Satmar Hasidism and the Future of Religious Freedom in the U.S.

July 20 2023

Drawing on two recent books on the Satmar—America’s most numerous ḥasidic group, and one of its most insular—as well as recent controversies over their schooling system, Rita Koganzon investigates how this unusual religious denomination relates to the American liberal order.

The protections of the Free Exercise Clause allowed the Satmar sect to establish a network of private institutions and schools to sustain and to pass on its beliefs. Federalism and localism allowed them to create an independent municipality in 1977, the village of Kiryas Joel in upstate New York, inhabited and governed entirely by Satmar Ḥasidim. Welfare policies allowed them to support large families without devoting their lives to the education and time commitment required for professional advancement.

The Satmar don’t reject these policies and principles, but they’re not fundamentally committed to them either. Unlike other illiberal groups within liberal regimes, ḥasidic Jews have no ambition to take over the secular state or govern non-Jews; they want only to govern their own communities. But unlike the Amish, they do not understand self-government to be possible only through complete withdrawal from politics. Rather, they are thoroughly modern in accepting the tradeoffs of representative government. Running a self-governing municipality gave them an unprecedented degree of insulation from the secular world, . . . but it also made them players in state and local politics, enmeshing them more deeply in political life than they had ever been.

Satmar Ḥasidim tend to be poor—especially when compared with other Jewish groups—to a great extent because of their large family size and general lack of secular higher education. But in socioeconomic terms, Koganzon explains, they are very much an anomaly:

For them, it seems, poverty has not been as fatal to flourishing as it has for other Americans. It has not led to any of the social pathologies—crime, family disintegration, drug abuse, and so on—typically associated with it. This confounds the typical sociological explanations for these negative outcomes, which identify poverty as their root cause. In this respect, Ḥasidism confounds the right too, since it more successfully models, in actual practice, the corrective or even alternative to liberalism that Christianity often aspires to be.

Read more at Hedgehog Review

More about: American Judaism, American Religion, Freedom of Religion, Hasidism, Liberalism, Satmar

After Taking Steps toward Reconciliation, Turkey Has Again Turned on Israel

“The Israeli government, blinded by Zionist delusions, seizes not only the UN Security Council but all structures whose mission is to protect peace, human rights, freedom of the press, and democracy,” declared the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a speech on Wednesday. Such over-the-top anti-Israel rhetoric has become par for the course from the Turkish head of state since Hamas’s attack on Israel last year, after which relations between Jerusalem and Ankara have been in what Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak describes as “free fall.”

While Erdogan has always treated Israel with a measure of hostility, the past few years had seen steps to reconciliation. Yanarocak explains this sharp change of direction, which is about much more than the situation in Gaza:

The losses at the March 31, 2024 Turkish municipal elections were an unbearable blow for Erdoğan. . . . In retrospect it appears that Erdoğan’s previous willingness to continue trade relations with Israel pushed some of his once-loyal supporters toward other Islamist political parties, such as the New Welfare Party. To counter this trend, Erdoğan halted trade relations, aiming to neutralize one of the key political tools available to his Islamist rivals.

Unsurprisingly, this decision had a negative impact on Turkish [companies] engaged in trade with Israel. To maintain their long-standing trade relationships, these companies found alternative ways to conduct business through intermediary Mediterranean ports.

The government in Ankara also appears to be concerned about the changing balance of power in the region. The weakening of Iran and Hizballah could create an unfavorable situation for the Assad regime in Syria, [empowering Turkish separatists there]. While Ankara is not fond of the mullahs, its core concern remains Iran’s territorial integrity. From Turkey’s perspective, the disintegration of Iran could set a dangerous precedent for secessionists within its own borders.

Read more at Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security

More about: Iran, Israel diplomacy, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey