Court Opinion

ID: 9629591
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:45:44.593109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:53.025156
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully disagree with my learned colleagues’ conclusion that the land use proposed by Camp Ramah is not religious. Camp Ramah desires to use its 30-acre property as a Jewish Day Camp and Family Life Retreat Center that would function as a religious retreat for children and adults. The day camp would teach many of the aspects of the Jewish faith to Jewish children by incorporating them into their daily lives while campers. See Decision of the Zoning Hearing Board of Worcester Township (Board), Finding of Fact No. 7. Prayer services will be scheduled throughout the day, and campers will adhere to a kosher diet and speak in Hebrew whenever possible.1 Id. Camp facilities include *1025an outdoor synagogue. Finding of Fact No. 9. In her testimony before the Board, Jennifer Stofman, the director of the Ra-mah Day Camp, provided a detailed description of the day camp’s scheduled program of worship and religious instruction, and she explained how the recreational activities are an important, but ancillary, part of that religious program.
The Family Life Retreat Center will host retreats focused on religious prayer and religious education conducted by rabbis, counselors and teachers provided by Camp Ramah. The center would be available to various groups, including families, single groups, college age groups and adult groups, but only those of the Jewish faith. Finding of Fact No. 12. Camp Ramah operates under the auspices of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which would set the overall educational policy of the facility. Finding of Fact No. 7.
The majority concludes that the proposed retreat is not a religious land use because the retreat would share certain characteristics in common with a recreational facility. However, it is not uncommon for religious and recreational land uses to share common characteristics. Therefore, the majority’s approach is not the appropriate test to apply. Rather, the Supreme Court set forth the appropriate test in Russian Orthodox Church Appeal, 397 Pa. 126, 152 A.2d 489 (1959). This Court must look to the general purposes of zoning and the zoning ordinance in question as a whole and ascertain whether the enactors of the ordinance intended to permit the proposed use as a religious use. Id. This Court’s decision must be based on express law rather than any subjective understanding of what may be properly labeled a “religious” practice. Id.; Church of the Saviour v. Zoning Hearing Board of Tredyffrin Township, 130 Pa.Cmwlth. 542, 568 A.2d 1336 (1989).
Section 150-8(B) of the Worcester Township Zoning Ordinance provides that undefined words “shall have the meaning of common or standard usage.” Trial court opinion, p. 6. The Board’s findings clearly demonstrate that Camp Ramah proposes to construct a retreat where children and adults of the Jewish faith can gather, learn about their religion and worship. A retreat principally designed for members of one faith to learn about then-religion is “religious” in the common usage. Thus, I believe that the proposed day camp and retreat is exactly the kind of religious use that the enactors of the ordinance intended. Moreover, any ambiguity in the terms of the ordinance should be construed in the landowner’s favor. Church of the Saviour (citing In re Shirk, 114 Pa.Cmwlth. 493, 539 A.2d 48 (1988)). Accordingly, I would reverse the trial court’s order affirming the denial of a special exception to Camp Ramah. Camp Ramah should be permitted to develop the Jewish Day Camp and Family Life Center as a religious use.

. Rabbi Steven M. Brown, who has been involved in the Camp Ramah program as camper, division head, teacher and counsel/trainer, described the program as follows in his testimony before the Board:
[It’s] an understanding that Jewish life encompasses all of living, and the way we teach it to children is to put them in an environment in which their entire life experience is seen through Jewish colored lenses.
That from the time you begin the day in the morning until the time you go to sleep at night, or from the time you come to camp until you leave, you are [im]mersed in Jewish living and seeing the world through Jewish eyes, the theory being that there's really no part of life that Jewish tradition and practice doesn't speak about.
So, if you’re playing ball on the ballfield, the way to treat a fellow on the ballfield, another person, treating them in God's image is a religious activity.
Praying two or three times a day is of course a religious activity.
*1025Eating kosher food, observing the dietary laws, is a religious activity.
By taking children out of their homes, many of whom have come from homes that aren’t particularly knowledgeable, Jewishly, or observant, Jewishly, or conversely who observe these laws and practices and want them reinforced all year long, Ramah has really been transformational in creating young, involved, committed, knowledgeable American Jews who care both about being Jewish and care about contributing to general American society.
Notes of Testimony, May 27, 1998, pp. 47— 48.