Monk or bunk? A Middletown tax dispute

Battle over exemption, sign centers on legitimacy of small monastery

BY KAREN E. BOWES Staff Writer

BY KAREN E. BOWES
Staff Writer

Middletown officials have demanded that this sign outside a residence on David Court be taken down.Middletown officials have demanded that this sign outside a residence on David Court be taken down. Middletown Township has ordered a self-described Greek Orthodox monk to remove a large front lawn sign declaring his home a monastery.

On June 18, Archimandrite Ephraem Bertolette, 63, said he received notice from the township giving him 14 days to remove the sign or suffer legal prosecution.

Ephraem, who calls his David Court split-level ranch the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Barbara, says he is the victim of religious discrimination. The town says his religion is questionable.

Ephraem claims that an unnamed township employee has even threatened him with jail time regarding the sign and a large metal cross, also on his front lawn.

“He asked, ‘When will you remove it?’ I said ‘never,’” Ephraem said, regarding the cross. “It’s not like it’s a pink flamingo. I can’t just take it down.”

But Township Attorney Bernard Reilly said the property code enforcer never mentioned the cross, only the new 4-by-6-foot sign. The sign went up recently, Reilly said, unlike the cross, which has been on the property for years.

ERIC SUCAR staff The Middletown home of Metropolitan Ephraem, which he considers a monastery.ERIC SUCAR staff The Middletown home of Metropolitan Ephraem, which he considers a monastery. “You can’t just put a sign up in a residential neighborhood,” Reilly said. “From a zoning point of view, you can’t simply convert a house into a monastery or a church. There are zoning requirements before you can declare your house a place of worship.”

Ephraem maintains it’s against his religion to take down the sign, which he calls sacred. He quoted several biblical verses, including Proverbs, to illustrate his point: “Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set up.”

Ephraem has also been fighting for property tax-exemption for about four years. He said he spends his days fasting, praying for the world’s salvation and doing charitable deeds. And although clearly a very religious man, this does not necessarily entitle him to tax-exemption, according to the township.

“The Pharisees want us to go through the gamut again,” Ephraem said last week, commenting on his latest bout in tax court, a losing battle he’s waged since 2003.

“Without getting into all the legal back and forth, the tax assessor’s assessment says it does not qualify for a tax-exemption,” Reilly said on Friday. “Basically, you cannot just declare your house a monastery.”

And while Ephraem promotes himself as a high-ranking bishop, or metropolitan of the Greek Orthodox Church, this fact is debatable, according to Reilly.

The new sign outside his home states “Resid-ence of the Metropolitan of New Jersey.” But this may come as a surprise to many mainstream Greek Orthodox Christians who recognize a separate metropolitan of New Jersey, with headquarters located in Kenilworth. Also of note, Ephraem claims to be a hieromonk, meaning he is both a priest and a monk in the Greek Orthodox Church.

Father Stavropoulos is the chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Jersey, Kenilworth.

“He is not affiliated with the official church,” Stavropoulos said of Ephraem on Monday. “He is not under the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

“So definitely, 100 percent, he is not under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Church of New Jersey. He can call or say whatever he wants.”

Ephraem says his jurisdiction falls under the “Hellenic Holy Archdiocese for Diaspora,” a small and obscure subsect of the faith that follows an ancient calendar.

“It’s the calendar our Lord used,” Ephraem said.

In 2005, the matter went before the state tax court. There it was turned down for a number of reasons, according to Reilly. Ephraem has since appealed.

“The real question is, where is the nearest church?” Reilly said last week. “That’s the issue of the case. You’re only entitled to an exemption if there’s an actual church that you minister to. You get into these people buying these certificates. Anyone can become an ordained minister. In the back of these magazines you can write away and become a minister in the Church of What’s Happening Now. So, if anyone can declare themselves a minister and be entitled to not have to pay half their property taxes, then I’d be a minister. A lot of people would be ministers.”

When asked to specify the nearest church that falls under his jurisdiction, Ephraem named the Holy Transfiguration Mission Church in Mercerville. When asked for the phone number of a superior, Ephraem provided a number in Athens, Greece, which responded as a fax machine.

Reilly said one of the requirements for a parsonage to receive tax- exemption is a church and/or congregation.

“The only thing that’s for sure is that there’s no church in the whole state of New Jersey,” Reilly said. “He was never able to identify if I wanted to go to a church, where would I go?”

“They’re full of you know what,” Ephraem said. “I’m a monastery, not a church. Look it up in an encyclopedia.”

Also, is a building a monastery if only one monk lives in it?

Ephraem claims two others monks also live at the house, but Reilly believes they do not exist.

Ephraem said no one is allowed to speak to the other monks, explaining a monastic life is a cloistered life of prayer and sacrifice.

“I wouldn’t subject any one of them to this nonsense,” he said.

As a monk himself, he said he is allowed to speak with the public, accept visitors and appear in public because he is now the bishop.

“‘I’m coming out because who else is going to do it? Also, I’m the bishop of New Jersey and I have to be the spokesman.”

He said the monks are called Father Thomas and Father Athanasios, but they do not have last names, having given them up after being ordained in the faith.

Complicating matters further, Ephraem has lived at the home since he was a teenager. His parents bought the split-level ranch back in 1963. At that time, Ephraem went by the name Raymond Bertolette III.

In fact, except for the 15 years between 1969 and 1984, Ephraem testified in court that he had always lived at the David Court house. His mother lived there too, he testified, until her death in 2004.

But how can a woman live in a monastery?

Simple – she was a nun. Ephraem ordained her himself in 2001 when she was in her mid-70s, he said.

Under cross-examination in 2005, Ephraem admitted his mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at the time of her ordination, according to court documents.

“She doesn’t have full-blown Alzheimer’s. She just has the symptoms of it,” Ephraem said, according to State Tax Court Judge Gail L. Menyuk’s decision after the 2005 tax-exemption trial.

The home is now owned by a board of trustees, Reilly said. These trustees make up the corporation called the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Barbara.

“There is an organization which supposedly has a board of trustees and that entity which is supposedly the title owner of this house but was incidentally the house he grew up in,” Reilly said.

Ephraem insists it’s simply a matter of religious and economic discrimination.

“Like the blacks, they have all these storefront churches and they’re all tax-exempt,” Ephraem said. “They don’t have bishops. They don’t have money. What’s the difference?”

As examples of residential homes that are allowed tax-exemption, Ephraem pointed to a nearby Roman Catholic convent on Cherry Tree Road and a home for Roman Catholic brothers near Christian Brothers Academy, Lincroft.

“There are houses that belong to the Roman Catholic Church that are tax-exempt because they represent so many votes and so much money,” Ephraem said. “We don’t have the power that the Roman Catholic Church does.”

Reilly believes Ephraem is off base.

“I think he wants to shift it,” Reilly said. “He wants to blow this up to some sort of ‘the town is coming out anti-Christ.’ We’re hardly anti-Christ. My mother would turn over in her grave.”

Ephraem calls Reilly a “devil” for arguing against his cause and vows to fight for tax-exemption for as long as it takes.

“These devils in Middletown, especially this Reilly, we’re going to be in court with him until Jesus comes again,” Ephraem said.