Satmar (Hasidic dynasty)

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Orientation to Zionism

According to the JC:

More importantly, however, even within Satmar the idea of actively supporting, in any way whatsoever, organisations that oppose the state of Israel, be they Far Right, Far Left, Islamist or anything else, is considered bizarre and in most cases actually forbidden.
The founder of Satmar, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, was absolutely clear that the PLO and other bodies were antisemitic murderers. He would never in a million years have supported a politician who was present at a wreath laying ceremony for the Munich Olympics terrorists.[1]

Shaul Magid writes:

While many people know of the general position of Teitelbaum and his Satmar community toward Zionism, few have actually read his works and understood the arguments from within the dense and complex context in which they were written. This is unfortunate, because his two anti-Zionist works, Vayoel Moshe, published in 1959, and Al Ha-Geulah ve ‘al ha-Temura (On Redemption and Exchange, taken from Ruth 4:7), a response to the Six-Day War published in 1967, offer detailed and intricate arguments that, contrary to what many believe, Zionism poses an imminent danger to the Jewish people and a deflection, rather than a procurement, of the impending messianic era. [2]
Significantly, in the hundreds of dense pages of Teitelbaum’s works, he rarely mentions Zionism or Zionists outright, although he alludes to them often, usually with terms such as “minim” or “apikorsim” (heretics) or “horsei dat” (destroyers of religion). These terms are not particular to him but were commonly used by ultra-Orthodox thinkers in reference to Zionists. Teitelbaum almost never discusses Zionist thinkers, although in his essay on the Hebrew language, “Essay of Lashon ha-Kodesh” he often refers to Zionist educational initiatives and debates regarding the secularization and profanation of the Hebrew language. I have found only one reference in a halachic responsa where he mentions Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine and architect of contemporary religious Zionism, and only in passing. Teitelbaum is not interested in direct polemics but rather creating a primary Torah source warning against the heresy of Zionism. His two major works are therefore replete with long digressions on talmudic dicta and their commentaries. They are clearly not meant for secular Jews, certainly not secular Zionists. In fact, one not conversant in the language of the beit midrash (“study house”) would have a difficult time unpacking his midrashic and halachic arguments.
These works are directed to his ultra-Orthodox community, who he believed were being, or could be, seduced by the Zionist narrative. This is particularly true with ‘Al Ha-Geulah, written when Teitelbaum saw the Six-Day War interpreted as a miraculous victory for Zionism. He often noted, half-jokingly, that all these secular Jews who didn’t believe in miracles suddenly started talking about miracles when it came to the Six-Day War. But more significantly, these works also represent a Jewish political theology, drawing on thousands of traditional sources, deployed to caution against the dangers of succumbing to the contemporary Zionist heresy.[2]
In addition, Teitelbaum believed, like many religious Zionists, especially after the Holocaust, that we stand on the cusp of messianic redemption. We often misunderstand Teitelbaum’s anti-Zionism as diametrically opposed to the Zionism of Abraham Isaac Kook. In truth, Kook and Teitelbaum disagree less than we think. From deep within the canonical tradition, both had a similar task: to make sense of the secular nature of Zionism and how that could square with traditional understandings of both catastrophe and redemption. Kook argued dialectically, using a romantic and mystical mindset, that the secular and largely anti-religious nature of early Zionism was a necessary, albeit temporary, deviation from tradition that would be transvalued in the immanent redemptive future. Teitelbaum, who lived more deeply in the binary framework of talmudic literature, also believed that Zionism played a central role in the coming redemption, except that for him its role was not a Kookian inversion of tradition for the sake of redemption, but the pre-messianic heresy that Jews were required to resist in order for redemption to come.
Zionism was thus the false messiah that needed to be rejected for the true messiah to arrive. If Jews succumb to the temptation of the “final test,” and Teitelbaum knew that temptation was strong given its post-Holocaust context, redemption will come, but it will come though catastrophe. As Jewish historian Amos Funkenstein put it, according to Teitelbaum “[a] catastrophe is imminent, after which only a few, the ‘remnants of Israel,’ will survive to witness the true redemption. Indeed, Teitelbaum’s whole argument is embedded in the apocalyptic premise that the true redemption, through divine miracle, is very close at hand.” Kook believed that secular Zionism had to be embraced in order to be overcome; Teitelbaum believed Zionism had to be rejected in order to avoid catastrophic redemption. Another similarity between Kook and Teitelbaum is that both viewed the messiah, false and true, in terms of the more abstract idea of Zionism. For Kook, Zionism was the embodiment of messianism, for Teitelbaum it was its satanic prelude.
If we think Teitelbaum’s position is unique in its extreme rejection of Zionism we would be mistaken. In general terms, Teitelbaum’s ideological commitments against Zionism are not new, but part of a much longer trajectory of traditional anti-Zionism that stems back to the early 20th century in the work of Hayyim Elazar Shapira of Munkacz (1868-1937), the “Old Settlement” Jews in Palestine, and, later, Neturei Karta in Israel. This anti-Zionism was also shared by much of the prewar ultra-Orthodox world, from Lithuanian rabbinic giant Elhanan Wasserman (1874-1941) to Yitzhok Zev Soloveitchik (1886-1959); and much of the Soloveitchik dynasty; and the Lubavitcher Rebbes Shalom Dov Schneershon (1860-1920) and Yosef Yizhak Schneershon (1880-1950), among many others.
The difference between Teitelbaum and many of his colleagues was that only Teitelbaum spent significant intellectual capital developing a political theology that not only reacted to the circumstantial instantiation of Zionism as heresy but placed it in a theological context that has its roots in the biblical narrative, for example, the Israelite rebellion of the golden calf, Job’s blasphemous response to his suffering, the Israelites’ rebellion against Moses in the desert, and the history of miracle in the Israelite and Jewish tradition. In addition, Teitelbaum rejected the largely pragmatic acquiescence to Zionism in groups like Agudat Yisrael, viewing them like the righteous who were fooled into serving the golden calf in the Sinai desert.[2]
In his dissertation on Teitelbaum, Menachem Keren-Krantz of Tel Aviv University writes, “Most Jews and Orthodox rabbis [after the Holocaust] were sympathetic to the Jewish state, even if they were suspicious of its secularism and the success of religion [in Israel] in the coming years. For the first five years, R. Yoel [Teitelbaum] was the only one who continued to maintain a staunch anti-Zionist position which had emerged [earlier] from the schools of radical Orthodoxy in Transylvania and its environs.” Until the late 1950s, however, Teitelbaum did not publish anything substantive on the subject but made his views known in oral sermons and in various media such as the Yiddish newspaper Der Yid, which he founded in New York and was widely read in the Yiddish-speaking ultra-Orthodox community. By the late 1950s, seeing the ultra-Orthodox community softening toward what he considered the Zionist heresy, he decided to publish his views in book form, in Vayoel Moshe.[2]


