Life in an apartment block can be intolerable when neighbours create a disturbance. This can be down to late-night partying, loud music... or davening.

Secular residents in a Jerusalem apartment block have had their Orthodox neighbours banned from holding Shabbat prayers.

Residents in the block in Hantke Street have fought since the prayer sessions started several weeks ago. A court decided that the 40 people who had come to worship constituted a “disturbance”.

Although Orthodox residents claimed that the services were “temporary and provisional with none of the characteristics of a synagogue, attorney Yossi Havilio retorted: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.”