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,…
SATU MARE, Romania (JTA) — The small congregation in this northern city consists of only 110 members. Yet the Satu Mare Jewish community owns an impressive 129 cemeteries and four synagogues. Among the heritage sites in its care is the Decebal Street Synagogue, an ornate behemoth of a building erected in 1892. It was designed…
If you walk into Monsey’s Evergreen kosher supermarket, somewhere among the extensive schnitzel varieties and Shabbos candy treats, you’ll see a single children’s book for sale. Zai Gezunt! is the Yiddish translation of Artscroll’s Let’s Stay Safe, written by Bracha Goetz and illustrated by Tova Leff, a picture book that talks about children’s safety of…
In the all-purpose room of the Swinging Sixties Senior Center, in Williamsburg, members of Brooklyn’s Community Board 1 met in mid-June to begin deciding the fate of two empty lots. Would the board vote to rezone the lots so that they could become the site of a massive, high-end housing development, or would the lots…
Nearly 20,000 members of the Satmar Hasidic group packed an anti-Zionist rally at the Brooklyn Nets’ home arena last night — even though half of the sect boycotted the event. The rally against Israel’s efforts to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews was organized by followers of Grand Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, the Satmar leader in Williamsburg, Brooklyn….
The Satmar Hasidic group is planning an anti-Zionist rally on Sunday at the Barclays Center, the massive arena in the heart of Brooklyn that’s home to the Brooklyn Nets. The rally, organized by a Satmar-dominated rabbinical group called the Central Rabbinical Congress, will protest an Israeli law, passed in 2014, that limits exemptions from military…
The following essay has been adapted from “Who Shall Lead Us: The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America,” by Samuel Heilman (University of California Press). In his old age, Yoelish Teitelbaum, the first Satmar Rebbe, had outlived his heirs. Although he was leader of the largest Hasidic group in America, with tens of thousands…
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been cleared in federal and state probes into possible improper fundraising that had ties to the Satmar community in Brooklyn. “I’ve said consistently that we acted appropriately, we acted ethically, we acted lawfully,” de Blasio told WNYC. “I think this confirms what I’ve been saying.” Federal prosecutors…
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