allow government to categorize which gatherings are “religious” and which are “secular,” then grant or deny access accordingly. Its only requirement is neutrality: treat like activities alike.

That is why lighting a Christmas tree, hunting for Easter eggs, gathering at a menorah lighting, protesting racial injustice, rallying on immigration policy or blowing a shofar on Rosh Hashanah all belong equally in a public park. When government starts drawing lines between them, it ceases to be a neutral referee and becomes an arbiter of belief—something our Constitution strictly forbids.

The Supreme Court has been clear: when a public space is open to secular expression, it must also be open to religious expression. This is Civics 101. Yet Mount Kisco’s response to this controversy has been to hire outside counsel and defer action. That is hedging, not leadership. With the High Holy Days approaching, the Jewish community deserved clarity, not a legal stall.

As Trustee Tom Luzio rightly observed, deeds cannot override constitutional rights. America once had deeds that declared parks “for whites only.” We now recognize those for what they were: unconstitutional relics. Invoking a deed today to deny equal access for religious observance deserves the same scrutiny.

A call for peaceful civil disobedience

If the village persists in denying the permit, then the Jewish community—and all neighbors of goodwill—should gather peacefully in Leonard Park anyway.  Tashlich, where Jewish people cast  off their past year's sins by throwing bread into a body of water, was originally scheduled for 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Bring your shofar. Say the prayers. Toss the breadcrumbs. Model dignified, nonviolent civil disobedience and dare the village to ticket you. For if that moment comes, it will not expose the worshippers’ defiance but the government’s failure — a failure to uphold the most basic promise of American liberty.

Mount Kisco owes its Jewish residents not just an apology but an immediate course correction. More than that, it owes all of us a reminder: that citizenship in this country is not a matter of mere “tolerance,” but of equal rights. That was Washington’s message in 1790, and it is the standard that must still guide us today.