I didn’t know what to make of this story after I read it in the Washington Post. In January 2021, Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jewish man, sent email invitations to about 12 of his friends to come to his house in University Heights, Ohio, for a Shabbat minyan. A minyan is a Jewish prayer meeting requiring a quorum of 10 adult men.
One of Grand’s neighbors learned about the planned meeting and reached out to the mayor’s office to complain about it. He asked the authorities to stop the gathering. The city’s zoning ordinance requires “houses of worship” to have a special-use permit. A city official contacted Grand and ordered him to “immediately cease and desist” using his home as a “place of religious assembly” without permission.
Although Grand didn’t see hosting his prayer meeting in his home as turning it into a house of worship, he obeyed the order and applied for the permit. Apart from delaying action on his application, city officials frustrated Grand in various ways, including multiple requests for additional information. Grand also said his house was later subjected to police surveillance.
Left with nowhere to turn, Grand filed suit in federal court. Unfortunately for him, the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit both dismissed his lawsuit on technicalities. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last month to hear the case, Grand v. City of University Heights, in its next term.
Zoning ordinances are crucially important for all sorts of reasons. However, their application in this case is nothing short of bizarre. It can be a nuisance when large numbers of parked cars take over neighborhood streets during house parties, but that happens quite often. People congregate in homes for Bible studies. Others host book clubs in their houses for discussions of literary works. Not to mention the frequent gatherings to watch football, basketball and other sports.
I don’t know much about what takes place during a minyan, but from the little information I’ve been able to find, I cannot see how it will be any more disruptive to a neighborhood than any of the group activities that routinely occur in homes. I’m also not aware of any cities or municipalities that require permits for those types of regular gatherings. Why single out a minyan then?
Houses of worship are typically built to accommodate large numbers of people. Even small churches hold at least one hundred people. It doesn’t appear as if Grand was planning to invite anywhere close to that many guests to his house, so his frustration is understandable.
The University Heights city officials apparently think that having people meet in designated houses of worship helps protect local populations from the disruptions that such gatherings can cause. They may be right, but I think a brief visit to Ghana, even for a few days, would do them a lot of good. They will return to Ohio with some fresh perspectives that I think will prompt them to channel their energies into far more important issues.
When I was growing up in Ghana in the 1960s and ‘70s, each town typically had about three or four churches—Protestant, Catholic, and Pentecostal. Most places also had a mosque. However, over the course of the last four decades, all kinds of other denominations have proliferated across the country. The new churches, which are often labeled as charismatic, tend to hold services at all times of the day, and throughout the week. The noise emanating from those places of worship can be quite deafening at times.
I stayed at a hotel in a mid-sized city in Ghana during one of my visits a few years ago. Having had a long day of travel and various activities, I retired to bed quite late one night. I really needed some good rest, so I set my phone alarm clock for 10:00 a.m. the next morning.
Things didn’t go according to plan. I was still fast asleep when, around 5 a.m., I was awakened by a booming voice over a loudspeaker. Minutes later, loud music came from the same source. I later found out it was a church just a few yards across the street from the hotel.
The next couple of hours were filled with alternating periods of preaching and singing.
Naturally, I was annoyed. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I finally got out of bed and went down to the reception desk. I asked the gentleman there why such a high level of noise was tolerated at that ungodly hour. He seemed a bit surprised by my question. While I was standing there, the noise became so unbearable that I asked him to call the police. He was hesitant, so I politely asked him to give me the number for the local police so I could make the call myself.
That was when I received an even more surprising answer. He told me it would be a waste of my time. Either no one would answer the phone, or even if someone did, there was nothing they would or could do about the problem.
I dejectedly returned to my room. For the next two hours, I just sat there and helplessly endured the noise pollution.
The interesting thing is that this particular church service was being conducted on a Tuesday morning. Because it was a workday, nearby businesses had already begun their operations for the day. The people assembled in that house of worship clearly gave little to no consideration to the disruptions they were causing in the neighborhood.
This problem is something people across Ghana face today. There is noise pollution from many different sources, with churches being notorious offenders. Religion is a highly sensitive subject for many Ghanaians. I get the sense that people are bothered by the disturbances—especially late at night and in the early mornings—but are afraid to complain because they might be seen as blasphemous. Everyone simply learns to live with it.
There are noise ordinances in Ghana, but almost no one obeys them. I enjoy my visits to the country to see family and friends. That noise pollution, however, is something I definitely do not miss whenever I return to my home base here in America.
Peaceful coexistence with neighbors in any society requires us, as individuals, to make some compromises. However, some things are not easy to tolerate. I would much rather live next to someone hosting a minyan at their house than be awakened by loudspeakers at five o’clock in the morning.
I wish I could invite the University Heights city officials to accompany me on a visit to Ghana. They would promptly get a taste of my hotel experience on that stressful morning. I am quite certain that they would return to Ohio with a completely different perspective. They might even decide to leave Grand alone the next time a neighbor calls to complain about his minyan.
NUTS!