‘Uneasy Neighbors’
By Abby Wolf
MONROE — Professor Richard Hull offered his insights into the Satmar Hasidic sect at his lecture, “The Satmar of Kiryas Joel: An Historical and Cultural Perspective,” to a riveted audience on Sunday, March 15.
Hull, a history professor and Warwick town historian, spoke in great detail for about two hours, to a diverse audience – numbering between 80-90 souls – at Congregation Eitz Chaim in Monroe.
He said that the insular community is one he would describe as a “patriarchal theocracy,” where men exclusively make the major decisions, both religious and secular, and where the Satmars’ particular – and particularly stringent – brand of Hasidic Judaism is interpreted by a small number of religious authorities, but chiefly by the Rebbe.
Hull noted that the Satmars’ very high birthrates (five to six children on average, but “nine or ten is not unusual”), the dependence of a large percentage of their members on government assistance and their heavy demand on public resources – combined with their engagement in “costly litigation at local, state and county levels – puts them “on a collision course” with the rest of the community – in Monroe in particular, but ultimately, with Orange County and the rest of the Hudson Valley region more broadly.
He fears that it is this situation that, left unaddressed, will lead to greater conflict between the Satmar/Kiryas Joel and citizens outside KJ – perhaps, even to more anti-Semitism in the region.
Hull said that what is needed is “frank and open dialogue” between KJ and the rest of the community, and more openness on the part of the government, both within and outside of the Satmar municipality.
Enigmatic, yet visible, community
“We know little of Kiryas Joel’s founders, origins and ethos,” Hull said, adding that they are “a unique community, without parallel in the US,” even as tightly-knit religious sects are concerned. (Hull referenced the Mormons by way of comparison.)
They are “enigmatic … there’s no highway exit or ZIP codes” for KJ, but, Hull said, it is “up to us to recognize their existence.”
Regarding the look and feel of the village, as well as the mode of dress of its residents, to an outside observer, entering KJ is “Like going into a time warp” where you’ll find residents in “18th century dress” which “keeps members inside the fold.” Hull added that this is all part of the Satmars’ “emphasis on conformity” of its adherents.
It is “not a gated community, like Tuxedo Park,” Hull said, but it is “another world.”
Dystopia or Utopia?Hull said that whether the village of KJ is a dystopia or utopia depends upon your perspective: To outsiders, the village poses potentially both an environmental as well as economic threat to the broader citizenry; it is a group eyed with suspicion, as KJ residents are seen generally to be “good at getting government funds” and are “masters of bloc voting.”
To the people who live within KJ, the village is a peaceful place, where members of the Satmar Hasidic community can practice their faith, raise their families and be undisturbed by what they see as the negative influences of an increasingly hostile, immoral world.
Hasidism 101: A primerThe term “Hasid,” is derived from Hebrew and means someone righteous or devout in his or her piety.
Hull said that an ancient strain of fundamentalism, found in Judaism in 200 BCE, reappeared some 200+ years ago in the form of Hasidism.
Hasidism as a formal movement came about in 18th century Eastern Europe – largely, Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Hungary – as a response to persecution of the Jewish communities in those countries.
This movement is expressed in the form of “religious fundamentalism,” according to Hull, not unlike some of the Christian fundamentalist movements that sprang up in Europe around the same time period. It is, at its core, “anti-intellectual,” rejecting the Enlightenment and science.
A major figure in this movement was a rabbi and mystic named Israel ben Eliezer, more commonly known as the Ba’al Shem Tov (the Master of the Good Name). Not much is known about him, beyond that he was an orphan, born in the 18th century in a village in Poland (now Ukraine), and was said to have seen visions of the prophet Elijah.
The Ba’al Shem Tov appeared at a time when the Jews of Eastern Europe were “exploited and persecuted” and very poor. He offered an ecstatic, mystical form of Judaism, from which Hasidism grew as a larger movement. This stream of Judaism was an outgrowth of Lurianic Kabbalism (Isaac Luria was a 16th century Jewish mystic who lived in Jerusalem and Safed, Israel), which encouraged Jews to prepare the world for the arrival of the Messiah.
According to Hull, “Hasidism was a revolt against Jewish leaders and their interpretations (of religious law).”
As the movement spread to Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary by the 19th century, mainstream Jews saw Hasidism as heretical, and a threat.
“Mainstream Jews sought to suppress the movement,” with limited success, Hull said.
By the 19th century, Hull continued, Hasidic courts emerged like monarchic “dynasties,” fighting each other for supremacy. Various sects subsequently separated themselves not just from Christians, but from other Jews as well.
The Hasids “came to see themselves as the only true Jews and chosen people,” Hull said. “Outsiders regarded them as arrogant and self-righteous.”
Hasidic communities sprang up throughout Europe, “causing alarm,” leading to discriminatory government laws.
The Hasids subsequently were adroit at working around these laws, violating them “if they had no sanction in Scripture.” Further, in order to protect the sects’ members, they became “remarkably adept at securing elite patronage…in the time-honored political process.” This often led to “vicious anti-Semitism.”
“Their ability to ‘game the system’” came in 18th century Hungary:” long-standing (secular) rules could be ignored, if it conflicted with the Satmars’ way of life, according to Hull.
Satmar rulesThe Satmar – like all Hasids, and indeed, all strictly religious Jews – live their lives circumscribed by the 613 commandments found in the Torah (the Jewish Bible), the Talmud (the written commentary on the Torah) and Kabbalah (a book of mysticism written in the 16th century in Safed, Israel).
The sect draws its name from Hungarian/Romanian border town of their origin, Satu Maré,/Szathmary, or St. Mary.
They are, Hull said, “very conservative,” and “obsessed” with the need to protect their identity. They speak Yiddish (a 1,000+ year-old language with roots in Medieval German, but written in the Hebrew alphabet, with some Hebrew and Eastern European words thrown in) as a way of preserving this identity, because, they believe, “If you lose your language, your culture will weaken.”
(The Satmar don’t speak Hebrew on a daily basis, because that is considered a sacred language, reserved for Torah study and prayer only.)
Scrupulous attention to the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and absolute separation of the sexes is key to their religious practice. Strict Sabbath observance also plays a major role, with many rules derived from the Torah enumerating forbidden practices on the Day of Rest, including travel, work and handling of money, among others.
Recreational use of the Internet, TV and radio are forbidden by Satmar religious authorities, and women in the community are not allowed to drive.
The Satmar live apart from/don’t mix with outsiders – including other Jews – and consider themselves to be the “defenders of the Jewish faith,” mainly due to their rigid interpretations of religious law, their high birth rates and their very act of living apart. Indeed, communication with outsiders is “formal at best,” Hull said.
Questioning any aspect of the rules or their interpretation is forbidden. “Dissidents are banished,” Hull said.
Satmar hasids are also anti-Zionists and oppose the modern State of Israel, believing it to be religiously illegitimate, as they believe that only the arrival of the Messiah will herald the re-establishment of Israel. This often leads to friction with the broader Jewish community.
With regard to acts of giving, Hull said, the Satmars are often charitable to their fellow members, but “altruism seldom leaves their own court.”
The Rebbe, Hull added, has absolute authority, and “wields immense political power,” over Satmar and non-Satmar alike.
Because the Satmar “tend to close ranks on issues that affect them,” Hull said, they tend to vote in blocs, which makes them an appealing constituency to politicians.
Satmar GenesisThe man who would become Kiryas Joel’s founder, Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, was born in Hungary in 1887, a “true scholar” who was “an almost compulsive Talmud reader,” Hull said.
Teitelbaum became the Chief Rabbi of Satu Mare in 1928, where – according to Hull – he “cozied up” to local authorities, including the king, in a highly factionalized city.
Both the rapid growth of and self-segregation by the Satmar incurred suspicion of the non-Jewish community. It also enabled their eventual capture by the Nazis: By the time of the Holocaust, the Satmars easily identified by their distinctive mode of dress and close-knit neighborhoods, were rounded up, with the majority sent to concentration camps.
A small number of the community were able to raise funds to bribe Adolph Eichmann, the SS officer responsible for the deportation of Hungary’s Jews to Auschwitz, and get the Satmar on the Kastner trains that sped some 1600 imperiled Jews out of Nazi-occupied Hungary to Switzerland.
A community reborn from the ashes
After a brief time spent in Israel at the end of World War II, young Rabbi Teitelbaum and a few Satmar survivors went to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
According to Hull, this put the Satmar at an advantage relative to other Hasidic communities, whose movements’ elders were either aged, or had been exterminated, preventing the other sects from reorganizing and rebuilding their numbers as quickly.
“The trauma of the Holocaust made Teitelbaum obsessed” with survival of the Satmars, tasked with rebuilding his community in a secular world they knew nothing about.
The Holocaust “deeply traumatized” them.
“They came to America, not for the American dream,” Hull said, but rather, to rebuild, “as destitute communities looking to rebuild their communities exactly as they knew them” in Europe. This was in marked contrast to the rest of the Jewish immigrants to America, who, in Hull’s words, “contributed to American culture and society.”
Brooklyn was seen as affordable, walkable and therefore, the Satmar found it easy to maintain a close-knit community and their traditional practices.
All was “very well,” Hull continued, until the late 1960s, when African Americans moved into low-income housing in Satmar neighborhoods. By the 1970s, conflicts between both groups led to the Hasids to search for new places to live outside of New York City.
