Neighbors, help us stop this.

We are your neighbors.

You know us. We stand behind you in line at the grocery store. We work with you, and we do business with you. Our children are growing up in the same town as yours. Some of us volunteer beside you in this town's emergency services.

We love this town. We love living here. Most of the people of Postville have shown us kindness, and we are grateful for it.

That is why we are writing to you. Something has been happening in our town that most of you never had a reason to see. If you did not know, that is not your fault. Now you know.

What is happening, in one minute

In Postville there is one road with two houses of prayer on it, one block apart. St. Paul Lutheran Church is at one end. Our synagogue is one block south, on the same road.

For years, cars have parked along the edge of the road in front of the church, every week, with no ticket. One block south, at the same edge of the same road, our members parked to come and pray. They got tickets, year after year.

We asked the City, in writing, for the same treatment. We asked for less curb than the church has. The City said no.

On October 12, 2026, the City Council passed a new parking rule. As it was described at the meeting, it closes the road to parking on both sides, from the curve at the church, past our synagogue, to where the City's pavement ends. It was said that the City will put out cones when the church has a funeral or a wedding. The church has its own parking lot. Our own concrete holds only a few cars. We pray there three times a day, every day.

This is not about St. Paul's, or about its people. We are glad they can park and pray. We ask for the same.

Is this fair? Turn it around.

Imagine it was your church whose members got tickets at the edge of the road, while the synagogue's members, one block up the same road, parked there and were left alone.

Imagine your parents and your children walking to church along that road, more than once a day, with no sidewalk, on a road set at 35 miles an hour.

For one of our members who parks at the tenth space up the road, that walk comes to about 136 miles a year, by our own measurement. The arithmetic is on the record page.

What it adds up to, for the whole community

This block is our own estimate. It will be replaced by the counts from a two-week log of cars at every service.

By our estimate, about 20 to 25 cars come to each of three daily prayers, about 300 days a year, with one person or more in each car. Each person walks about 200 to 400 feet from the nearest allowed parking to our door, and back. At the lower figure, that is about 36,000 walks and about 2,700 miles a year. At the higher figure, about 45,000 walks and about 3,400 miles a year. Every one of those walks crosses or follows a road set at 35 miles an hour, with no sidewalk. Over thirty years, as our members remember it, that is more than a million walks. The arithmetic, with every input, is on the record page.

What would you call it? What would you hope your neighbors would do?

If you had asked, and written, and been told no, you would expect to go to court in the end.

First, it is a matter of decency. Then it is the law, and the Constitution: equal treatment, and the free exercise of religion.

Come and see for yourself.

Do not take our word for it. Come and look.

1. Come on a Friday afternoon, before the Sabbath begins, when our members arrive to pray.
2. Try to park near our synagogue, at 10001 Aspen Avenue.
3. Walk from where you can park to our door. Then walk back. Picture doing it three times a day, in January, after dark.
4. Look at the width of the road in front of the church, and then in front of our synagogue, from the edge. Please do not step into the road to measure it; a surveyor's measurements of both blocks will be posted here. Stay off the road, and never after dark.
5. Look at the signs around our building. Then look for signs like them anywhere else in town.

Everyone is welcome at our synagogue. Ours is a warm and welcoming faith. Our door is open to every neighbor. If you would like one of us to walk the road with you, talk to us. We will be glad to.

If you cannot come, watch.

We plan to ask an independent professional to measure the road and film it. [Video slot, shown only when the film exists. Gate N-G3.]

Until then, you can watch the City's own video of the Council meeting of October 12, 2026.

[Button: Watch the City's video]

Judge for yourself.

We are not hiding anything.

Here is everything we sent the City, and everything the City sent back, in full.

[Button: Read the letters]

Here is what the City's own records show, line by line, each with its source, so you can check it yourself.

[Button: See the record]

Read it. Then decide for yourself. You do not have to agree with us. We only ask that you look.

This Council has said yes to us before.

The Council approved our Torah parade in March 2024. It approved our Lag BaOmer parades in 2025 and in 2026. It approved a Hanukkah parade of cars from our synagogue in December 2025. We are grateful, and we have not forgotten it.

