Kiryas Joel, New York

Village of Kiryas Joel
Kiryas Joel's rapid and ongoing growth has been one of several sore points between it and surrounding communities
Government
• Administrator	Gedalye Szegedin
Elevation	257 m (842 ft)
Population  (2000)
• Total	13,138
Time zone	UTC-5 (US EST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (Eastern Daylight Time)

Kiryas Joel

Kiryas Joel (New York)

Kiryas Joel (or Kiryas Yo'el or Kiryat Joel or KJ) (קרית יואל, Hebrew: "Town of Joel") is a village within the Town of Monroe in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 13,138 at the 2000 census. The great majority of its residents are Hasidic Jews belonging to the Satmar Hasidic dynasty, making it a significant Satmar enclave. Kiryas Joel is the poorest town (with over 10,000 residents) in the United States.

Most of the residents speak Yiddish as their first language. The village has the youngest median age (15.0) of any population center of over 5,000 residents in the United States. Large families are encouraged, in part to replace the Satmars lost in the Holocaust.

Inspired by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum

It is named for and by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the rebbe of Satmar, who encouraged the project and helped choose its location a number of years prior to his death in 1979. Rabbi Teitelbaum was the first and founding rebbe of the Satmar Hasidic dynasty, originally from Hungary. The Satmar families of Kiryas Joel originated in Szatmarnemeti, Hungary (now Satu Mare, Romania), Teitelbaum's home, which was nearly wiped out when the Nazis deported 12,000 residents to Auschwitz.

Teitelbaum was inspired and impressed by the success of the Skver Hasidim in establishing New Square, New York. He had settled with the remnants of his sect in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1946, where he had moved after the Holocaust following the end of World War II. However, by the 1970s, the confines of his rapidly-growing re-established community grew too small. He also wanted to reduce the likelihood of assimiliation. He then encouraged his disciples to search for a location that would not be too far from the commercial center of New York City, but that would also allow his followers to raise their large families in relative seclusion away from what he and his followers deemed to be the negative immoral influences of the outside world.

Eventually the location near Monroe was chosen and found acceptance with many of the Satmar Hasidim. However, the Satmar Rebbe did not want the village to be exclusively used by Satmar Hasidim, and he encouraged other Hasidic groups and non-Hasidic ones, that agreed with his political views, to open synagogues in the village, and today there are over 40 synagogues in the village of Kiryas Joel; however, the vast majority of the residents are Satmar Hasidim.

In 1977, when Teitelbaum bought the land which became his "modern shtetl" of Kiryas Joel, fourteen Satmar families settled there. By 2006, there were over 3,000.

Not long after the founding of Kiryas Joel, in 1979, Rabbi Teitelbaum became the first person buried in the town's cemetery. His funeral reportedly brought over 100,000 mourners to Kiryas Joel at that time.

The main synagogue in Kiryas Joel

The position of Grand Rebbe continues to be extremely influential. It is widely believed that no candidates run for either the village's board or the school board unless first approved by the grand rebbe. In 2001, Kiryas Joel held a competitive election in which all candidates supported by the grand rebbe were re-elected by a 60-40% margin.

Friction with surrounding jurisdictions

The village has become a contentious issue in Orange County for several reasons, mainly related to its rapid growth. Unlike most other small towns, it lacks a real downtown and much of it is given over to residential property, which has mostly taken the form of contemporary townhouse-style condominium complexes similar to those found in ski resort communities in western states. New construction is going on throughout the community.

Population growth is strong. In 1990, there were 7,400 people in Kiryas Joel; in 2000, 13,100, nearly doubling the population. In 2005, the population had risen to 18,300, a rate of growth suggesting it will double again in the ten years between 2000 and 2010. In 2006, village administrator Gedalye Szegedin stated:

There are three religious tenets that drive our growth: our women don't use birth control, they get married young and after they get married, they stay in Kiryas Joel and start a family. Our growth comes simply from the fact that our families have a lot of babies, and we need to build homes to respond to the needs of our community.

As each successive generation of women becomes old enough to have children, the number of women of child-bearing age grows exponentially. The number of women who marry each year is the approximate number of new homes needed.

Local impact of growth

Monroe also contains two other villages, Monroe and Harriman. Kiryas Joel's boundaries also come close to the neighboring towns of Blooming Grove and Woodbury.

Residents of these communities and local and Orange County politicians view the village as encroaching on them. Due to the rapid population growth occurring 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 acreage, to the dismay of the majority of the residents of the surrounding communities. Many of these area residents see the expansion of the high-density residential and commercial village as a threat to the quality of life in the surrounding suburban communities. They view it as a prime source of suburban sprawl (most land surrounding it is largely undeveloped). Other concerns of the surrounding communities are the impact on local aquifers and the projected increased volume of sewage reaching the county’s sewerage treatment plants, already near capacity by 2005.

On August 11, 2006, residents of Woodbury voted by a 3-to-1 margin to incorporate much of the town as a village to constrain further annexation. Kiryas Joel has vigorously opposed such moves in court, and even some Woodbury residents are concerned about adding another layer of taxation without any improved defense against annexations.

In March 2007, the village sued the county to stop it from selling off a million gallons (3,780 m³) of excess capacity at its sewage plant in Harriman. Two years before, the county had sued the village to stop it from tapping into New York City's Catskill Aqueduct, arguing that the village's environmental review for the project had inadequately addressed concerns about the additional wastewater it would generate. The village is appealing an early ruling siding with the county.

In its action, Kiryas Joel accuses the county of inconsistently claiming limited capacity in the its suit when it is selling the million gallons to three communities outside its sewer district.

