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For five years,  a few dozen people have met at the same park to perform Taschlich as a community on Rosh Hashanah — tossing breadcrumbs into the water to cast off sins and blowing the shofar to ring in the new year.

But this year, the Village of Mount Kisco in Westchester County, New York, denied Chabad of Bedford a permit for Leonard Park, claiming the park’s deed from 1941 prohibit religious events. The decision struck Chabad leaders as inconsistent: The same park hosted an Easter egg hunt in April, according to the village’s online calendar.

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“I didn’t know as the deed is very long and was just trying to help out our local groups,” Kyle Thornton, superintendent of parks and recreation, wrote in a June 11 email to Sara Wolf, who runs Chabad with her husband, Rabbi Arik Wolf. “I’m really sorry.”

Now, both sides are lawyering up and teeing up a potential legal showdown over religious freedom. Earlier this month, Mount Kisco’s Recreation Commission voted to retain a constitutional attorney, and Arik Wolf says he will sue as a last resort if the issue is not resolved.

Sara Wolf emailed Thornton to clarify why the egg hunt in April was not considered religious, while Tashlich is.

“We have an Egg Hunt in the park, we don’t use the word ‘Easter’ in any of it,” Thornton responded in an email obtained by the Forward. He added that the Recreation Commission had also rejected requests from local churches to hold morning prayer services.

“My hands are tied,” he wrote.

So Sara Wolf offered to remove the words “Rosh Hashanah” from the event name, just as the “Egg Hunt” did not mention Easter. Still, Chabad’s permit was denied.

“To be clear, the characterization of the event as an ‘egg hunt’ does not alter its religious nature,” Lauren Israelovitch, a lawyer with the National Jewish Advocacy Center representing Chabad of Bedford, wrote in a legal warning letter to the Village of Mount Kisco. “Egg hunts held in connection with the Easter holiday are widely understood to be expressions of Christian religious tradition, and government favoritism toward such events — while excluding comparable Jewish observances — cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.”

Israelovitch also disputed the idea that the park deed bans religious activity. A copy of the deed, obtained by the Forward, prohibits only the erection of permanent or temporary buildings or structures “for memorial, religious or educational purposes.” But Chabad’s ceremony would not involve any buildings or structures, Israelovitch said.

Even if the deed did have a clause prohibiting religious activity in the park, Israelovitch said such a clause would be unconstitutional. In the 1993 Supreme Court case Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, the court ruled against a public school that allowed community groups to use its facilities for social and civic meetings but prohibited them from holding religious gatherings. The case established that when secular expression is allowed, excluding religious speech from public property violates the First Amendment.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, where a village says that in a public park where all of these different religious activities have been taking place for years, and all of a sudden, they’re not permitted to take place,” Israelovitch said. “It’s completely unconstitutional.”

On Aug. 5, Thornton emailed Sara Wolf with another complication: The Recreation Commission had asked him to remind Chabad that only Mount Kisco residents are permitted to reserve the park. But while Chabad of Bedford’s mailing address is not based in Mount Kisco, the Wolfs are Mount Kisco residents.

Mount Kisco said it is assessing the matter. “The Village appreciates the sensitivity and urgency of this matter and we are currently reviewing the situation,” Edward Brancati, village manager of Mount Kisco, wrote in an email to the Forward.

Chabad was not the only Jewish group affected. Another local synagogue, Bet Torah, also had its permit for Tashlich at Leonard Park denied in June on religious grounds, an issue Rabbi Aaron Brusso addressed in a sermon. He said the congregation would hold their family Tashclich service at Shoppers Park instead, at Thornton’s suggestion.

In his sermon, Brusso said he supported Chabad’s challenge to the permit denial. But he also cautioned against labeling people antisemitic without evidence, mentioning he heard town leadership had received many emails characterizing them as antisemitic. Brusso said he called Mount Kisco Mayor Michael Cindrich and explained “that our community is feeling anxious and vulnerable after Oct. 7 and not as trusting as we were before based on a measurable increase in antisemitic events.”

Rabbi Wolf, troubled by what he viewed as an “arbitrary” decision, met with Cindrich last week. It was a cordial meeting, Wolf said, but the two did not reach a resolution.

“I made it clear as I was leaving the meeting that, ‘Mr. Mayor, you have not clarified at all to me or to our community why you denied this permit,’” he said in an interview. “I told him, when you take an action and you don’t clarify, justify, explain that action, you ask people to infer their own motivations that are unhelpful, that are unhealthy, that create divisiveness.”

Israelovitch, the NJAC lawyer, was more direct.

“It certainly seems that there’s somebody there with antisemitic motives,” she said. “That’s not to accuse the mayor of being antisemitic, or the board, or anyone in particular, but there is certainly somebody there that didn’t want this Jewish event taking place.”

Cindrich told the local newspaper The Examiner News last week that legal caution guided the village’s handling of the matter, adding that accusations of discrimination were painful to hear and pointing to his record of supporting the Jewish community.

“This has nothing to do with discrimination or antisemitism,” he told The Examiner. “It has to do with the rules and regulations and deed restrictions that have been followed for the last 80 years.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment as to why Chabad was approved to host Tashlich in previous years but denied a permit this year.

This story was originally published on the Forward.