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Portland, ME - The city of Portland will not appeal a 5-0 Zoning Board of Appeals vote that will allow a local rabbi to continue to hold Saturday prayer meetings in his Craigie Street home.

"We won't be appealing this," Penny Littell, director of the city's Plannning and Urban Development Department.

The board's vote overturned a city decision that blocked Rabbi Moshe Wilansky from holding the services in his home.

Zoning Administrator Marge Schmuckal delivered Wilansky a letter in late May, ordering him to stop the activities.

City officials said Wilansky has used his Craigie Street home as a synagogue for years. They said that put him in violation of zoning regulations because his property did not meet the two-acre minimum for places of worship in a residential neighborhood.

Wilansky attorney Marshall Tinkle and the Maine Civil Liberties Union appealed the order, saying it was an unconstitutional encroachment on his religious liberties.

Littell said the board's vote "provided some good guidance to our department on how we should be defining 'place of worship' in the future.'"

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