Take Linden, the latest in a line of localities that have used zoning laws to enforce an unofficial quota of Jewish residents. In 2017, the town began passing zoning laws in an attempt to reverse the continued growth of its Orthodox Jewish community. At the time, you needed a 25,000-square-foot lot to build a house of worship. As Yitzchok Landa wrote this week: “All too quickly, however, the zoning was changed to require a minimum of 75,000 square feet, limiting options to a handful of sites. It was then revised upward again to 90,000 feet, of which there are no lots in Linden. Combining smaller lots was outlawed. This made it impossible to get a shul approved within the city, forcing Jews to meet for prayer gatherings in homes.”
Jewish life in Linden was thus made “difficult, but not impossible.”
But what if impossible is the goal?
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