HIGHLAND, NY — Is it a place of worship, or is it a children’s summer camp?

Highland’s Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) says the proposed Yeshiva Ohr Shraga Veretzky is a sleepaway children’s summer camp—a use that hasn’t been allowed in town for many years.

The applicant says that because participants will be engaging in religious activities, the town has no choice but to approve the yeshiva as a place of worship.

Highland was once home to many sleepaway camps, including the biggest in the country at the time, Camp Wel-Met in Barryville. Founded in the 1930s as the Metropolitan Jewish Centers Camp Association, Wel-Met closed in the 1980s. The still-operating Camp Tel Yehudah, a summer camp for Jewish teens founded in 1948, is grandfathered in. Koinonia Nature Camp is a day camp for town residents.

Although places of worship are allowed in all parts of town with a special use permit, Yeshiva Ohr Shraga Veretzky is not primarily a place of worship, writes the ZBA chair, Larry Fishman, in an interpretation dated July 18.

“The best and most accurate description of the proposed use...would be as a children’s camp, which use, whether religious or secular in nature, is explicitly prohibited in the Town of Highland,” he writes.

Approved for a hotel

The site at 211 Mail Road was once home to the Catskill Mountains Resort and is currently approved for use as a hotel. Yeshiva Ohr Shraga Veretzky has applied for site plan approval and a special use permit to operate there.

Fishman said town code defines a children’s summer camp as “either publicly or privately owned, complete with buildings, structures, sanitary facilities and ancillary services designated for the recreation and education of youth.”

The applicant describes the project as a “summer religious educational retreat,” a use that is not included in the town code, Fishman writes.

The applicant considers Yeshiva Ohr Shraga Veretzky a place of worship because “Hasidic young adults, children, and families” will come there “to study Torah, communicate and study with their Rabbi, deepen their religious faith, and connect on a religious level with others of their religious community,” according to Fishman.

He said the applicant argues that the ZBA has no choice but to define Yeshiva Ohr Shraga Veretzky as a “place of worship” because the term is not defined in town code, and “because the courts consistently require that a municipality be ‘more flexible’ in seeking to accommodate religious uses and expansive in defining what constitutes religious use.”

“However,” Fishman writes, “on June 20, the applicant made clear that the dormitories would house only children between the ninth and twelfth grades, would only house them for the summer, and would provide recreational and educational facilities for the children, and the parents would not be permitted to stay on-site.”

He said this shows that the project is intended for the “‘recreation and education of youth,’ i.e., a summer children’s camp, after or near the conclusion of the official school year to the exclusion of any other primary use. This logical conclusion is further bolstered by the applicant’s identification on its own website of the Subject Property as ‘Mesivta Camp-Barryville.’”

A summer children’s camp that caters exclusively to a religious community and includes religious structures, such as a mikva (a ritual bath) and a synagogue, does not mean that it’s a place of worship. Fishman wrote.

$3.33 million purchase

In March 2023, the D’Veretzky Foundation Yad Yecheskel purchased the land and buildings from 211 Mail Road LLC for $3.33 million. The sale included two parcels, one 31.4-acres and the other 6.6 acres.

The previous owner, 211 Mail Road LLC, paid $33,133 in county taxes in 2017. The owner before 211 Mail Road LLC was Sokol Woodlands Inc., which purchased the property in 1963 for the Slovak Gymnastic Union Sokol.

The current applicant wants to build two single-story dormitories including 72 beds each and totaling 6,800 square feet. The project includes a 800-square-food mikva and a 9,000-square-foot multipurpose building.

Earlier this year, the planning board asked Laberge Group engineers to review the special use permit and referred the applicant to the ZBA. The applicant appeared before the ZBA in April.

During the public comment period, Fishman said, the town heard the public’s concerns regarding traffic safety, garbage disposal, occupancy numbers, noise, and the risk of fire. Some “complained that the true anticipated usage of the property had been obfuscated by the applicant,” Fishman wrote. “One member of the public noted that the proposed use was already being openly and publicly advertised by the applicant as a ‘CAMP.’”

The applicant returned to the ZBA on June 20 “to present more details including sketch plans of the proposed construction and to answer additional inquires from the ZBA and its counsel,” said Fishman.

Yeshiva Ohr Shraga says on its web page that “Mosdos Veretzky’s mission is to provide students with a superior, Torah-based, individualized education that will equip them with faith and knowledge to enable them to meet life’s challenges. This education is provided in a warm and nurturing environment that will maximize the students own experience and creativity and infused with the flavor of our traditions, heritage and culture.”

Fishman said the applicant has cited no precedent in which a summer children’s camp is defined as a “place of worship.”

“To do so would be to render the definitions in town code meaningless and allow a use—children’s summer camp—to all religious groups while simultaneously denying the same to all non-religious groups,” he said.

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"Catskill Mountains Resorts gets permit"

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