Cortlandt Manor, NY – ‘Rosh Hashana’ A Period Of Redemption, Neighbors Hope Yeshiva Issue Can Be Resolved

Cortlandt Manor, NY – There have been few odder matchups in Westchester than the dude ranch here that for two decades has been the home of an Orthodox yeshiva. Teenage boys and young men spending dawn to midnight plumbing the labyrinthine arguments of the Talmud have spent nights sleeping in Western-style low-slung buildings called Dodge City and Dallas.

But Yeshiva Ohr Hameir is a serious boarding school that was settled pretty much uneventfully at the county’s rural northern edge until it tried to replace Dodge City, a tumbledown two-story wood building recently condemned as unlivable by the Town of Cortlandt. The 220-student yeshiva wanted to erect a new dormitory with classrooms. The plan ignited what must have been a well of resentment, however, and, in a 300-signature petition, neighbors opposed what they saw as an expansion. After two years, the town’s Planning Board has not come to a resolution.

Now, with Rosh Hashana approaching, signaling a period in the Jewish calendar of redemption, there is hope that the issue can be resolved — in a way that a Talmudist might appreciate. Although no one involved would publicly furnish details because of the delicacy of negotiations, there is talk of scaling down from an expansion to a wholesale renovation using the same footprint so that only a building permit would be required. Kenneth Verschoor, Cortlandt’s deputy director of planning, would say only that “scaling back was a possibility, but I don’t have confirmation.”

Still, even if the yeshiva sails out of the political storm, the experience of applying for approvals has been unnerving — stirring not just the standard development griping about things like a new building’s potential to overload the sewage system but also complaints that the yeshiva finds offensive.

“It is unsafe to have so many students walk along the narrow roads that are not designed for pedestrians,” Joe and Sally Foster, local residents, wrote in one of several similar letters sent to the Planning Board.

Some young men do interrupt their studies to walk a half-mile loop to air out minds weighing hairline distinctions. They insist that they walk two abreast and are careful not to block cars on what are, except for one stretch, sparsely traveled roads.

From the yeshiva’s perspective, it seemed that critics were saying that young men in yarmulkes strolling on a country road were more of a danger than occasional joggers.

The neighbors deny any anti-Semitism — one, Stephen J. Simbari, made that express point in a letter in response to the application to replace the ramshackle building, and even noted that he is Jewish. Still, he opposes the plans.

“True, for the most part the residents of the facility keep to themselves,” he wrote. “But this does not mean we cannot see them. Whenever I pass the property on Furnace Woods Road I am constantly amazed by the state of disarray that the yeshiva is kept in.”

The reality evident on a visit is that with Dodge City unusable, boys are crowded five to a room and classes are held in a partitioned dining room. That is why the yeshiva wants a new, or at least reconditioned, building.

The long-bearded head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Eli Kanarek, said it was his impression that neighbors worry that the yeshiva is a rapidly multiplying Hasidic community.

“They thought we’re making another Kiryas Joel,” he said, referring to the Orange County village settled by Satmar Hasidim from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “We just want a yeshiva.”

Though not Hasidic, the yeshiva is stringently Orthodox — the kind known in the Jewish world as black hat. It is the creation of Rabbi Kanarek’s father, Israel, who fled the Nazis and wanted to instill a love of the Talmud away from the diversions of family and city, diversions like the pull of the local kosher pizza shops.

The school, which runs from ninth grade to three years beyond high school, started out in New Rochelle and was transplanted here in 1985 to what had been the 37-acre Peekskill Dude Ranch. The incongruous Western-themed hotel rooms would serve as dormitories, and the lobby area — with the Holy Ark concealing a fireplace — would eventually become a study hall. A riding ring and stable were left to rot.

The young men say they appreciate the seclusion. “You’re fully engrossed,” said Moshe Schmalz, 19, of Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood. “You’re away from the outside world.”

The other day, more than 100 young men, all in white shirts and dark slacks, were squeezed into the study hall, some in solitary absorption, others in pairs, explicating to one another the same pages of the tractate Kesuva, which concerns marriage contracts. If, Heshel Jacobs explained to Mattis Nussbaum in a characteristic singsong, a man is engaged to be married in 12 months and cannot wed in time, he is still obliged to take care of his intended’s need for food and shelter.

Rabbi Yaakov Rothberg, the yeshiva’s administrator, says that for 20 years neighbors never complained — except about noisy excesses of enthusiasm for, say, the acquisition of a Torah. But clearly there was simmering displeasure.

Not by everybody. One letter received by the town was from Patricia Goethals, who said she would not oppose razing Dodge City and replacing it with a similar-size building. And, it now seems, that is likely to happen.