The head of the Satmar Hassidic sect has accused his followers of increasingly admiring Israel for its military and political accomplishments, imploring them to maintain the Hasidic group’s hardline anti-Zionism. Addressing thousands of Satmar members at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum lamented what he called a “tremendous and terrible spiritual decline” among his followers. “According to the rumors I heard, [people] are excitedly talking about the news of [the Israelis’] accomplishments, how smart they are, how they succeed politically and militarily, and about their heads of government,” Teitelbaum told the crowd in an address in Yiddish on Sunday, according to a Hebrew translation from the Kann public broadcaster. The head of the Satmar Hassidic sect has accused his followers of increasingly admiring Israel for its military and political accomplishments, imploring them to maintain the Hasidic group’s hardline anti-Zionism.Addressing thousands of Satmar members at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum lamented what he called a “tremendous and terrible spiritual decline” among his followers. “According to the rumors I heard, [people] are excitedly talking about the news of [the Israelis’] accomplishments, how smart they are, how they succeed politically and militarily, and about their heads of government,” Teitelbaum told the crowd in an address in Yiddish on Sunday, according to a Hebrew translation from the Kann public broadcaster. “We must yell gevalt, gevalt! To where have we come?” he declared. “We have no part in Zionism. We have no part in their wars. We have no part in the State of Israel.” The Satmar, one of the largest Hasidic groups in the world, is staunchly anti-Zionist and does not recognize the State of Israel, maintaining a Jewish state should not exist until the Messiah appears.
“We’ll continue to fight God’s war against Zionism and all its aspects,” Teitelbaum said. The Satmar rabbi also spoke out against draft legislation regarding military service for ultra-Orthodox seminary students in Israel. “We declare there can be no compromise,” he said. “We won’t agree to any compromise regarding the [military] draft law for yeshiva students.” Teitelbaum’s remarks came as the coalition is haggling over legislation addressing mandatory military service for ultra-Orthodox seminary students. Earlier this week, the head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party gave an “unequivocal” ultimatum that his faction will bolt the government if legislation is not passed in the next seven weeks exempting members of his community from mandatory military service. Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman’s threat, not his first of this nature, comes ahead of a September deadline set by the High Court of Justice for the Knesset to re-legislate a previous exemption that the court disqualified on the grounds that it violated principles of equality. In September 2017, the High Court of Justice struck down a law exempting ultra-Orthodox men engaged in religious study from military service, saying it undermined the principle of equality before the law. However, the court suspended its decision for a year to allow for a new arrangement to be put in place, giving the government the option to pass a new law. After a similar ultimatum was made by UTJ during the Knesset’s winter session, coalition partners reached a last-minute deal to cooperate on the contentious issue in order to reach an agreement before the deadline. But a compromise agreement still remains elusive, with Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman vowing that his staunchly secular Yisrael Beytenu party would not fold in the face of demands made by their ultra-Orthodox coalition partners.[3]

