Testimony in Lawsuit On Ban of Religious Gatherings in NJ

Added Plaintiff  testimony about  Police enforcement at a  Lakewood congregation.
Case 2:20-cv-05420-CCC-ESK Document 7 Filed 05/04/20 Page 1 of 48 PagelD: 76
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
(Newark Division)
REV. KEVIN ROBINSON and  1. RABBI YISRAEL A. KNOPFLER, Plaintiffs,
PHILIP D. MURPHY, COLONEL PATRICK J. CALLAHAN Defendants.
EXHIBIT B- UNSWORN DECLARTION OF PLAINTIFF RABBI YISRAEL A. KNOPFLER
UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY
Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1746, Plaintiff, Rabbi Yisrael A. Knopfler, hereby declares under
penalty of perjury as follows:

1. I am co-plaintiff this case and I make this declaration in support of my attorney's
motion for a preliminary injunction in this case.
2. I am a rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish tradition and I preside over a synagogue located
in Lakewood, NJ, Congregation Premishlan. I was ordained over 20 years ago in Israel.
3. My congregation numbers 45-50 practitioners of Orthodox Judaism.
4. I also preside over the rabbinical court Beis Din Tzedek of Lakewood. The Court
has eleven members.
5. My synagogue accommodates 30 people, and I minister to my congregation by
holding two Davening services each Saturday, starting 35 minutes before sunrise and then again
at 9:30 a.m.
6. In addition, each day the synagogue hosts prayers during morning services, usually
around 8:30 a.m., a noon service, and a night service around 1 1 p.m.
7. The full panoply of synagogue prayers required by my religion must have a quorum
often, and several of the congregants must gather closely around the Torah for a reading from the
Torah a few times a week.
8. Also, people come to my synagogue to pray and study the Torah and the Talmud
together, especially young men.
9. Governor Murphy's Executive Order 107 has drastically interfered in the practice
of my Jewish faith in the following ways.
10. On or about March 22, a Sunday, in fear of police action because of Order 107's
ban on "gatherings of individuals," we began holding our morning prayer services in the backyard
of the synagogue so that we could disperse if the police were called.

11. Over the coming days, a number of the members of my congregation stopped
attending services in fear of legal consequences from the Governor's order because it bans "all
gatherings of individuals."
12. In order to confirm this ban, I consulted the FAQs on the Governor's website, which
stated clearly there must no religious gatherings for worship, funerals, weddings or the like.

13. On or about April 3, at sundown on Friday, as the congregants were walking from
different directions to the synagogue, two police cars parked directly outside the synagogue. The
congregants were walking, not driving, because it was the Sabbath.
The police cars had their red and blue overhead lights on to intimidate us and to make it appear as if some sort of police intervention were about to occur. They were clearly surveilling us to look for violations of Order 107.

15. To avoid a confrontation with the police, we avoided having the prayer service in
the backyard, escaped -tlm)ugh the back gate and had the prayer service elsewhere.

16. Because of this police interference, we changed the times of our Saturday morning
prayer service, the main prayer service of the week, and our afternoon services as well, as it
appeared that the police had leamed the regular times for our services from their surveillances.

17. On or about April 13, we were holding our morning services outside in the yard
around 9:30 a.m. Approximately 20 congregants were present, and the distance between each of
us was about ten feet.
18. However, during the service, as required by our religion, four of us gathered around
the Torah to read from it.

19. Suddenly, two police officers, evidently responding to a neighbor's complaint,
arrived and the congregants quickly began scattering in all directions. One of them ripped his pants
while climbing over the fence to escape the police. Another hid in the boiler room under the steps
and would not come out for 20 minutes.

20. The two officers started walking around my yard while talking on their radios.

21. I rolled up the Torah scroll, covered it, walked over to one of the officers and said:
"You know, you're on private property," to which he responded: "Well, this is an illegal
gathering."

22. I replied: "This is my private property. You're trespassing. If you don't get off my
property immediately, I will file a complaint against you."

23. The officer then turned on his body cam and barked at the remaining congregants
that they should not move because he was coming back with tickets, to which I responded that he
would not be allowed back on my property without a warrant.

24. The officers then retreated to the street, and I could see them attempting to count
how many people had remained from the congregation.

25. The remaining congregants, nine in number, went into a back room of the
synagogue in fear of being arrested. They taped garbage bags on the windows and locked the door.

26. They could not continue reading the Torah, which they had taken inside, because
there was no quorum of ten.

27. I knocked on the door, and only when they were satisfied that it was me did they
let me in.
28. We finished reading from the Torah and finished our prayers in that little room with
10 men, while the young children were sent into the main sanctuary to peek out from the now
blacked out windows to let us know when the police left.
29.
30. Not only were the two police officers still there, but a female supervisor had arrived.
The two male police officers were wearing masks, but the female supervisor was

31. As we were completing the prayer service, one of my children came down to the
synagogue from my house, upstairs. After identifring him, he was allowed into the back room. He
came over to me and told me the police were banging on the front door of the house. I told him
not to open the door.

32. After completion of the service I went upstairs to my home on the second floor,
where I am usually met by the raucous din of 13 kids eating breakfast. Surprisingly, the second
floor was silent and deserted.

33. I continued up to the third floor, where I met my almost 12-year-old daughter in a
hysterical state.

34. In response to my questioning look, she explained to me that after the police had
knocked and upon receiving no response, retreated back to their cars, she continued playing with
the younger kids in the foyer.

35. She continued saying that after a few minutes, upon noticing the police woman
approaching the house, she sent the little ones up to their bedrooms. As she followed, she suddenly
heard the front door opening. She spun around and saw the unmasked police woman's head inside
the house. She shrieked and bolted upstairs.
36. A few minutes later the three officers left.

37. After seeing that the officers had left, the remaining congregants furtively snuck
out to their cars parked in the driveway of the synagogue, and, after checking the windshields for
tickets, went home.

38. Our fear was palpable. A 45-year old-congregant, who had been hiding in the boiler
room, emerged from his hiding place quivering and quaking.

39. Now we live in constant fear of another police intervention. Members of the
congregation are constantly looking toward the street for police cars, and some hide inside the
synagogue and come into the yard only for the most important parts of the services.

40. We continue to hold the prayers in the yard in order to be able to escape the police
if and when this happens again.

41. Also, in fear of the consequences under Order 107, we have refrained from any
gatherings of the Beis Din Tzedek of Lakewood rabbinical court, whose eleven members sit in
tribunals of three in the synagogue or in the back room, along with the litigants and civil and
rabbinical attorneys. These gatherings have sometimes included up to twenty people.

42. Our continued fear of police intervention is further justified because, also in the
Town of Lakewood, the police broke up a prominent rabbi's funeral on April 2 and issued
numerous summonses, as widely reported in the press. One of my congregants was present during
this fiasco and fled the scene to observe the police violating Jewish rights from a distance.

43. Furthermore, the Lakewood Police have broken up more than a dozen forbidden
"gatherings" in Lakewood, some religious and some non-religious, as has also been widely
reported in the press.

44. For example, there is this report of the police breaking up a Jewish wedding:
http://tomsriver.shorebeat.com/2020/04/police-break-up-four-gatherings-in-lakewood-including-
an-open-school-and-backyard-wedding/

45. I am asking the Court to afford my congregation the same degree of freedom that
Order 107 affords to the non-retail business gatherings he_ favors, such as law firms, accounting
firms and media operations, which is to say, best efforts to practice "social distancing" when
"practicable" and sanitizing common surfaces by building owners.

46. On this point, I note that it is absolutely impossible for Jewish worship to be
conducted by video. For one thing, there must be a physically present quorum of ten for every
prayer service, and these ten cannot even be in different rooms in the same building let alone spread
out on the Intemet. The suggestion is ridiculous.

47. Further, given the supposed limitation of religious gatherings to ten or fewer
people, the required quorum often men for all religious services would mean excluding the mother,
sisters and other family members at a Bar Mitzvah and even the wife at a wedding in the
synagogue, not to mention any relatives and friends who would wish to be present.

48. Finally, while we had heard rumors of some sort of permission for gatherings of ten or less, we have since learned that this is not an Executive Order by the Governor but some kind of directive to police that they can "presume" gatherings often-or-less are lawful unless they decide there is "clear evidence" to the contrary. We have no idea what this means and we are not willing to live under a regime in which a police officer decides whether our gatherings satisfy his presumption and we are limited to only ten people.
49. I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Executed on May 4, 2020
Rabbi Yisrael A. Knopfler