Kiryas Joel: A Shtetl Rebuilt in New York

Off this highway in Orange County sits one of the most distinctive communities in the United States. Kiryas Joel, which means Village of Joel in Hebrew, was founded in nineteen seventy-seven by followers of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the leader of the Satmar Hasidic dynasty. Teitelbaum had survived Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and arrived in postwar Brooklyn convinced that assimilation had made European Jews vulnerable.

His vision was to recreate the insular East European shtetl on American soil. A group of Satmar families moved from Brooklyn to this part of Monroe in nineteen seventy-four, and in nineteen seventy-seven they incorporated their own village. Today Kiryas Joel, now part of a newly formed town called Palm Tree, has one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in New York State, and operates its own schools, ambulance corps, and institutions largely in Yiddish.