An Upstate town has wrongly turned away a Brooklyn-based Orthodox Jewish yeshiva’s application to convert existing area buildings into classrooms and residences for boys’ studies, a state appeals court has ruled, writing that the applicable zoning ordinance’s definition of a place of worship “expressly” and “unambiguously” includes the facilities proposed.

An Appellate Division, Third Department panel rejected the Town of Wawarsing Zoning Board of Appeals’ finding that much of the yeshiva’s converted-building use proposal, from classrooms for Torah and Talmudic study to a dorm, was “akin to a school or a camp” that didn’t belong on the yeshiva’s 23-acre site.