The Missionary Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo are in the news again. They have complained that the rights of their convent in Stone Park/MelrosePark, Illinois are being violated by a strip club built next door. The convent contains a retirement home for nuns and a boarding school for training initiates into religious sisterhood, as well as chapels and the order’s Midwestern headquarters.

For four years, the nuns, with community members alongside them, have protested. The owners, investors and lawyers of the “gentleman’s club” have aggressively taken to the radio and other media, dismissing the convent as a “retirement home” which should not be able to take advantage of laws distancing alcohol-serving businesses from churches and schools.

The press reported that, initially, the town’s zoning officials voted against the “adult entertainment” business twice because of its proximity to the convent, but that an owner/spokesman/lawyer filed suit and a judge ruled his way. This litigator made the front page headline of the “Sun-Times” (Feb. 13, 2012) when he told the nuns: “Mind Your Own Business.”

That newspaper cited him as claiming as a business owner: “As a legal, tax-paying citizen of this community, we ask only to be judged fairly by what we have done and not through the recent religious fervor.” He then added: “In reference to our non-tax-paying neighbors, we ask that you treat us as we have treated you, by not trying to unduly disturb us by imposing your religious beliefs on us or others. All throughout our plans for this project, we’ve followed the letter and spirit of the law.”

The implication here is that people who pay more taxes should have more say and are somehow preferable, especially when they can invoke the law. Note, as well, the use of the “Do unto others” precept to bully the sisters into silence.

The nuns responded that they were not out to impose their beliefs, but to fight for moral principles within the community at large. They maintain that although there are many strip clubs in that area, this one is not only right next to them but near to a residential neighborhood full of children.

What amazed me is that the investor/spokesman/lawyer didn’t seem to care about the feelings of the club’s neighbors. He preferred to brag about how his club would feature some of the most spectacular acts in the country, and that the developers had distinguished themselves by building a sports celebrity’s burlesque house. And, oh yes, he boasted that the strip club was the only landscaped commercial building in Stone Park, and that the dancers are “daughters; they’re mothers, and some of them are Catholics, too.”

Now it seems that the well-landscaped “establishment” has lost its liquor license, withdrawn by the mayor, and has shut down a bit.  A judge has given the green light to the nuns to persevere in their efforts to sue the strip club in the wake of a complaint filed by the sisters regarding the public disturbances and alleged sordid goings on there. From the start, the club’s builders have proudly billed it as a “cabaret with nudity” with a “top shelf restaurant.”

My question is: Where is the club owners’ sense of embarrassment? Abraham Heschel wrote that he dreaded the very thought of any human being without a sense of embarrassment, basic to religion and to our very humanity. Heschel wrote that embarrassment “is a response to the discovery that in living we either replenish or frustrate a wondrous expectation. It involves an awareness of the grandeur of existence that may be wasted…of unique moments missed.” (Who Is Man?, p. 113)

The nuns have complained in their lawsuits about having to endure “pulsating and rhythmic staccato-beat noise and flashing neon and or strobe lights that impair the sisters’ and others’ peaceful use and enjoyment of their neighboring properties.”

I can’t help looking at this issue (and all issues) from the perspective of Jewish law and tradition. Respecting the sensibilities of neighbors is a core value of biblical and Talmudic jurisprudence. According to the Mishnah (compiled in the year 200), the foundation code of the Talmud, the compendium of Jewish legal deliberations, one should avoid building anything that could in any way infringe upon a neighbor’s view or that would damage his property (Baba Batra 2:1). One should not even plant trees too close to nearby property (2:11) or do business in one’s home that disturbs one’s neighbors, especially with noise. (2:3) The rabbinic sages taught that one should go beyond the “letter of the law” in order to do the right thing, especially to promote paths of peace and cooperation (darchei shalom) among neighbors of different beliefs and backgrounds. (Gittin 5:8)

The values and teachings of Jewish Law and tradition offer much to inform civil law controversies, such as that in Stone Park. And the right kind of popular culture has something to offer, as well. I can’t help thinking of the classic film, The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), in which Ingrid Bergman portrayed a dedicated and feisty nun, and Bing Crosby an engaged but laid back and crooning priest. These Catholic clergy run a parochial school with compassion and concern. In the end the nun convinces a wealthy man to donate his building to the school. This emphasizes another value basic to the Judeo-Christian heritage: zedakah, doing the right thing with one’s wealth, especially sharing it.

Could the day come when the strip club owners will turn over their facility to the convent for the operation of, say, a dare care center (that would give pleasure to the retired nuns and education experience to some of the novitiates), hopefully out of zedakah, or perhaps out of the town’s providing reasonable incentives for the club’s move to an alternate location?