Local politics

Further frustrating village critics is its impact on local politics. Villagers are perceived as voting in a solid bloc. While this is not always the case, the highly concentrated population often does skew strongly toward one candidate or the other in local elections, making Kiryas Joel a heavily-courted swing vote for whichever politician offers Kiryas Joel the most favorable environment for continued growth.

In the town's 2005 municipal election, a slate of anti-growth Democratic candidates for the Town Board ran against pro-growth Republicans. The Democrats carried almost every precinct in town but lost the election because the Kiryas Joel vote went for the Republicans.

Kiryas Joel played a major role in the 2006 Congressional election. The village sits in the 19th Congressional District, represented at that time by Republican Sue Kelly. Village residents have usually been loyal to Kelly in the past, but the voters were upset over what they saw as lack of adequate representation from Kelly for the village. In a bloc, Kiryas Joel swung around 2,900 votes to Democrat John Hall in the 2006 elections. Hall won the election by over 4,000 votes, but Kiryas Joel was the primary reason Hall carried Orange County. He defeated Kelly in the county by 93 votes.

Alleged vote and tax fraud

In addition to the obvious power of bloc voting, there are persistent allegations of electoral fraud related to the village. An investigation by the local newspaper, the Middletown Times Herald Record, found that some residents apparently voted regularly in local elections despite living full-time in places as far away as Antwerp. New York's Elections Law bars residents who live overseas from voting in county or local elections. A subsequent investigation by the District Attorney failed to substantiate this claim.

Village leaders strongly denied this and insisted the newspaper was either mistaken or negligent in its coverage or trying to whip up hysteria against it.

Welfare burden, tax fraud

Kiryas Joel residents have been alleged to cheat on taxes by claiming that they have a temple, or a place of worship, in their homes. Obtaining tax relief as a house of worship means the property is excused from paying property taxes that support local services, such as public schools, roads, water and sewer, fire and police, and so on, including the funds which subsidize welfare payments.

It is the custom in Kiryas Joel for women who work outside the home to stop doing so at the birth of their second child. Most families have only one income and many children. The resulting poverty rate makes a disproportionate number of families in Kiryas Joel eligible for welfare benefits when compared to the rest of the county; and cost of welfare benefits is subsidized by taxes paid county-wide. Per the New York Times,

Because of the sheer size of the families (the average household here has six people, but it is not uncommon for couples to have 8 or 10 children), and because a vast majority of households subsist on only one salary, 62 percent of the local families live below poverty level and rely heavily on public assistance, which is another sore point among those who live in neighboring communities.

Litigation

The unusual lifestyle and growth pattern of Kiryas Joel has led to litigation on a number of fronts. Most noted in legal circles is the Grumet decision about school district boundaries; but there has also been litigation over what entity should pay for the education of children with disabilities in Kiryas Joel, and over whether the community's boys must ride buses driven by women. The women of the community do not drive, because it is considered immodest.

Main article: Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet

In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that the Kiryas Joel school district, which covered only the village, was designed in violation of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, because the design accommodated one group on the basis of religious affiliation. 512 U.S. 687 (1994). Subsequently, the New York State Legislature established a similar school district in the town that has passed legal muster.

Geography

Kiryas Joel is located at 41°20′24″N 74°10′2″W (41.340020, -74.167229)Template:GR.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 2.8 km² (1.1 mi²). 2.8 km² (1.1 mi²) of it is land and only a very small portion of the area (a small duck pond in center of the village) is covered with water.

Demographics

File:A305.jpg

Grave of Grand Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum (r.) and his wife, Rebbetzin Alte Feiga Teitelbaum (l.) in Kiryas Joel Cemetery. Rabbi Teitelbaum was the first person to be buried in the new cemetery in 1979

As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2000, there were 13,138 people, 2,229 households, and 2,137 families residing in the village. The population density was 4,611.5/km² (11,962.2/mi²). There were 2,233 housing units at an average density of 783.8/km² (2,033.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the village was 99.02% White, 0.21% African American, 0.02% Asian, 0.12% from other races, and 0.63% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.93% of the population.

Sign in English written in both Roman and Hebrew letters; see Yeshivish.

The 2000 census also reports that only 6.16% of the village speaks English at home; 2.3% speak Hebrew; over 89% speak Yiddish at home. Of the Yiddish-speaking population in 2000, 46% spoke English "not well" or "not at all." Overall, including those who primarily spoke Hebrew and European languages as well as primary Yiddish speakers, 46% of Kiryas Joel residents speak English "not well" or "not at all."

There were 2,229 households out of which 79.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 93.2% were married couples living together, 1.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 4.1% were non-families. 2.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 2.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 5.74 and the average family size was 5.84. In the village the population was spread out with 57.5% under the age of 18, 17.2% from 18 to 24, 16.5% from 25 to 44, 7.2% from 45 to 64, and 1.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 15 years. For every 100 females there were 116.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 118.0 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $15,138, and the median income for a family was $15,372. Males had a median income of $25,043 versus $16,364 for females. The per capita income for the village was $4,355. About 61.7% of families and 62.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 63.9% of those under age 18 and 50.5% of those age 65 or over.

See also

• New Square, New York
• Monroe (village), New York
• Monroe (town), New York
• Satmar
• Hasidism
• Shtetl
• Mea Shearim
• Bnei Brak

In the local media

Often, the local media gives the clashes between Kiryas Joel and its neighbors front-page status:

• Move could double KJ's size (March 12, 2004)
• Satmar group files to make land tax exempt (April 6, 2004)
• Myriad of deals done to carve out new village (July 12, 2004)
• Editorial: When dreams collide (August 15, 2004)
• Bohan, KJ and the NYC Aqueduct (June 30, 2004)

External links

• The Kiryas Joel Voice, a community website