Why this Satmar shtetl in New York is as American as apple pie

Kiryas Joel, rather than being a European hangover, might be the Jewish American future

IN THE EARLY 1970s, the Satmar rabbi Joel Teitelbaum led the surviving remnant of his people out of the fleshpots of Brooklyn and upstate to the town of Monroe in Orange County. After a little more than 40 years in the wilderness, Kiryas Joel, the “village” that bears Teitelbaum’s name, had 33,000 residents by 2020.

Kiryas Joel is an American shtetl. Almost everyone who lives in Kiryas Joel is a Satmar Chasid. Its unemployment rate is below the local average, but so is its median income. It is the most populous municipality in Orange County, and then some: more than half its inhabitants are under the age of 18.

If Kiryas Joel seems to be a ghost from the European past or an out-take from Yentl, Nomi M. Stolzenberg and David N. Myers would advise you to think again. The authors of American Shtetl, a fascinating new history, Stolzenberg and Myers call Kiryas Joel an only-in-America phenomenon: “a self-standing, homogenous, Yiddish-speaking shtetl that became a legal municipality recognised by the state; a vision long fantasised by utopians and novelists, but without precedent in European history”.

As this is an American story as well as a Jewish one, it’s about law, and property law in particular. It’s true that the Constitution forbids the establishment of a state religion, and that the United States is a land of individual rights. But the truth, as often is the case in America, is more complicated.

America is a secessionist’s paradise. Kiryas Joel is following the legal path of the Amish, who themselves cite the precedent of the Pilgrims who first settled in New England.

FULL STORY The Satmar shtetl as American as apple pie (Jewish Chronicle)

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