‘Rapidly expanding’ sect moves to the country
Rabbi Teitelbaum’s search for a new place for his fellow Satmars to live led to Bergen County, New Jersey, and through Rockland, Orange and Sullivan counties in New York, “all the way to Cooperstown,” as he looked to move his people “away from secularizing trends.”
Teitelbaum eventually came to Orange County, after meeting resistance in Mount Olive, N.J., settling on Monroe: It was near highways, the Erie Railroad, yet isolated enough “to realize their dream.”
Leopold Lefkowitz, a developer, financier, philanthropist and the head of the United Talmudic Academy, was Teitelbaum’s advisor.
The Satmar established development corporations that acquired about 800 acres of land in Monroe that was previously woodlands and farm.
Teitelbaum wanted to replicate the old world that was lost in the Holocaust.
By 1974, “Garden apartments and ‘unusually large single-family homes’ were suddenly built in Monroe,” Hull said.
In 1976, multi-family dwellings were built in single-family areas, in violation of local zoning laws. As surrounding residents protested, the Satmars responded by – in effect – playing the religious card: they needed to live close together, in order to maintain their religious traditions.
In response, people in the surrounding area formed homeowner associations to counter the Satmars’ attempts to circumvent zoning laws.
Still, the Satmars drew their own boundaries, in accord with their own religious beliefs and practices: “This utopia was named ‘Kiryas Joel,’ Joel’s Town.”
Kiryas Joel initially was established with 500 people (the minimum required by New York State law to form a town), growing eventually to 2,000. The current population is estimated to be about 23,000 souls.
In the 1980s, the Satmars created holding companies to purchase and hold land for future development, offering the ability to annex parcels into KJ without approval. The community bought land in parts of Woodbury and Blooming Grove: the village of South Blooming Grove was formed in response, as a way of “forestall(ing) the Hasidic takeover.”
EducationThe Satmars’ education system is seen as “key to insulat(ing) their youth from outside influences.”
Boys are groomed only to be lifelong Torah scholars, without any formal academic or vocational training; girls are raised only to be wives and mothers, “not job-holders.” However, according to Hull, some women have left, finding life in the fishbowl-like world of KJ to be “stultifying.”
By the early 1990’s, Kiryas Joel established its own public school district, particularly for its sizable population of special needs students: these students required Special Education services – and were mandated by law to receive them – but could not, in the Hasids’ view, be sent to public school with non-Jewish (and non-Hasidic) students.
Although the New York State Supreme Court invalidated the district in 1994 as unconstitutional, the New York State legislature would eventually re-write the law to change the rules and permit the special district.
Water resourcesAs KJ’s population continued to grow, the need to find additional sources of water began in earnest in the 1980s and ‘90s.
The former Star Company’s wells were bought in Cornwall: “The purpose of Cornwall was to get reserve (water) for KJ, in case the aqueduct had to be closed down.”
Orange County eventually sued KJ over the municipality’s proposed pipeline expansion, as county authorities realized that more water needs would translate into greater needs for expanded wastewater treatment.
The municipality currently uses 1.8 million gallons of water a day, with that number projected to jump to 20 million gallons by 2040; KJ creates 2.2 million gallons of wastewater daily, with 25 million gallons projected of for 2040.
The town of Woodbury sued KJ, as both the town and Orange County feared not only the greater use of limited water resources, but also balked at the cost of upgrading infrastructure: upgrading the sewage treatment plant in Harriman would cost taxpayers some $30 million. (Former County Executive Edward Diana subsequently dropped the lawsuit.)
Local environmental protection group Orange Environment concurred, adding its concerns that the greater discharge of wastewater would have a negative impact on local flora and fauna.
Population ‘explosion’KJ’s birthrate is among “the highest in the nation,” Hull said; using numbers based on recent U.S. Department of Commerce and Census data, the “most conservative” estimates of KJ’s population put it at 20,000 in 2010, around 23,000 currently, likely reaching 96,500 by 2040, using the most conservative estimates. Assuming, however, the “current figure of 5.9 people per household brings the total number well over 200,000,” according to a handout provided by Hull.
“Many of these future residents would be living in an expanded, possibly high-rise KJ, while others might be living in new Satmar villages with new names in Monroe or other Orange County towns.”
“Hasidic women aspire to have as many children as possible,” Hull said, taking literally the Biblical mandate to ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ They typically have 8.3 children on average, with fertility rates among the highest in the world.
The community is on pace to be the second most-populous municipality in the US by century’s end.
Due to the combination of this high birthrate and the lack of any real education or marketable skills among the majority of its young adults, the village of KJ is extremely poor, many of its adult males only “marginally employed,” and its residents living on average about 2/3 below the poverty line. Median family income is little over $17,000 a year.
