Beth Din switch sought by Shulamith
November deadline to close on Inwood campus nears
By Mayer Fertig
Issue of Oct. 10, 2008
In a sharply worded response to a third hazmanah from the Beth Din of America, an attorney for Shulamith School for Girls said he answered a second summons three days before the Aug. 15 deadline.
“I have never received any substantive response to that letter [dated Aug. 12] but I have been informed that you have taken the position that Shulamith never responded to the second hazmanah,” Edward Rubin wrote.
“This is simply false.”
A group of nearly 100 Shulamith parents more or less simultaneously has summoned the school administration to a din torah and filed a civil suit, seeking to block an apparent plan to sell the school’s valuable Flatbush campus and use the proceeds to purchase a campus for Bnot Shulamith in Inwood. That purchase, which was scheduled to close in November, is now in doubt, as is the status of the deposit paid on the property by Rabbi Moshe Zwick, the venerable institution’s executive director.
“Please do bear in mind the distinction between no response and a response you don’t like,” Rubin’s letter continued. “They are not the same. I trust I will not hear attributed to you the further falsehood that there has been no response to the third hazmanah.”
The letter referred to objections Rubin raised in previous letters and at several reportedly contentious meetings at the beth din, in which Shulamith took the position that the rabbinical court may not have the authority to decide the case.
Finally, he informed the rabbinical court, which is affiliated with the Rabbinical Council of America, that the Shulamith administration “elects to arbitrate” before a different court, the Beth Din of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, also known as Agudas Harabonim, and expects a hearing date to be set shortly. He added that the school “reserves the right to raise the threshold issues previously elaborated.”
A call to Rubin for further comment was not returned. Rabbi Shlomo Weissmann of the Beth Din of America promptly returned a call but said he was bound by his court’s policy to not comment on a current case.
“[Rubin’s] claim isn’t that the RCA beth din doesn’t have the right, it’s that no beth din has the right,” said Robert Tolchin, an attorney for the parents’ group.
The head of the Agudas Harabonim court, Rabbi Hersh M. Ginsberg, told The Jewish Star Tuesday that no hearing has been scheduled and none can be unless both parties are in agreement.
“How can I schedule a hearing if both parties haven’t agreed?” Rabbi Ginsberg asked. “The party who called Rabbi Zwick to a din torah doesn’t have to agree” to a change in venue, he explained, in which case one beth din would call the other and schedule a process called zabla, in which a representative of each court would together choose a third rav to hear the case.
Tolchin told The Jewish Star Tuesday he would have no response yet about a possible change of venue.
A New York State Supreme Court justice recently ruled that the parents have standing to sue, finding that they are “members” of Shulamith, as defined in the bylaws of the school, which the court found to be valid. The court dismissed a motion filed by the school to dismiss the case.
That could set the stage for the parents to elect new trustees, which the bylaws stipulate is to occur early January.
“I would expect that plans will be organized to hold the election that’s supposed to held Jan. 2,” Tolchin said. “In light of the fact that there hasn’t been an election in years it would make sense to hold an election earlier.”
The parents planned to publish an advertisement in a Flatbush-area shopping guide announcing that registration for grades nursery-12 is open for the 2009-2010 school year. The phone number in the ad rings at a parent’s home. It is an apparent response to the Flatbush school’s plan to delay until at least November a decision on whether to accept applications for ninth grade.
