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When Is A Home A Shul?.
A Lubavitch minyan in a rabbi's home has sparked a legal conflict.
It's an old story.
The Jews of Woodenton, N.Y., in Philip Roth's 1959 short story Eli, The Fanatic, oppose an Orthodox neighbor who turns his home into a yeshiva.
"This is a modern community," they cried. "We pay taxes."
Jews in Smith - Greenspring, in a very real court battle whose conclusion has yet to be written, are fighting a rabbi in their midst for turning his home into a temporary Chasidic synagogue.
In January, 1990, residents in the Ranchleigh neighborhood, near Bonnie View Golf Course, complained to Baltimore County zoning officials about Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan, chief representative of the Lubavitch movement in Maryland, who was advertising weekly services in his home at 6509 Deancroft Road.
The county and the local neighborhood association contend that the dwelling is a synagogue, and must therefore meet certain requirements to be allowed in a residential area: among them off-street parking for worshippers and a distance of at least 100 feet between it and surrounding buildings.
Responding to the local complaints, the county Zoning Enforcement Office found Rabbi Kaplan in violation of zoning regulations; he was fined $600. Rabbi Kaplan appealed the decision to the 8th District Court of Maryland, Baltimore County, where Judge Barbara R. Jung dismissed the case against him.
The Baltimore County Office of Law has appealed her decision to the 3rd Judicial Circuit Court.
Rabbi Kaplan, along with his attorney and members of Baltimore's Orthodox community, argued that the residence is just that; a home for Rabbi Kaplan, his wife and their eight children, and that a minyan is held in his home just as is done in countless other Jewish homes in Baltimore City and County during the weekly Sabbath celebration.
"The case itself is black and white, it's not an issue," said Rabbi Kaplan. "That [Baltimore County]...