Consequently, there is high demand for public assistance, in the form of TANF (Temporary Assistance to Families, or food stamps); special education services; government assistance to pregnant women for pre-natal care; public medical insurance (like Medicaid); among other forms of taxpayer-provided aid.
On the other hand, there is, Hull added, a “tiny elite,” with successful businesses of their own making.
Political influenceThe combination of a large population that votes in virtual unanimity on issues important to them, combined with the Satmars “schmoozing candidates” beginning in the 1980s to promote “their own special interests” is an irresistible combination for politicians at all levels of government.
He added that KJ is “achieving a spectacular level of electoral participation” at a time of overall voter apathy.
At the local level, they have power within their own village, as well as in the town of Monroe, yet Hull believes, “We are witnessing the ‘Satmarization’ of Orange County,” as the Satmars’ electoral power is “greater than any other group.”
Many elected officials seek – and get – the Satmars’ vote, and in return, much government largesse flows their way.
A growing number of taxpaying residents complain that KJ receives more government support than anyone else, at the local, county, state and federal levels.
Facing the futureThe Satmars and KJ are “out of sync” with their neighbors.
Hull told his audience of a “glossy postcard” he received from KJ, with an idealized picture of the village and contact information on one side, and the following statement: ‘We look forward to offering you additional information about our community, its culture…”
It represented, Hull said, “unprecedented communication” with the outside world, suggesting that while the KJ controversy represents a “clash of cultures,” the village’s authorities may be sensitive to criticism from the outside, and may be taking small steps to reach out: even as it is a community that wishes to remain apart, it “desperately needs” the cooperation of its neighbors to achieve its goals.
Since the death of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum in 1989, there has been no successor with the same level of authority (the Satmars split into two factions, in both KJ and Williamsburg, where two of his nephews each control one faction).
Some of the younger leaders coming up within the Satmar ranks “lack the charisma” of their predecessors, according to Hull. Some of the younger residents of KJ have gone outside the bounds of their community, attempting to make contact with outsiders.
With the incursion of the Internet into their world, their insularity is increasingly less sustainable.
As government services are cut back and/or privatized, the Satmar will be “hard-pressed” to make up the shortfall.
“The competition for those diminishing resources will intensify.”
The challenge, Hull said, is “How do we maintain peaceful mutual co-existence” with this insular community?
“We earnestly hope that KJ will not become a scapegoat for problems of our own making – and theirs.”
He concluded that it is “going to be hard for them to undergo fundamental reform, as they believe there placed there by G-d” after the Holocaust.
“How do you demand of this community assimilation and acculturation?”
Hull insisted that any dramatic changes in KJ “don’t have to result in bloodshed,” and urged all citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike, to work together and “build bridges” of understanding and common interest.
While there is – as yet – no formally-named group organizing Hull’s talks on this issue, he said that he speaks on behalf of “a group of concerned citizens: Jews, Christians, agnostics … an ad hoc group,” concerned about the situation in KJ, and distressed that things are not sustainable as they are.
Hull is taking his talk on the road, farther away from Monroe: His fourth lecture will be at OCCC in April; the following talk will be held in Blooming Grove.
Audience reactionThere was a palpable anger in the room, expressed by a small number of commenters, often followed by bursts of applause.
One man, self-identifying as a Viet Nam veteran, said he resented accusations of Anti-Semitism when it came to criticizing the actions of some of KJ’s residents: “It’s not who you are, it’s what you do.”
Steve Brander, who helped organize Hull’s talks, urged people to educate their neighbors and their children to mobilize against the proposed annexation of 507 acres of Monroe town land into KJ: “They’re a bloc vote, we’re (also) a bloc.”
A man who identified himself as a Chester resident said that the laws need to change: “Getting out the vote is a struggle,” and that “KJ can’t do what they’re doing without (influencing) political leadership.”
A Tuxedo Park resident told of the Hasidic women she had met in her gym who seemed “very friendly, very warm,” and couldn’t square their interactions with her with the larger political conflict.
Responding to another audience member’s suggestion to disrupt Friday afternoon (before the Sabbath) business in KJ, Diane Soss replied, “I strongly disagree with going to their store at 3 p.m. on a Friday…let’s (protest KJ’s actions) legally, appropriately and smartly.” After all, she added, “Sometimes, politicians promise things, then go to KJ.”
Willa Freiband, a Woodbury resident who has volunteered for Orange Environment, said her ad hoc citizens’ group has worked to identify all parcels of land bought by KJ, often through opaque front organizations. Eventually, she said, “It’s about limited resources,” and about forcing greater transparency on the part of the village and elected officials across the board.