Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo picked up the phone and called the spiritual leader of the New York Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, Satmar Grand Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum, to try to shake a compromise out of a recalcitrant state senator. According to two people familiar with the negotiations, the call was part of an effort…
Three concrete corporations run by Hasidic Jews in upstate New York pled guilty to withholding $780,000 in taxes, the Times Herald-Record reported. Two principals of the mixing companies, David Gross and David Friedman, were also sentenced to misdemeanor tax fraud. The sentences were given in late December. Two of the companies — Concrete On Demand…
The recent Netflix documentary One of Us — which depicts the lives and tribulations of three Jews who are attempting to or have already left Hasidic Judaism — has led several commentators to reflect on the subject of those who leave the ultra-Orthodox community. One commentator, Anshel Pfeffer, who believes that there is currently a…
Officials in the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, in New York, gave final approval this month to a major development that will increase the village’s population by 40 percent over five years, the Times Herald-Record reported. Kiryas Veyoel Gardens, a 1,600 condo development, is expected to bring 9,000 residents to a currently undeveloped 70-acre plot…
(JTA) — The head of one of the Satmar Hasidic sects slammed the United States’ announcement that it recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum of Kiryas Joel on Saturday night at an event at the New York Expo Center in the Bronx condemned the announcement made on Wednesday at the White House by…
If someone knew about the Hasidic community only by learning about it through recent stories in the mainstream press, I would not blame that person for coming away with confusing and contradictory perceptions. This season we saw the release of the Netflix documentary “One of Us,” in which the three protagonists describe a Hasidism of…
Residents of the New York town of Monroe voted this week to carve out a portion of their town to create a brand new one with an unusual name: Palm Tree. So why will a village 50 miles north of New York City bear the name of a tropical tree that is particularly ill-suited to…
About 10 years ago, right around the time the tectonic plates beneath my structured world began to shift, eventually destroying my entire existence as I knew it, there was a campaign in my hometown of Kiryas Joel and beyond to “save the neshama of a young girl.” The young girl, a toddler at the time,…
100% of profits support our journalism
