Uta satmar: Underground Satmar yeshivas approved by administrators
Underground Satmar yeshivas approved by administrators
A nearly empty street is viewed in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn on March 25, 2020 in New York. Image by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images
Read this article in Yiddish.
A principal at United Talmudical Academy, a complex of schools serving the ultra-Orthodox Satmar community, told a teacher to hold classes in person despite coronavirus social distancing orders, according to a school answering machine recording from last week.
In the recording, the teacher, a man identified as Mr. Weiss, tells students they have permission from their principal, Yakov Herman, to come in person to their eighth grade class. The recording can be accessed through a series of menu options in Yiddish stemming from United Talmudical Academy’s main phone number.
“The principal was here and he’s asked that whoever can come to Cheder tomorrow should come and wear their gloves,” he said, using the Yiddish word for grade school.
Another recording from before Passover, which started on April 8, accessed through the same answering machine service asked parents to volunteer their basements for in-person classes.
“Until the situation resolves we’re seeking the following and asking for those who can provide basements or larger rooms in private homes where we’d be able to place 10-12 children to study with their teachers on a smaller scale, of course, strictly according to governmental instructions,” said the message from before Passover, which was from another teacher, Shmiel Leibish Schwartz. That message was also aimed at parents of students in eighth grade.
Schwartz was apparently referencing social distancing guidance to avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people, but New York State and New York City health department guidance stipulate that all schools are supposed to be closed, or operating in distance-learning mode.
The recordings call into question claims by Satmar leaders and officials from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office who have insisted that the underground yeshivas operating in Williamsburg were being run by rogue teachers without authorization from rabbinical authorities or administrators, that there was only one classroom in operation and that students met only for a single day.
More than 3,000 children who attend UTA from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. It is the largest system of Satmar yeshivas in Brooklyn. (It is separate from Central United Talmudical Academy headquartered in upstate New York.)
Williamsburg is home to the largest population of Satmar Hasidic Jews in New York City. The community is characterized by very strict religiosity and yeshivas intensely focused on religious education.
A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienation from the community brought the recordings to the Forward’s attention. Staff from the Yiddish Forverts called the number and verified the first recording.
After the source sent the second recording, UTA protected the message behind a password. Forverts staff could not verify it without the PIN, but the number the source provided did bring the caller to Schwartz’ phone mailbox.
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When reached by phone, Principal Yakov Herman hung up on a reporter who asked about the recordings and said in a subsequent call that he did not want to speak to the press.
City officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It is not yet clear how many classes have been operating in secret and for how long, but the new recordings suggest more widespread coordination than was previously thought.
A different source who spoke to the Forward Monday on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation by the community said Satmar schools attended by his children of different ages were running classes in apartment buildings and synagogues since mid-March.
Gothamist has named Talmud Torah Tashbar and Talmud Torah Bnei Shimon as schools operating underground.
After the Forward published its first story on the matter, New York City officials broke up one of the schools, which it declined to name. A city spokeswoman said the dispersal was tied to the Forward’s reporting.
Jordan Kutzik contributed reporting and Yiddish translation.
Molly Boigon is an investigative reporter at the Forward. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @MollyBoigon
Molly Boigon is an investigative reporter at the Forward. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @MollyBoigon.
Uta Mesivta of Kiryas Joel
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UTAM’s origins trace back two centuries to the Chassidic Master Rabbi Moishe Teitelbaum, zt’l, author of the renowned text Yismach Moishe. Under his towering influence, the Talmud Academy in Uhel, Hungary was developed into an esteemed institution for training young men in Talmud, Ethics, and Halacha. The institution served the entire community. Its curriculum was not limited to the narrow goal of producing outstanding scholars skilled in refined intellectual analysis, but rather the Yeshiva embraced the broader mission of training its community’s youth for a life based upon reflection and discipline.
Inspired by Rabbi Moishe’s teaching, the community’s residents held fast to tradition and sustained each other with warm concern and affection in difficult times.