Satmar and Neturei Karta

Some Neturei Karta members are Satmar Hasidim and so there is occasional public hostility from the Satmar towards Neturei Karta .

2006

Are there limits to anti-Zionism? Typically anti-Zionist Orthodox sector issues condemnation of seven Orthodox Jews who attended Iranian Holocaust denial conference last week
The Satmar Hassidism Court published an unprecedented statement calling on the public to disassociate themselves from the seven Neturei Karta members who visited Iran to attend the Holocaust denial conference this week. The Satmar movement printed an official placard, with bold black lettering, publicly denouncing “fanaticism, and those committing insane acts to walk hand in hand with the Arabs.” The court further ordered that the offenders be shunned and their actions be condemned. It slams the offenders for “joining in desecrating the name of the heavens. The declaration expresses astonishment at how a few people “dared attend a special conference of the nations of the world that despise Israel (may the names of the evil rot), deny the Holocaust, and deny and belittle the immensity of the evil and murder of those killed for sanctifying the lord; they desecrated the name of the heavens.” Residents of the Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim said that the Orthodox leaders could not stand the fact that those individuals who visited Iran identify themselves as Satmar Jews, and thus stain the name of Orthodoxy. The Satmar Orthodox group is the largest Orthodox sector worldwide, numbering some 120,000 people, and holds adamant anti-Zionist views. Yitzhak Weiss, an editor of a Hassidic journal, told Ynet: “The rabbinate issued the declaration to attack those Orthodox who represented Orthodox Judaism at the Holocaust denial conference. What they did there is a simple crime against humanity.”[4]

2023

Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Teitelbaum, a.k.a. Reb Zalman Leib, one of two Satmar Rebbes and the son of the Rebbe Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum, on Sunday night, attacked the sect of Neturei Karta who have been demonstrating in New York City in support of Hamas and against the Jewish State. “There are those who do not have any ancestral tradition, and carry out actions independently, because they think they understand more than the late Tzaddikim,” the Rebbe said, referring to the fringe group that advocates the “peaceful dismantling” of Israel because its very existence constitutes rebellion against God. “Unfortunately, we see how far they have strayed from the path,” the Rebbe said. “They are walking around the world together with the Arabs, with those who shout without any shame and support the murders, they walk with them in broad daylight with the Shtreimel and the gown and shout together with the haters of Israel and murderers of souls. This is a terrible desecration of the name of heaven, to strengthen murderers in the name of the Holy Torah and in the name of heaven.” The Satmar movement is considered anti-Zionist and presents itself as the ideological guardian of the entire Haredi public. They are the biggest contributors to the Haredi community and institutions that do not receive budgets from the State of Israel. However, unlike Neturei Karta, they maintain ties with pro-Zionist Haredi communities.[5]


