Maybe these Hasidim should not act in ways that are dishonest, illegal and anti-social, and then maybe the wider society will have less reason to investigate them?<\/p>\n
(JTA)<\/a> \u2014 Even before FBI investigators descended last week on the Satmar Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, there was a growing sense in this insular community that it and its unique way of life were under attack. In last week\u2019s FBI raid, investigators confiscated computer equipment and boxes of documents from the village\u2019s Department of Public Safety and its main yeshiva, United Talmudical Academy. An unnamed law enforcement source interviewed by a local newspaper, the Journal News, said the raid was related to the publication on social media two weeks ago of a leaked hidden-camera video that appeared to show a principal of the yeshiva kissing and grasping young boys in his office. Some 6,000 students are enrolled in the school. But that implicit agreement may be breaking down as it becomes more difficult for authorities to ignore abuses \u2013 sexual, educational or financial \u2013 allegedly taking place within these closed communities. The prospect of outside interference threatens one of Kiryas Joel\u2019s raisons d\u2019etre: Hasidic control of the community\u2019s affairs. Maybe these Hasidim should not act in ways that are dishonest, illegal and anti-social, and then maybe the wider society will have less reason to investigate them? (JTA) \u2014 Even before FBI investigators descended last week on the Satmar Hasidic … Continue reading
\nTwo months earlier, the FBI had been in the village investigating alleged fraud of a government program, and community leaders also have been facing a mounting campaign by dissidents to increase state oversight of yeshiva curricula.
\n\u201cWe need to know what kind of danger we\u2019re in,\u201d the Satmar rebbe in Kiryas Joel, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, said in a widely publicized May 4 speech about the threat of closer state supervision of yeshiva curricula. \u201cThese are bad times for us Jews, terrible. We need to pray to God that they should not interfere with the upbringing of our children.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nPublication of the video, which generated a firestorm in Orthodox circles, came the same week that a New York State legislator, Ellen Jaffee, introduced a bill that would bring better enforcement of state rules that require non-public schools, including yeshivas, to ensure they are providing education that is \u201csubstantially equivalent\u201d to that offered in public schools. Yeshivas like those in Kiryas Joel, located about an hour north of Manhattan in New York\u2019s Orange County, long have flouted state standards on secular subjects, foregoing even basic subjects like English and math in upper grades.
\nFor a long time, Teitelbaum said in his speech, there\u2019s been an implicit understanding between state authorities and the leadership of Hasidic communities like Kiryas Joel that the state wouldn\u2019t interfere in communal affairs.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cUntil now there were also strict laws, but because we live in a kingdom of benevolence [a reference to government authorities] to put it bluntly they simply turned a blind eye to what\u2019s going on by the Jewish children,\u201d Teitelbaum said in his speech, which was delivered in Yiddish and then translated into English for widespread dissemination. \u201cThey didn\u2019t want to look, the benevolent kingdom. Now, too, they\u2019d continue doing that, the government would have continued, they\u2019re happy not to look and not to know. But these worthless people are stirring up in various ways and are demanding in court, forcing the government that they should take a stance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"