Broadly speaking, about ten percent of Jewish people worldwide are Orthodox, half of whom are so-called “Ultra-Orthodox.” About half of Ultra-Orthodox Jews are Chassidic, and Chassidism is divided into dozens of groups, one of which is called Satmar. This piece is about the aftermath of a battle over who would take the place of their leader, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, when he died in 1979. I grew up in Rockland County, about an hour north of New York City, in the most notorious of the groups that was forced out of Satmar and out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The vast majority of the people in these communities are Holocaust survivors, or the children of survivors, and that trauma continues to inform so much of the Jewish community.
Hurt people hurt people.
I left in my early twenties and joined the United States Army, and am now in the St. John’s School of Education on the GI Bill, studying to be a high school social studies teacher.
I would like to thank Professor Sharon Marshall, my First Year Writing professor, whose instruction and guidance made this piece possible.
Synagogue of Broken Dreams
It’s clearly a converted house. A small, old, tired house, but it’s our small, old, tired, converted house. A bungalow really, the kind that once freckled this town before half of Brooklyn moved here. Before the zoning violations, before the traffic, before the fancy restaurants and expensive supermarkets, before the forced migration. The winding concrete walkway is cracked, big chunks missing. The once green lawn is covered in dirt and weeds, mud when it rains. The windows are always open, the doors are never closed, the building is never empty, no self-respecting thief would walk in here anyways. The front porch was closed in and a wall torn down to expand the sanctuary, but shoddy construction and years of overuse are causing floors to sink and walls to separate. There’s no escaping the elements in Congregation Bais Yosef.
All are welcome, even Lipa, even Shmiel. Some synagogues would ban you for refusing to give your wife a get or living in your car, but not this one — they know the feeling. There’s Zanvel the candyman who likes tickling the boys a little too much, Shulem who lost his fancy Manhattan job years ago and now survives on welfare and handouts, and Meilech, poor thing; they say he’s like that because a fever cooked his brain at four.
And the Rebbe, the patriarch, with his long gray beard, his big sad eyes, and just an echo of the charisma that brought this community together. The baritone that drew crowds, the talks so alluring and so threatening, the warm smile so rarely seen these days.
There are joyous occasions, and the building is packed on holidays, but the air remains heavy, somber. Nuchem’s collar is velvet and Mechel’s vest is white; many clearly hail from Chassidic royalty, but you’d have to tell that to their worn-out garments and dejected faces. No one has money, most make ends meet as religious teachers, ritual slaughterers, Torah scribes or book sellers; free time is devoted to prayer and study. Even the women crowded into the tiny lady’s section in the back seem quieter, and fewer peek through the partition wall than in other congregations.
The Torah ark and bimah in most synagogues are beautiful, majestic structures, expertly crafted from wood or marble or Jerusalem stone, often accented with gold. Our ark is a plain box, the bimah a creaking plywood eyesore. The sagging bookshelves look homemade, the bare walls were once white. Even the light fixtures seem disheartened.
Drooping and sighing they trudge on. The obligations remain the same. They were thrown out of Satmar, not Judaism.
Years ago, when the Grand Rebbe was slipping away, the issue of succession could no longer be deferred. Without a son, who would fill his shoes? A giant of the generation, one of the last links to the old world, the man most responsible for rebuilding Chassidism after the war – who could possibly replace him? Who would dare try? A small group of power brokers, including the Rebbe’s wife, debated and vetted various community elders, but there was too much money, too much power, too much influence at risk to take chances. The handful of shell-shocked survivors who landed in New York Harbor on Rosh Hashanah in 1946 had matured into the largest Chassidic group in the world, with millions of dollars in real estate, a village in the Catskills, political connections, and a network of organizations. Godliness was important, but so were savvy, shrewdness, finesse. This was the big leagues. They needed someone they could trust not to go rogue. Certainly not 35-year-old schoolteacher Yosef.
An ordinary man from an ordinary family with an ordinary job – Rebbes don’t have jobs – Yosef wasn’t the son of a Rebbe, nor had he been raised from early childhood to become a Rebbe. But Yosef was magnetic. He sang, he led prayers, and he had a mastery of the Torah that belied his age and upbringing. And when he looked at you, when he listened to your concerns, it felt like he was seeing into your heart and hearing your soul. Yosef didn’t pursue followers. He didn’t want a following; they wanted him.
It began with small gatherings where they’d sing Chassidic tunes and absorb Yosef’s wisdom. He effortlessly wove Torah and mysticism with parables and current affairs, making the abstract tangible and the ancient relevant. His talks made them laugh, made them cry, made them think, and left them feeling uplifted. But as the crowds grew, what had been a small underground movement became a problem.
Yosef received an anonymous call ordering him to cease all gatherings immediately. “Go back to your private life,” he was warned. But his followers weren’t ready to give him up. They gathered at night in parks, in basements, in garages, but word inevitably got out.
“Yosefists,” as his followers were derisively called, started receiving threats. They were banned from synagogue; their kids kicked out of school, their wives taunted on the street. Menashe, Yosef’s closest friend, was beaten up and had half his beard cut off. Yosef stopped the gatherings and called for peace, but religious edicts are hard to retract. The mob hounded his wife and children, his in-laws and siblings. He was fired from his job, rocks were thrown through his windows, and denunciation leaflets blanketed the neighborhood. He left town hoping things would cool off, but he returned to a disaster.
In fear for her safety, Yosef’s wife left with their children and demanded a divorce. He pleaded and promised the movement was dead, and proposed moving away, but to no avail. Most “Yosefists” quickly cut ties and melted back into the community, but there was no going back for Yosef and his inner circle. In a community accustomed to a handful of divorces a year, dozens of families were torn apart in a matter of months. Crushed and devastated, they retreated upstate to hide, to mourn.
Life goes on. They slowly recovered, remarried, rebuilt as best they could. Many haven’t spoken to brothers in decades, some have never seen their grandchildren, a few were barred from their parents’ funerals. But life goes on. At the front of the synagogue sits the Rebbe’s son from his second marriage, the heir apparent. To us, Brooklyn is history; Monsey is home. Births, Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, you almost wouldn’t know. Life goes on.
But during Yizkor, the memorial service for the deceased, when anyone not mourning is shooed outside, the wailing from inside is too loud for a community this age. Long after most congregations have regrouped, in this synagogue as in the old one, they weep for their children and their parents, for Williamsburg and Warsaw, for villages annihilated and a world destroyed, for their childhoods and their innocence.
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