A sign on the menorah - symbol of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which began Tuesday night - reads, "There will be liberty and justice for all when I am across the street."
Rabbi Levi Neubort of the Anshei Lubavitch Outreach Center in Fair Lawn has erected what he calls a "defiant menorah" on private property facing the municipal building, because borough officials have consistently refused to allow the menorah on town property.
Rebuffed in previous years, this year Neubort didn't even make an official request that the menorah stand alongside the borough's official "holiday tree." That's a name the rabbi finds offensive.
"It's a Christmas tree," he said. "And there's a double standard. One that pays for a Christmas tree with tax dollars and won't allow us to put up a menorah. They can call it [the menorah] a 'holiday candlestick' if they wish."
Joanne Kwasniewski, borough manager, said there hasn't been a flood of calls asking that a menorah be included in the holiday display, which puts hundreds of colored lights on a 30-foot pine tree on the city lawn near Fair Lawn Avenue.
"I think I had one letter on the matter, from a new resident and one phone call from a woman who didn't identify herself," Kwasniewski said.
Borough officials maintain that court decisions have agreed that a decorated pine is a "holiday tree" and worry that adding a menorah could lead to requests for displays by other religious and ideological groups, some of them controversial.
"Court decisions have gone different directions," Fair Lawn Mayor David Ganz said. "But what is absolutely clear is that if you haven't had a symbol and add one, you leave yourself open to requests from other groups, and we don't want to go down that road."
The mayor said that at least one anti-Semitic group had offices not far from Fair Lawn.
Ganz said there are public displays of the Hanukkah symbol at local synagogues and on the lawn of the building housing the Jewish War Veterans. The mayor said he would take part in the lighting of that menorah on Wednesday evening. Most Jewish organizations in the borough are content with the current policy, said the mayor, who is a member of a local synagogue.
Neubort said he hoped the menorah across from the municipal building would "let people note our displeasure" at the current town policies.
