Anna Throne-HolstThrone-Holst

Lee ZeldinZeldin

Southampton Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst and the four trustees have been asked why the town’s capitulation to the East End Eruv Assn. was not on the agenda for the Aug. 25 meeting. Citizens have lodged complaints with SH.

Throne-Holst is running for the House of Representatives in the 2016 election, hoping to unseat Rep. Lee Zeldin, the only Jewish Republican in the House, who won election in 2014.

Zeldin has criticized the proposed U.S. pact with Iran that would limit its power to create atomic weapons. He called the pact “a bad deal” in a July 14 press release.

The SH meeting took up the issue of an eruv Jewish boundary proposed for the town at the end of 49-minute meeting. Throne-Holst and trustees Stan Glinka, Bradley Bender, Christine Scalera and Bridget Fleming voted by voice in favor of a settlement with the EEEA that would absolve SH of further legal costs but allow the EEEA to construct a permanent eruv on SH property.

SH would not have to pay restitution to the EEEA for lawyer and court fees, Throne-Holst told 27east.com. Fees to the law firm of Jaspan Schlesinger have totaled more than $700,000. SH lost its bid to enforce laws against signs on its poles in a Suffolk Superior Court decision June 30.

Comments Being Sought

Comments are being sought from Jewish People for the Betterment of WHB, Freedom from Religion Foundation, and others who have been claiming that eruvim violate the separation of church and state.

Postings by “Highhatsize” on 27east.com are the most extensive criticisms of the Aug. 25 action by the SH Council.

They are as follows.

This is hardly a surprise. The real surprise is that the Town Board held out for so long in the face of the ever-increasing extortion by court procedural costs imposed by the Orthodox Jews' legal action.

Now the only holdout is Quogue, which, I am led to believe, is proceeding entirely on the basis of the entirely peripheral issue of signage laws. It may win because IT'S ordinances forbid ALL private postings on village property. Entirely ignored will be the constitutional question.

The fact is that now, in the entire United States, the only religious sect that is permitted to permanently post its symbols on public property is the Orthodox Jews. This incomprehensible privilege flies in the face of repeated Supreme Court decisions that hold such postings to be a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st amendment. However, since the Supreme Court previously denied certiorari (as it does to 99% of cases) to an appeal from a previous lower court pro-eruv decision, it is unlikely to change soon.

The Supreme Court has decided, unequivocally, that no permanent religious symbols may be posted on public property. Surely the test of whether or not an object is a “religious” symbol is whether or not it has a religious significance (and, particularly, if it ONLY has such a significance) to members of a particular religion.

To permit the Orthodox Jews, and the Orthodox Jews ALONE, to post their particular religious symbols thusly confers supra-constitutional rights upon them and assaults the fundamental liberal ideal (i.e. that all citizens have equal rights under the law) that gave birth to our revolution and that is the heart of our republic.

As to WHY the Orthodox Jews feel that they need to do so, if faith were rational it wouldn't be faith.This outcome, and identical ones in other communities, is contemptible and a shame to all Americans who zealously support the fundamental, non-sectarian design of our republic.

By highhatsize, East Quogue on Aug 27, 15 5:28 PM