Rabbi Joseph Bauman, whose home at 351 Bradford street, Brooklyn, is also his temple, today looks happily forward to holding Rosh Hashonah services in his own synagogue.
Until Friday Rabbi Bauman was not so sure that he could hold them there. Neighbors had complained about his temple. It was too noisy, one of them, Harris Cohen, who lives a few houses down the block, complained.
The complaint wouldn’t have bothered Rabbi Bauman much, however, except that it was made to the Police Department. And it was made in the form of a formal charge to the effect that the rabbi was maintaining a public nuisance.
Cohen said that the rabbi permitted dances in his temple until the early hours of the morning. Neighbors, Cohen said, were being kept from their sleep. Ten neighbors signed their names to affidavits attesting to their loss of sleep as a result of these dances in Rabbi Bauman’s temple.
On Friday, Magistrate Blanchfield heard the case. He ruled that Rabbi Joseph Bauman was not maintaining a nuisance. Disturbance of ten persons, he declared, did not constitute a nuisance under the intent of the law.
And so, Rabbi Bauman is preparing now to conduct the New Year’s services as originally scheduled—in his temple home, rather than in some makeshift synagogue to which he might have had to resort.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
