American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, A Hasidic Village in Upstate New York by Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, A Hasidic Village in Upstate New York by Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers Motti Inbari (bio) American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, A Hasidic Village in Upstate New York. By Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. xiii- 477 pp. Kiryas Joel is a village in upstate New York, about sixty miles from New York City. Established in 1974, the community has since expanded dramatically to include almost 30,000 residents, who are exclusively Satmar Hasidim. Over the years, the community has gone through intensive legal battles with its neighbors, the town of Monroe, and each other, as the community of Hasidim splintered and sued each other over the use of the property and public goods. American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, A Hasidic Village in Upstate New York is mainly focused on discussing the litigation concerning this enclave. Some of these legal battles tested the separation of state and church, since religious laws governed this community. Some of these battles even reached the Supreme Court. The Satmar Hasidic movement was established by Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, who landed in New York in 1946 and recreated a Hasidic court there. Teitelbaum was known for his extreme piety and anti-Zionist views. His radicalism attracted a small group of followers, mostly Holocaust survivors, and over the years, with an influx of newcomers and high fertility rates, Satmar has become a significant Hasidic sect, similar in size to that of Chabad. The Satmar Hasidim initially settled in Williamsburg, New York. Hasidic society is a voluntary entity, and in theory, its members are free to join or leave the community as they please. The absence of physical boundaries weakens the status of the Haredi community and the authority of its rabbis, since their followers can leave at any point. Moreover, the city is full of distractions and temptations. Teitelbaum was disturbed by this situation and sought to regain some of the coercive authority that the rabbis had enjoyed in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. As his community grew, the problem became more pronounced. Then came the idea to build a shtetl on the outskirts of New York. In 1973, land was purchased in the city of Monroe, and Teitelbaum himself moved to Kiryas Joel. In order to establish their presence, develop their resources, and expand their community, the Satmar leadership used sophisticated tools, including political lobbying at all local government levels and the state courts. Stolzenberg and Myers note that although the vision of establishing an isolated Orthodox enclave to distance the community from the American lifestyle was specific to the Satmar community, these tools are "as American as apple pie" (9). Assertive political and judicial behavior by ultra-Orthodox Jews concerned with protecting their insular communities [End Page 505] is not unique to Satmar. Agudat Yisrael, a political movement among ultra-Orthodox Jews in Europe, was already active in 1912 and had representatives in the Polish parliament before World War II. In Israel, ultra-Orthodox Jews are very active in the political system. As Kiryas Joel developed, it became apparent that the residents of Monroe were not pleased with their new neighbors, who dressed differently, spoke Yiddish, kept their distance from others, and were so poor that, as of Stolzenberg and Myers's writing, over 90 percent of its population was on Medicaid. Due to the rapid population growth in Kiryas Joel, resulting almost entirely from the high birth rates of its Hasidic population, the village government has undertaken various annexation efforts to expand its area, to the dismay of the majority of the residents of the surrounding communities. Many of these area residents saw the expansion of the high-density, residential-commercial village as a threat to the quality of life in the surrounding suburban communities. Thus they sued to block Kiryas Joel's expansion, with some success. Another battle was over the use of the public school system with its resources for children with special needs and the use of school buses. The courts had to decide on the conditions under which Kiryas Joel could use these resources...