A succession of Chassidic leaders carried forward the mission of the Yismach Moishe and his Yeshiva. By the eve of World War II, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, zt’l, headed the Yeshiva and served as leader of the Satmar community. His keen mastery of Jewish scholarship was tied to a rigorous adherence to traditional ways, and under this profound, saintly man the Yeshiva became a regional institution attracting gifted scholars from all over.
Then this world was plunged into darkness. Towns and villages saturated with Torah and Mitzvos were set ablaze; the old communities flowed with rivers of Jewish blood. A world was destroyed in the gas ovens of Nazi occupied Europe.
But the mission endured, and a hand-full of survivors committed their every effort to reclaiming the world of Torah that had been so tragically destroyed before their eyes.
Others had before failed to establish a vibrant Yiddishkeit in the United States, but with his great learning and bristling faith, the Satmar Rav lifted up an orphaned generation and sparked in them the courage to join him. From the scarred survivors of the holocaust, whom many feared were too bowed to build anything ever again, he erected a spirited Torah community. To those who argued that Torah must make accommodations, he replied with a serene assumption: Truth did not change with time and place. The eternal law and its explication were the only guide and they must be studied, understood and scrupulously followed. At first a lone voice, he became the architect of a new American orthodox generation.
UTAM stands as the capstone of the educational institution that he erected. It provides advanced students with rigorous training in the intellectual foundations of classic Jewish thought, law and philosophy and stands today as the leading institutional voice and training ground for unswerving classical Judaism.
Established in Brooklyn, New York, in 1949, amid the Satmar community, the school initially attracted only a small number of students. Its first classes were held in neighborhood synagogues, with few amenities, but its devoted staff and impassioned leader pushed forward. The Satmar Rav knew no fear, gave in to no compromise, in planting the scholarly traditions of Torah study in America. Over the decades, the school expanded into an institution of worldwide prominence with many hundreds of students pursuing the classical curriculum. From the one- room, book cluttered classroom-library of the early days, the Yeshiva expanded to many different locations including the Village of Kiryas Joel in Monroe, New York where the UTAM today occupies a vibrant modern campus.
Under the sage leadership of the Satmar Rav’s revered successor, Rabbi Ahron Teitelbaum, shlita, UTAM continues to press forward its educational mission with vigor, dedication and a commitment to excellence.
Inspired by Rabbi Moishe’s teaching, the community’s residents held fast to tradition and sustained each other with warm concern and affection in difficult times.
This tiny group of leaders launched an effort to rebuild on American shores from the European remnants. At the head of this effort stood the Satmar Rav, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum.
UTAM’s MISSION
The mission of the institution is to provide higher education founded on classical Jewish learning.
- Inculcate an abiding interest in Jewish culture, history and heritage;
- Provide the intellectual training for future leaders who will serve the Jewish community as clergymen, teachers, halachic judges, religious functionaries, and educators;
- Train students in the systematic higher learning of classical biblical, Talmudic, and philosophical texts;
- Teach language and reasoning skills, textual analysis, legal research, logic and modes of argumentation;
- Emphasize the moral application of Torah principles through the study of mussar and ethical works by Chassidic masters;
- Create an integrated Torah perspective for understanding and interacting with the modern world;
- Foster in students a contemplative spirit, an awareness and respect for the life of the mind;
- Offer a challenging special program of study for the gifted who may seek to devote their lives to scholarly research and study;
In sum, UTAM offers a program of study that focuses upon the intellectual traditions of Chassidic Jewish life and seeks to weave the reconstructed fabric of Old World Jewish thought in modern America.
Its curriculum emphasizes the study of Talmud, Halacha and Hashkofa in order to prepare students for a richer, more meaningful, intelligent and fulfilling life. It provides the specialized education that serves as the intellectual capital for students who wish to become rabbinic authorities, dayanim, Talmud educators, and communal functionaries. Its goal is to carry forward the chain of Talmudic knowledge and, by enhancing it, to provide the basis for a reflective life in contemporary society. Its specific aims include the following:
Uta Mesivta from Kiryas Joel – Monroe | Cost | Incoming
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The university is located within Monroe – a small city in the United States.
Uta Mesivta of Kiryas Joel is one of the best educational institutions in the country, consistently demonstrating a high level of teaching.
