In a decision handed down yesterday, the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a Rhode Island federal district court (see
prior posting) and held that Rhode Island's historic Touro Synagogue is owned by New York's Shearith Israel congregation. In
Congregation Jeshuat Israel v. Congregation Shearith Israel, (1st Cir., Aug. 2, 2017), the court also concluded that a pair of historic silver Torah ornaments worth some $7 million are also owned by the New York congregation. Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, sitting by designation on the case, wrote the opinion for the court, saying that the court should rely on the parties' own agreements which are the "instruments customarily considered by civil courts." He said in part:
The district court approached the competing claims ... by a conscientious and exhaustive historical analysis.... Much of that history reflected, albeit without directly addressing, the doctrinal tensions between the CSI congregation, committed to preserving Sephardic practice at Touro, and the later Newport congregation that emerged from the 19th century immigration, which included a significant Ashkenazic element. The district court was scrupulous in avoiding any overt reliance on doctrinal precepts....
Nonetheless, the court's historical investigation was unavoidably an immersion in the tensions between two congregations that were not doctrinally identical.... These are circumstances in which we think that the First Amendment calls for a more circumscribed consideration of evidence than the trial court's plenary enquiry into centuries of the parties' conduct....
AP reports on the decision.
