PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A fight over control of the nation's oldest synagogue went to trial Monday, with the congregation that worships there arguing its very existence is at stake and the other arguing the congregation has lost its way and has gone "beyond the pale."
The disagreement began over the proposed sale of ceremonial bells for $7.4 million and has become a bitter dispute over who is in charge of the 250-year-old Touro Synagogue in Newport. On one side is Congregation Jeshaut Israel, the congregation that has worshipped at Touro since the late 1800s. On the other is New York's Congregation Shearith Israel, the nation's first Jewish congregation, which owns Touro.
As trial began in a packed courtroom in U.S. District Court in Providence, Judge John McConnell noted that the court is resolving a civil, not religious, dispute.
"To do otherwise, in this court's opinion, would violate the First Amendment," he said.
Monday's proceedings touched on documents stretching back hundreds of years, including a 1790 letter George Washington wrote to the Jewish community in Newport that is considered an important pledge of the new nation's commitment to religious liberty. The letter is read annually at Touro, and in recent years, U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan have given the keynote address during the ceremony.
"It has stood as a beacon of religious freedom and tolerance in this country and the state of Rhode Island since it was dedicated in 1763," the Newport congregation's lawyer, Gary Naftalis, said during opening statements.
The Newport congregation says it is in financial straits and wants to sell the bells, called rimonim, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It hopes to use the money to create an endowment.
After the deal was announced in 2012, the New York congregation objected. It now says it owns them and says any sale is akin to selling a "birthright."
Jews left Newport after the Revolutionary War and didn't return until the late 1800s. During that time, items from Touro were transferred to Shearith Israel. After Jews returned to Newport, the items were returned.