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N and today Satmar is considered the largest Hasidic community. These are mainly immigrants from Galicia and Transylvania, united in America into a large community. The name comes from the city of Satmar (rum. Satu Mare, Hung. Szatmar, Yiddish. Satmar), located on the territory of modern Romania, 13 km from the border with Hungary and 27 km from the border with Ukraine. Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum, also known as Reb Yoilish or simply the Rebbe of Satmar, was born in 1887 to a family of tzaddiks from Sziget. At the beginning of the war, the Rebbe was imprisoned in a ghetto. In 1944, Rebbe Yoel, along with a group of his Hasidim, was able to get out on the Kastner train to Switzerland. Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum was born in 1914 and was named after his ancestor, Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum, who founded the dynasty in the 18th century. His father, Chaim-Zvi Teitelbaum (1870s-1926) Rebbe of Seget. Before the war, Moshe Teitelbaum was the rabbi of Senta (at that time a city in Hungary, now Serbia). At the end of 1944, Moshe Teitelbaum, along with his wife and three children, ended up in Auschwitz. It was difficult for him to remember this mournful page of his life until the end of his days – only he survived from the whole family in Auschwitz. Wife and children died. At 19In 45, he was transferred to another concentration camp – to Theresienstadt. Both brothers, like the previous Satmar leaders, take an extreme anti-Zionist stance. In 2013, during the visit of the Satmar Rebbe Zalman Leib to Israel, he called on Israelis not to participate in parliamentary elections and spoke out against the military service of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the army. The son-in-law of the late Rebbe Moshe, Chaim Yehoshua Halberstam, the chief rabbi and head of the Satmar community in Monsi and the second son of Rebbe Moshe, Hananiah Yom Tov Lipa, who founded his own community, and is the Zenter Rebbe, in honor of the city of Senta on territory of Serbia, where his father served until World War II. The traditional occupations of the Hasidim are the real estate business and construction contracts, the diamond business, trade, mediation, the financial market. |
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The community was founded by Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum (Taitelboim) at the beginning of the 20th century as an offshoot of the Sziget Hasidic community in Hungary. The Satmar-Sziget dynasty traces its origins to Rebbe Moshe Taitelboim (Moshe ben Zvi of Uihei (1759–1841)), a student of the Lublin seer, who, in turn, studied with Rebbe Elimelech of Lizhensk. Rebbe Moshe ben Zvi of Uihei, along with another well-known tzadik, Yitzhak Aizik Taub of Kaliv (1744-1828), was one of the first Hasidic Rebbes in Hungary. During the Second World War, the Sziget community was almost completely destroyed by the Nazi invaders. Its remnants united with the Satmar Hasidim. The movement is currently centered in New York. Takes an anti-Zionist position, arguing that the state of Israel violates Jewish laws. Satmar Hasidim living in Israel are boycotting the elections. Satmar Hasidic educational institutions in Israel eschew public funding as a matter of principle and subsist on private donations. nine0007 
His father, Hananya Yom-Tov Lipa, Rebbe of Sziget (1830s-1904) was the great-grandson of the founder of the Satmaro-Sziget dynasty. Yoel was a rabbi in a number of Carpathian and North Transylvanian communities. Rebbe Yoel was the youngest son and therefore did not take his place after the death of his father. Went to Satmar where he set up his own court. Rebbe Yoel quickly became widely known in Satmar and throughout Transylvania. During this period, Rebbe Yoel also began a broad polemic against Zionism, in which he saw a serious violation of the Torah. Although Rebbe Yoel saw Zionism as a danger to Jewish existence, his views were not as extreme as those of the Rebbe of Munkacs. Rebbe Yoel did not call his followers to leave Europe before the war, and many of his congregation perished in Auschwitz. nine0007 
In 1945 he repatriated to Palestine, where he was recognized as the leader of the orthodox anti-Zionist community “Eda Haredit”. The Satmar Rebbe found it difficult to find himself in a Yishuv with his anti-Zionist views, and he preferred to re-establish his community in the United States in New York, in the Queens-Williamsburg districts, where many Transylvanian refugees from various Hasidic denominations settled, who constantly called on the Rebbe to lead them. From 19At the age of 53, he became the spiritual leader of the Jerusalem anti-Zionist community “Naturei Karta”, but remained in New York, visiting Israel regularly every few years. Thanks to the efforts of Rebbe Yoel, a new community with its own educational institutions was quickly established in New York. The community was called Satmar Hasidism and soon became the largest Hasidic community in the world. A few years later, the Williamsburg area was too small to accommodate all the Hasidim and Rebbe Yoel created a new community near Monroe in the state of New York, Orange County, called Kiryas Yoel.
