An Orthodox Jewish religious teacher says her temple bosses canned her — because she was too observant and doesn’t work on the Sabbath!
Ellen Gastwirth, 41, says in a new Brooklyn federal-court lawsuit that she was hired as the director of education at the reformed Jewish synagogue Temple Judea on Long Island in 2005.
Gastwirth said everything was kosher until Rabbi Todd Chizner was hired there in 2006 and learned she was a Sabbath-observant Orthodox Jew.
“What do you people do on that day that would prevent you from being here?” Chizner insultingly asked Gastwirth in October 2008, when she said she couldn’t work on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the suit states.
A board member at the Manhasset synagogue also told Gastwirth in January 2010 that she was “the laughingstock” at a Women of Reform Judaism convention because “everyone knew that [we] had an Orthodox educational director,” the suit states.
The rabbi and the board of directors didn’t only discriminate against Gastwirth — they also didn’t want any other Orthodox Jews, according to the suit.
A board member told Gastwirth, “Don’t hire or renew the contracts of any teachers who are Orthodox Jews or Sabbath-observant,” according to the suit.
That April, Gastwirth’s boss learned that an Orthodox guest speaker planned to speak about Jewish mysticism at the temple and flipped, she said.
“Why would we ever allow him to speak here? The way he looks with that Orthodox beard will be a major turnoff to us here,” her boss said, according to the suit.
In mid-2012, when Gastwirth asked the synagogue president not to use money donated for the religious school on the synagogue, he allegedly replied, “Is your God going to be angry with you?”
The synagogue board finally booted Gastwirth in December 2012.
During a board meeting the next month, a board member accused Gastwirth of “running an Orthodox curriculum and further accused her of trying to sway the children away from Reform Judaism,” the suit states.
Rabbi Chizner hired a non-Orthodox Jew as the new education director, according to the suit.
Chizner declined to comment.
Gastwirth couldn’t be reached, and her lawyer declined to comment.
The suit seeks unspecified damages.