Skver and the Satmar

The Hasidic community – especially Satmar and the less-populous Skver group – is veering ever more towards extremism. If it isn’t a new law prohibiting long robes traditionally worn on Shabbat, it is a ban on the internet, smartphones, concerts, strawberries, raspberries, grapes (for the slight chance they contain insects), eye makeup by makeup artists (yes, this is the case in Kiryas Joel), and now the innocent images of three-year-old girls.
This radicalized Hasidism does not include Chabad. Even though they are, by definition, Hasidic, the Lubavitchers’ representation as the poster children of Hasidism in America and worldwide is a gross misrepresentation. Many other Hasidic groups shun Chabad as a separate, modernized entity – akin to the Modern Orthodox – and whose chumros (stringencies) are a lot more lax than the bona fide Hasidim. The media-savviness of Chabad and comfortable relationship with secularism exemplifies their worldliness – something the majority of Hasidim are decidedly not, as a consequence of their insularity.[6]
Skver has thrown its support behind Democrat Kathy Hochul for governor, joining Satmar’s Aronim faction in backing the incumbent who has signaled that she will not do anything to oppose the New York Board of Regents’ attacks against yeshivas. Skver and Satmar are now the only two voting blocs within the broader Orthodox Jewish community in New York who have spurned their brethren in endorsing Republican Lee Zeldin and his pledge to support Orthodox Jews and yeshivas and protect their way of life.
Skver also endorsed Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat who is locked in a tight race with Assemblyman Mike Lawler. Despite the endorsements of Hochul and Maloney, many Satmar Aronim and Skverers are expected to vote for the Republicans, with their leadership’s endorsements having little effect on their vote in the crime-ridden and anti-yeshiva climate of New York.[7]

Voting bloc - June 2025

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, candidate for Mayor of New York City, today received the endorsement of the main Satmar community in Williamsburg, led politically by Rabbi Niederman, together with a coalition of the main congregations in the area, including Pupa, Viznitz, Vien, Tzelim, Nitra, Krasna, Skver and Klausenburg. This group is known as the largest Orthodox voting bloc in the city. This marks the sixth Orthodox Jewish group to endorse Cuomo, joining the Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance, the Bobov community in Borough Park, Crown Jewish United and the Crown Heights PAC, and Satmar Ahronim, in backing Cuomo’s bid. Cuomo has also received the endorsement of the Sephardic Community Federation.
“I'm deeply honored to have the endorsement of the Satmars, a powerful nod that speaks to the deep bond and affection I’ve developed over the years with this community,” Governor Cuomo said. “I have great admiration for Rabbi Niederman, who is a true example of a real leader and who I’m proud to call a friend. Before coming to Brooklyn, he put his life on the line to save Jews in the Middle East. He’s helped to make the UJO from a three person team into a true New York powerhouse. In this election, antisemitism is on the ballot. When I become Mayor, I promise to continue my record of fighting antisemitism, and serving as that shield to protect our Jewish brothers and sisters.”[8]

Satmar in the UK

Canvey Island

As in other countries with sizable Jewish populations, the Haredi community is the fastest-growing Jewish group, estimated currently at around 60,000, or 20 percent of British Jews. But over the past decades, while they increased in number, they shrank in geography, concentrating in a handful of neighborhoods in north London and Manchester, with one northern outpost around the yeshiva in Gateshead founded in 1929. This is the first major migration of Haredi Jews to a brand-new location within Britain in nearly a century, when the children of migrants from Eastern Europe began moving from the overcrowded East End of London to the more comfortable suburbs to the north, making way for new waves of immigration to Britain.
And unlike in the United States, where ultra-Orthodox communities have been moving out of New York City to places such as Lakewood, Monsey, Kiryas Joel, and New Square since the 1940s, the Canvey Island community wasn’t created at the behest of a charismatic rabbi. It was the initiative of a few men in their late twenties and thirties. “We were a group of about seven or eight people, in early 2015, who stayed behind at shul one evening after Ma’ariv and talked about house prices and what we can do,” says Joel Friedman, one of the founding members of the community and the first to purchase his family’s new home in Canvey Island, in February 2016.
Friedman, 37, is a father of seven, a Satmar Hasid, and for want of a better definition, can be best described as a macher — a grassroots activist. He commutes daily back to Stamford Hill in London, where he works as director of public affairs at Interlink and the Pinter Trust, organizations that work to provide public services within the British Haredi community and connect it with local authorities, the media, and the British government. His group spent nearly a year trying to find a location for their new community.They scoured the area around London, looking for a place that fit their requirements. It would need to be about an hour away, so as to be “not too far, but also not too close, so it could become self-sustainable and not rely on Stamford Hill for everything,” says Friedman. It would need to have a low crime rate, space for building communal institutions, and above all, a ready supply of homes at reasonable prices.[9]
Canvey Island is a Haredi community that exists without a rabbinical leader, though some of its members have semicha (rabbinical ordination) and they employ a dayan who rules on more technical issues of halacha. The Satmar Hasidim are the predominant Haredi sect in Canvey, affiliated with Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, who rules his international flock from Kiryas Joel in Orange County, New York (Satmar has been split for 16 years between two brothers, Aaron and Zalman). But Canvey is a general Hasidic community, not an exclusively Satmar one, and the rebbe is a distant figure. In March, Reb Aaron visited Britain but didn’t come to see his followers in Canvey. “We’re much too small and poor for him to visit,” wryly observes one Satmar Hasid, who insists they weren’t disappointed at being left off the rebbe’s itinerary.[9]

