Three decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about the winter-holiday displays at the city and county buildings on Grant Street in Pittsburgh — specifically, if they amounted to government endorsements of religion.
The result: a split decision so complex that when Pittsburgh Rabbi Sruly Altein recently tried to read the 1989 decision, he found it more confounding than the legendarily complex Jewish legal tradition.
“I thought Talmud was complicated,” said Rabbi Altein, outreach director for Chabad of Pittsburgh, an Orthodox Jewish organization.
Despite that daunting challenge, Rabbi Altein invited two lawyers who worked on opposite sides of that case — and who still remember the day the Supreme Court’s lengthy decision came wheezing across the slow fax machines of the day — to reprise their arguments for a modern audience.
So they gathered Wednesday afternoon at the 20th floor offices of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney at One Oxford Centre — right across Grant Street from the scenes of the original dispute.
The session was offered by Chabad of Pittsburgh, whose 18-foot menorah was part of the 1989 case. It was part of a continuing legal education program for lawyers. It was also part of a series by the Chabad-affiliated Jewish Learning Institute on great debates in Jewish history — and that label fit this case as well.
Most of the 25 or so attendees Wednesday in the crowded conference room were Jewish, as were lawyers on both sides of the case.
The attorneys were Jon Pushinsky, who was on the legal team of the American Civil Liberties Union that opposed the displays, and Charles Saul, who represented Chabad.
The two, still working as attorneys in Pittsburgh, greeted each other warmly in a reunion of mutually respecting opponents — even as they held firm to their starkly different interpretations of the extent to which the First Amendment prohibits government-endorsed religion.
In the case, which involved multiple concurring and dissenting opinions, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a creche installed by the Holy Name Society each December in the Allegheny County Courthouse was an unconstitutional government endorsement of Christianity. The creche depicted the birth of Jesus along with the Latin words for “Glory to God in the Highest.”
But the court ruled 6-3 that the Chabad menorah did not amount to an endorsement of Judaism. It was installed in front of the City-County building, alongside a towering Christmas tree and a banner titled “Salute to Liberty” with then-Mayor Richard Caliguiri declaring the menorah lights as symbols of freedom.
Participants passed around a black-and-white photo of the display, with the yellow label “Plaintiff’s Exhibit 16” still affixed to it.
Mr. Pushinsky said those challenging the religious displays “received so much hate mail and death threats” for bringing the case.
He said the context of the case was important.
These religious displays were at buildings “in which citizens are compelled to attend to conduct business with their government,” Mr. Pushinsky said.
The origins of the menorah display have deep roots.
In Hanukkah, Jews celebrate an ancient liberation from Greek oppressors in what’s often called the first war for religious freedom. Religious law requires Jews to publicize this victory by displaying the menorah, in which one candle is lit for each of the eight days of the holiday, Rabbi Altein said.
In the late 20th century, the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement urged followers to extend this obedience in public places.
Mr. Pushinsky said this pedigree helps to prove the menorah is fundamentally religious — its lighting accompanied by prayers and even its symbolism traced to an ancient story of how the temple’s limited candle oil was miraculously extended.
There’s no such thing as a “secular miracle,” Mr. Pushinsky said.
But Mr. Saul countered that while the menorah is indeed a religious symbol, it also stands for universal values, and that its placement in the context of other symbols meant it was not an exclusive endorsement of one religion.
“We’re advocating for a rule of reason, not extremism,” he said. “We’re advocating for messages of tolerance, pluralism, religious freedom for all, messages of inclusion.”
The fact that there are government-recognized holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, each with religious as well as cultural roots, shows that the First Amendment doesn’t banish all religious expression from the public square.
Mr. Pushinsky said he “never dreamed the court would split” over the two displays.
The risk was that the decision would “stimulate religious hostility,” he said, with one side saying, “We have to take our symbol down, but you get to keep yours.”
At that time, no Jews were serving on the Supreme Court who could warn “what the effect would be on the street” of the decision, he said.
As it happened, more courtroom drama followed the 1989 decision. By that point, Mayor Sophie Masloff had succeeded the late Caliguiri. The city’s first Jewish mayor, but one more sympathetic to the ACLU stance, she refused to allow the menorah to be displayed. Chabad appealed again to the Supreme Court, which upheld the display.
That’s why, later this month, Chabad plans its annual menorah installation ceremony at its usual spot in front of the City County Building, once again next to a towering Christmas spruce.
Peter Smith: petersmith@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1416; Twitter @PG_PeterSmith.
First Published: December 7, 2017, 12:00 p.m.
