House of Worship Causes Back-Yard Rift in Oak Park : Judaism: Orthodox Chabad of the Conejo angers some residents, who say issue is land use. Zoning law is on their side, leaders say.

The house is simple: single-story, beige stucco with brown trim and a well-watered lawn. From Conifer Street, it looks just like any other comfortable suburban home in Oak Park.

But neighbors watch it as suspiciously as if it were the haunt of drug dealers, counting the cars parked in front, the visitors coming and going.

Inside the house, members of Chabad of the Conejo, an orthodox Jewish group, are equally uncomfortable.

Their neighbors do not want them there. They say they have nothing against Jews, but they do not welcome a house of worship in their residential neighborhood.

Tensions have risen on both sides, escalating to the point of physical confrontations between Chabad members and neighbors on two occasions last week.

There is no end in sight to the conflict: The residents, with the tenacity typical in the Oak Park community, are threatening to take Chabad to court if necessary to oust it from Conifer Street.

“We have tried very hard from the beginning to make it clear this is a land use issue,” said Howard Fox, the attorney retained by the Medea Creek Neighborhood Assn. “We don’t want Chabad out of the neighborhood. We just don’t want them in that house.”

The heart of the matter, Fox said, is that he and other neighbors think traffic in and out of the house is excessive for the quiet street.

“We don’t want 70 people coming and going from that house,” he added. “It’s like living next to a neighbor who has a party every weekend.”

But members of Chabad are just as adamant. One of the tenets of their religion is that they live within walking distance of their place of worship. They say there is nowhere else to go in the neighborhood, and a relocation would involve uprooting 25 families.

The law is on their side, members of Chabad say, and they believe they will be allowed to stay.

“I personally feel that people should welcome churches and synagogues into their community,” said Rabbi Moshe Bryski, Chabad’s leader. “The zoning laws make that exception for residential neighborhoods. Why in the world would that exception be made? Because this is where they belong.”

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Bryski hopes eventually to restore cordial relations with Chabad’s neighbors.

“I won’t be happy until I’m friends with my neighbors,” Bryski said. “It’s over with when I shake hands with my neighbors.”

But handshakes are a distant hope at this point.

Chabad bought the house on Conifer Street more than a year ago, and has been holding services there since then, without a conditional use permit from the county. For six years Chabad held services in a rented space on Kanan Road and Sunnycrest Drive, but when the group lost their lease they moved to Conifer Street.

When Chabad members wanted to expand the house, giving it a more synagogue-like appearance and adding a second story, they applied to Ventura County planners for permits. They were told the expansion violated the basic residential feel of the neighborhood, and later came back with scaled back plans.

Their conditional use permit application asks that the group be allowed to hold services for up to 70 people in the house three times a week, and to have Bible study classes at night, Sunday through Friday.

The county’s Planning Commission did not approve the request at its Sept. 8 meeting. The vote was 2 to 1 in favor, and staff had recommended approval. But with two members absent, a majority was lacking and the commission could not issue the permit.

Chabad has appealed to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, which will hear the case in late October. In the interim, county planners are allowing Chabad to hold services.

For six months, the neighbors have made their objections clear, circulating petitions and attending contentious community meetings to complain about the group.

A core group of two dozen neighbors have hired a lawyer and are preparing for a lawsuit if the permit is approved. They say they have the support of as many as 400 other residents in the neighborhood.

The neighbors say they mistrust Chabad. They do not believe Bryski’s emphatic statements that the planned expansion is designed only to make the congregation’s current 60 members more comfortable, not to allow for future growth.

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They worry about having more cars parked on their streets--some members of Chabad do drive to services--they worry about noise from the group, and they worry about loss of privacy, particularly when Chabad breaks for refreshments in the back yard of the house.

“My privacy has been completely shot to hell,” said Martha Helton, a resident whose back yard is kitty-cornered to Chabad’s house. “I lay out by my pool in a bikini and all these little heads pop over the fence and look at me.”

“Look at me,” Helton said, gesturing to her lightly tanned arm. “I’ve quit laying out. We’re talking having 70 holy people look at me in a little bikini. That’s embarrassing. My choice is being denied.”

