In a TriBeCa Park, a Question of Law and a Religious Symbol

[rug]

By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: September 25, 2011

Ralph Musolino unreeled his Stanley tape measure across the walkway of a small park in TriBeCa, marking off space for the construction of a Jewish ritual hut known as a sukkah, while Rabbi Zalman Paris, in auburn beard and tzitzit fringes, crouched nearby holding the tape’s other end.

“If the sukkah goes out onto the sidewalk, that’s a whole other issue,” Mr. Musolino cautioned the rabbi, as he chalked off where on the walkway he could squeeze the hut’s roughly 12-by-14-foot footprint. “But I want to make sure you don’t have a telephone-booth-sized sukkah.”

Though not Jewish, Mr. Musolino, the Lower Manhattan district manager for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, has learned quite a bit about the often obscure structure known as a sukkah because the agency has allowed the huts to be erected in several parks, including two in Mr. Musolino’s jurisdiction, Battery Park and Bowling Green.

But the one being contemplated for TriBeCa’s Duane Park, which is more of a triangular traffic island, has presented a different challenge. Some members of the local community board, as well as advocates for the park, oppose the erection of a sukkah, saying it violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against establishment of religion or, at the very least, is an intrusion in a tiny park.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/nyregion/in-a-manhattan-park-a-question-of-law-and-a-jewish-symbol.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

[Rabblevox]

1. No sukkahs. No mangers. No mosques. No Buddhist shrines. Not one god-damned dime...

of public money or land going to any religion. Period.

[Sinistrous]

2. ++++++