Not everything has to be a struggle. This should not be one either.

What you can do

If, after you look, you think this is not right, here is what any resident can do. All of it is up to you. Nothing here asks you to sign anything or join anything, and nothing here binds you to anything.

1. Tell your elected officials what you think. Your Mayor and your City Council members work for you. Their names are on the City's website. You can also write to the people who represent you in Des Moines and in Washington. [answered: no addresses are given (G, October 13, 23:43 UTC)]
2. Come to a City Council meeting. The Council usually meets on the second Monday of each month, at 7 p.m., at City Hall, 147 North Lawler Street. Each agenda sets aside time near the start, and again near the end, when citizens may speak for up to three minutes. The City posts each agenda on its website a few days before the meeting. Meetings are also shown live on the City's YouTube channel.
3. Talk to us. Stop us in the store. Come to the synagogue. We would rather talk with you than about anyone.
4. Share this page with someone who would want to know.

What we are asking for

This is not mainly about money. We did not come to the City for money. We came for parking, and for fair treatment.

What we ask for is simple. It is infrastructure.

1. A safe place to park at our synagogue, on our side of the road, so no one has to cross it to pray.
2. A lower speed and a safer road where our families walk.
3. An end to the tickets.

How to do it is the City's job, not ours. It has done it before, for a pickleball court, a park, a pharmacy, and a clinic. We ask for the same care. I believe the only difference is that we are Jewish.

If this goes to court, the law will decide what the City owes. That would be the City's choice. We would much rather it never got that far.

The door is still open.

Even now, before any case is filed, the door is open. If the City will sit down with us and end this treatment, the leadership of our community will sign a release. The terms will be settled when the City sits down with us. Your own rights stay your own. No one can sign them away for you.

That is the position of the community's leadership. Each person's own rights stay their own.

We have tried everything else first. We asked. We wrote. We offered. Once a case is filed, it will be in the hands of lawyers and a court, and much harder to undo. We would rather solve this now, as neighbors. The answer could come tomorrow.

To the people who work for the City

This part is for the people who serve Postville: City employees, police officers, firefighters, and first responders. If you used to work for the City or its Police Department, this is for you too.

First, thank you. You do hard work for all of us. Some of our own members volunteer beside you. This page is not about you.

It is about decisions made at the top: where tickets are written, what goes on the Council's agenda, and what answer a letter gets.

Some of you may have seen things. Some of you may have heard things.

In a small town it is easy to stay quiet through hard moments. That is how unfair treatment lasts. Not because most people agree with it, but because good people say nothing.

What you tell the attorneys is read by the attorneys, and by no one else. It is not posted here. It can change what happens to the people in this story, and it can change how this town is policed. If you leave a way to reach you, you will be told what came of it.

Every officer and every elected official in this City swore an oath to support the Constitution. That oath does not ask you to look away. It asks you to stand up. The job is not to step aside, or to resign. The job is to stand up, and to protect all of us.

The freedoms in our Constitution never protected themselves. They were kept alive by people who stood up for someone else's rights, because the people whose rights are being taken cannot always stand up alone. That is the best of America.

In a Jewish town, you would expect its police to protect the church's members from unfair treatment, whoever ordered it. We ask the same of you.

A former officer has already told us what he was told to do. Read it on the record page.

Come forward. Tell the truth. You can tell the attorneys, in confidence.

[Button: Tell the attorneys, in confidence]

If you know something

If you know something that could help, you can tell the attorneys in confidence. [Link: Tell the attorneys]

If you saw something happen yourself, at the church's curb or at our door, you can also register and tell the attorney's office what you saw.

[Button: I have information that can help]

We love this town.

For three thousand years, in country after country, Jews were treated differently from their neighbors. In America, thank God, we are supposed to be treated like everyone else. We want that here, in the town we love, where we are raising our children.

Help us make it true in Postville.

With respect, and with thanks to every neighbor who reads this,

Gideon Gratsiani For and on behalf of the Jewish Community of Postville, Iowa