Today the population of the city community is over 10 thousand inhabitants. Rebbe Yoel believed that Hebrew is a holy language that the Jews never used in their everyday life, and so it should remain. Yiddish should be used as the language of everyday communication. Satmar Hasidim follow the views of their teacher very rigidly, and Yiddish dominates in all their communities. Rebbe Yoel believed that attempting to create a Jewish state before the arrival of Moshiach was a serious violation of the Torah. Based on the treatise Ketubot in the Babylonian Talmud: G-d swore three oaths on the Jewish people and other nations. First: do not try to climb the wall by force (that is, do not create your own state before the arrival of Moshiach). Second: do not rebel against the nations. Third, the nations of the world will not enslave the Jews too much. Therefore, the Jews cannot try to return their Eretz-Israel by force, but only with the consent of the peoples of the world, the Jews cannot rebel against the existing non-Jewish authorities.
Therefore, the ways in which the State of Israel was created do not comply with the agreement and are prohibited, and the State of Israel is illegal. The Rebbe is the author of the works Vayoel Moshe, Al HaGeula Veal HaTemunah, Divrei Yoel, Dibros Kodesh. Reb Yoilish dies at 1979 in New York. After his death, his nephew Rebbe Moishe Teitelbaum took his place. 
The war was already ending, and after a short time he, along with other prisoners, was released. After World War II, Moshe Teitelbaum married the daughter of Rebbe Aharon Teitelbaum of Volov and returned to his childhood city of Seget. But it was not easy to establish a normal Jewish life in the town where his father had once been a rabbi. Communists came to power in Hungary. “Servants of the cult” became the “object” of persecution. In the end, to save his family and his beliefs, Moshe Teitelbaum and his wife emigrated to the United States of America and settled in New York. By that time, his uncle Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum was already living in the United States. In Williamsburg, where Moshe Teitelbaum settled after coming to America, he founded the Beit Midrash “Etzei Chaim Seget”. Here in Williamsburg they called him the “Szeged Rebbe”. Later, Rebbe Moshe moved to Boro Park (a district of Brooklyn) and created another Satmar community there. After the death of Rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum at 19In 79, the Satmar community named Moshe their Rebbe, and he, assuming the duties of head of the movement, returned to Williamsburg.
During the period of his administration of the entire community, the territory occupied by the Satmar Hasidim expanded significantly. Shortly before his death, Rebbe Yoel founded a new settlement, and during his lifetime only a few families managed to settle in it. Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum named this place “Kiryat Yoel”. Under him, the population of the area increased significantly. In 1977, the first 14 Satmar Hasidim settled in Kiryas Yoel. By 2010, the population of the village was more than 20 thousand people. The Rebbe is the author of the commentaries on the Torah “Berach Moshe”. Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum left our world in 2006 on 91st year of life. He is survived by 4 sons, 2 daughters and at least 86 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. After the death of the Rebbe, the struggle for the leadership of the community between the eldest sons – Aharon (b. 1947) and Zalman Leib (Yekutiel Yehuda) (b. 1951) – became fierce, which began during the life of their elderly father in 1999. Aharon, eldest son of Rebbe Moshe, son-in-law of the previous Vizhnitzer Rebbe Moshe Yehoshua Hager of Bnei Brak (1916-2012).
In 1985, Aharon was appointed by his father as chief rabbi and head of the Satmar yeshiva in Kiryat Yoel. Zalman Leib (Yekutiel Yehuda), the third son of Rebbe Moshe, son-in-law of the previous Bistritzer Rebbe of Brooklyn, is the Satmar Rebbe in Williamsburg, head of the Satmar yeshiva in Queens. nine0007 