Denial in D.C

Members enjoyed a crosscountry skiing activity together.

joint programs per year with Kalamazoo’s Temple B’nai Israel (TBI) and Chabad of Kalamazoo with the help of the Jewish Federation of Kalamazoo and Southwest Michigan. CoM also does a lot of programming with TBI itself, bringing the two communities together.

CoM makes up one half of the Marvin and Rosalie Okun Kalamazoo Community Jewish School operation, a joint endeavor with TBI launched in 2016 from a desire to have all Jewish children in the community learn together. About 45 children are enrolled in classes ranging from pre-K to high school. Classes are held at both congregations and are led by teachers and rabbis.

“I think the location, the fact we’re in Kalamazoo, is part of what makes us special,” Estrin said. “It’s a university town, and you’ve got a lot of independent bookstores and independent coffee houses and that kind of feeling around.

“Both the Kalamazoo community and the Kalamazoo Jewish community are incredibly strong and vibrant. They’re not traditional Detroit Jews, so to speak; they live in Kalamazoo — and that choice already says something about them.”

CoM is continuing to grow just as it always has over the years and is currently planning two projects. One is to create an outdoor garden/ playground/gathering space; the other is to expand its sukkah to triple the current size.

“I think just the way people gather is really beautiful,” Estrin said of the CoM community. “There’s really a friendliness. Everybody’s welcome no matter who you are, what you look like or what you believe. We want to welcome people in wherever they are.”

Watch Ask the Rabbi with Rabbi Estrin

A protester stands outside Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor in 2020.

Denial in D.C.

Supreme Court declines to hear two di erent attempts to stop longtime Ann Arbor synagogue protesters.

ANDREW LAPIN JTA.ORG

ALEX SHERMAN/JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear two different requests to take up a suit against a group of protesters who have gathered weekly outside an Ann Arbor synagogue for nearly two decades holding anti-Israel and antisemitic signs, seemingly closing off any remaining legal avenues against the long-running display.

The court issued orders in March and May denying petitions brought by two different congregants who had argued that the protests targeted Jews at their place of worship, violating their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.

The plaintiffs belong to two different congregations that both meet in the same synagogue building: Conservative Beth Israel Congregation and the Jewish Renewal-affiliated Pardes Hannah Congregation. Neither congregation was involved in the lawsuits.

The two congregants, one of whom is a Holocaust survivor, had first brought a joint lawsuit against the protesters, the city and Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor in 2019. Lower courts dismissed it on First Amendment grounds, and a judge ordered the plaintiffs to pay the protesters’ legal fees. Following a dispute between one of the plaintiffs, Marvin Gerber, and their attorney, Marc Susselman, the suit was broken up and two separate petitions under two separate attorneys were filed to the Supreme Court.

Both of those petitions have now been declined; Gerber’s was rejected most recently, on May 16.

Gerber had retained the wellknown Jewish attorney Nathan Lewin, a veteran of the Supreme Court who has argued multiple Jewish-interest cases and who was a close friend of former Justice Antonin Scalia.

“I am shocked and dismayed that the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals view antisemitic picketing timed and designed to harass and intimidate Jews only when they come to pray — clearly protected by the First Amendment’s Religion Clause — as free speech that may not be curtailed,” Lewin said.

He compared the case to a law that makes it a federal crime to protest or picket near a judge’s residence in order to influence a decision — a law that has been in the news lately as abortion rights protesters upset with a leaked Supreme Court draft appearing to overturn uuu have protested outside the homes of conservative justices.

Jewish groups, including Agudath Israel of America, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, filed friend-of-thecourt briefs on the plaintiffs’ behalf.

Earlier this year, the Ann Arbor City Council issued a formal resolution condemning the protests as antisemitic. The protesters, who claim they are opposed to Israeli policy, have held signs with messages including “Jewish Power Corrupts.”