Institutions

The sect operates numerous community foundations. Bikur Cholim ("Visiting the sick"), established in 1957 by Teitelbaum's wife Alte Feiga, concerns itself with helping hospitalized Jews, regardless of affiliation. Rav Tuv, founded in the 1950s to help Jews in the Soviet Union, aids Jewish refugees. Today, the organization mostly helps Jews from Iran and Yemen. Keren Hatzolah is a charitable fund to support yeshivas and the poor in Israel, providing for those who shun government benefits.

Teitelbaum founded a network of large educational institutions, both yeshivas and girls' schools. If its schools in New York were a public school system, it would be the fourth-largest system in the state, after those of New York City, Buffalo, and Rochester.[10] In most places, the girls' schools are called Beis Rochel, and the yeshivas Torah VeYirah. In 1953, Teitelbaum founded the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, which provides various services, including kashrut supervision.

Senior yeshivas include the United Talmudical Seminary and Yeshivas Maharit D'Satmar. [11] Satmar also operates its own rabbinical courts, which settle various issues within the community by the principles of Jewish Law.

The sect has a Yiddish newspaper called Der Yid, now privatized, and various other Yiddish publications. It is currently identified with Zalman's Hasidim; whereas Der Blatt, established in 2000, is owned and run by a follower of Aaron's.

UK

Schools in the UK

Beis Rochel d'Satmar Girls' School Hackney | Beis Rochel D'Satmar School Hackney | Beis Rochel Mcr Girls' School Salford | Beis Ruchel D`Satmar Hackney | Beis Ruchel Girls School (secondary) Salford | Beis Ruchel Girls School

US

Notable Satmar people

Further reading

External links

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/time-to-stop-the-shraga-stern-farce-1.494581
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Shaul Magid The Satmar Are Anti-Zionist. Should We Care? Few Jews today agree with the late Satmar rebbe’s attacks on Zionism. All the more reason to read them. Tablet. May 21, 2020
  3. ↑ https://www.timesofisrael.com/head-of-satmar-hasidic-sect-castigates-followers-for-admiring-israel-idf/
  4. ↑ https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3340592,00.html
  5. ↑ https://www.jewishpress.com/news/jewish-news/haredim-news/satmar-rebbe-condemns-neturei-karta-for-supporting-hamas-murders/2023/11/13/
  6. ↑ https://forward.com/opinion/181566/blurring-out-satmar-history/
  7. ↑ https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/2134796/outliers-skver-joins-satmar-in-endorsing-hochul-also-backs-maloney.html
  8. ↑ https://www.andrewcuomo.com/press/cuomo-receives-major-endorsement-satmar-williamsburg-led-grand-rebbe-zalmen-teitelbaum-one
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 https://k-larevue.com/en/postcard-from-canvey-island/
  10. ↑ New York Times, April 25, 2006.
  11. ↑ yeshivasmaharit.org
  12. ↑ Kusisto, Laura (June 16, 2014) "Familiar Face Emerges in LICH Saga", The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
  13. ↑ Liel Leibovitz Straight Outta Satmar: Hear the Biggest Hasidic Hit of Right Now October 20, 2017 Tablet
  14. ↑ Yossi Green Weathers Storm in Seagate.  Tablet.
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