The culture clash extends beyond bikinis. When Chabad erected a plywood succah--a small outdoor hut needed to celebrate the harvest festival Succot, which took place last week--the neighbors were horrified at its appearance, and angry over how it was built.

Traditionally, the top of the succah is covered with palm fronds. Last Sunday, members of the congregation went across Conifer Street to gather the palm fronds from a stand of trees at the headquarters of the Oak Park Unified School District headquarters.

Two children roller-blading observed bearded men wearing yarmulkes who were sawing off palm fronds. The children reported back to their father, Jim Fox, a nearby resident and Chabad opponent.

Fox took his camera and drove up to school district headquarters, eager to capture any wrong-doing by Chabad members on film. Two men were stacking palm leaves in the back of a car when he arrived. He began to take pictures.

“I told the younger guy this is school property and you have no business cutting these palms,” Fox said. “Then the older gentleman came out from behind the car with a saw in his hand. He started yelling and running at me.

“I jumped in my Suburban and he physically opened my passenger door and tried to grab at me,” Fox said. Fox said he hit the gas and sped away from the parking lot, pushing the man aside.

“I came home and I was shaking,” Fox added. He said he called police and reported the incident.

No members of Chabad were available to comment on the incident, but Oak Park’s assistant superintendent of schools, Stanley Mantooth, confirmed that he received an apologetic phone call from a member of Chabad, saying they had not known the palms were considered private property.

Meanwhile, members of Chabad said they have been the victims of anti-Semitic actions in recent weeks. Cars have screeched down Conifer, their occupants shouting out “Heil Hitler” and ethnic slurs, they said.

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Their answering machine has been filled with messages suggesting that Oak Park is not the place for orthodox Jews. Bryski had to dodge an object thrown from a car last week while he was leading a religious procession down Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

The rabbi said he does not blame his neighbors for the mounting anti-Semitism. He believes the examples of bigotry he has seen are coming from outside the immediate neighborhood, spurred on by publicity about Chabad.

“This is not coming from my neighbors,” he said. “But as much as my neighbors want to keep this a land use issue, it has brought out anti-Semitic feelings in others. It has brought out the worst in the community.”

It has also brought out fears in Oak Park’s Jewish community, which extends beyond Chabad membership, including many residents who worship elsewhere.

On a ridge in Oak Park last Sunday, a group of eight residents, including some Chabad members, confronted Ken Kegler, of Thousand Oaks, and Dane Vannett, of Moorpark, while they were flying model replicas of German World War II airplanes.

The group, carrying a sword, a crossbow and hatchet, demanded to know if Kegler and Vannett were Nazi sympathizers, according to the two men.

Satisfied to learn the men were merely aviation enthusiasts, the group left. But Kegler and Vannett called the police, concerned that they might be accused of a hate crime.

A Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said the department was satisfied that no crime had occurred and that the incident is no longer under investigation.

Bryski said he knew a few members of his congregation were involved in the altercation, but that he knew nothing about weapons.

“You have to be concerned about someone looking up and seeing a swastika flying overhead,” Bryski said. “But when they talked to the men, they were convinced that there was no malice in their hearts or their minds.”

Bryski said he would have recommended calling the police when the swastika was first spotted. “But as it turns out there was nothing and that was good.”

He said he believes the conflict over the Chabad worship center was not related to the incident over the model airplanes. But he acknowledged that fear of anti-Semitism has put everyone in the community on edge.

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Several of the most vocal opponents of Chabad said they believe the group is over-inflating the issue of anti-Semitism to blur what they consider a land use question.

“They’re using it as a point in their favor,” said Louis Fishstein, whose property faces the back of Chabad. “It’s not Chabad that anyone is opposing, it’s strictly a land use issue.”

Fishstein points out that he and his wife, Arlene, are Jewish and have attended services at Chabad from time to time. But when they look over the fence in their neat back yard, they want to see a traditional family at play, not a group of people celebrating a religious faith.

“We’ve been happy here for 17 years,” Fishstein said. “Don’t we have a right to keep this a residential neighborhood?”

Times correspondent Greg Rippee contributed to this story.