Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2011 10:32:35 GMT -5
Could this group of Ultra Orthodox Jews found the way to legally cheat the public assistance system
uticaobserverdispatch.ny.newsmemory.com/
Dissident Jews claim enclave oppresses them
By JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press
WHITE PLAINS — Dissidents in a Hasidic Jewish enclave in New York demanded Monday that the village be dissolved on the grounds that its existence violates religious freedom.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court, the dissidents say the majority congregation has taken over village government in Kiryas Joel and selectively enforces tax, zoning, election and other laws to oppress them.
“Due to this inherent and unavoidable entanglement between religion and government, the village has engaged, and continues to engage, in religious discrimination,” the lawsuit said.
Kiryas Joel’s attorney, Donald Nichol, denied any infringement of religious rights.
“These people have been allowed to exercise their religious freedom even beyond the village statutes,” he said.
Kiryas Joel was incorporated in 1977 by members of the Satmar Hasidic sect from Brooklyn. Few if any others live there. A village of large families, it is one of the fastest-growing places in the state, with a population of 23,000.
It also is listed as among the poorest places in the country and is heavily dependent on food stamps, Medicaid and federal housing vouchers. But it has little of the street crime or drug problems that other poor communities have.
The lawsuit says many of the dissidents — nine are named as plaintiffs — follow the teachings not of the grand rebbe, Aron Teiltelbaum, but his brother Zalman Teiltelbaum, who leads a Satmar group in Brooklyn. It says the dissidents comprise about 40 percent of the village population.
The lawsuit said the dissidents recently established a wedding hall outside the village where couples could be married by rabbis not sanctioned by the grand rebbe.
I looked up another interesting artical from The New York Times which does seem to show a group of people that can cheat the system legally and receive Medicade, food stamps and government vouchers as well as other federal and State monies in order to run their religious organization. It is interesting because of its Hasedic foundation.
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/nyregion/kiryas-joel-a-village-with-the-numbers-not-the-image-of-the-poorest-place.html?_r=1
Village With the Numbers, Not the Image, of the Poorest Place
The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.
And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.
About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.
About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.
Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.
Continue reading by going to the link above the artical
uticaobserverdispatch.ny.newsmemory.com/
Dissident Jews claim enclave oppresses them
By JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press
WHITE PLAINS — Dissidents in a Hasidic Jewish enclave in New York demanded Monday that the village be dissolved on the grounds that its existence violates religious freedom.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court, the dissidents say the majority congregation has taken over village government in Kiryas Joel and selectively enforces tax, zoning, election and other laws to oppress them.
“Due to this inherent and unavoidable entanglement between religion and government, the village has engaged, and continues to engage, in religious discrimination,” the lawsuit said.
Kiryas Joel’s attorney, Donald Nichol, denied any infringement of religious rights.
“These people have been allowed to exercise their religious freedom even beyond the village statutes,” he said.
Kiryas Joel was incorporated in 1977 by members of the Satmar Hasidic sect from Brooklyn. Few if any others live there. A village of large families, it is one of the fastest-growing places in the state, with a population of 23,000.
It also is listed as among the poorest places in the country and is heavily dependent on food stamps, Medicaid and federal housing vouchers. But it has little of the street crime or drug problems that other poor communities have.
The lawsuit says many of the dissidents — nine are named as plaintiffs — follow the teachings not of the grand rebbe, Aron Teiltelbaum, but his brother Zalman Teiltelbaum, who leads a Satmar group in Brooklyn. It says the dissidents comprise about 40 percent of the village population.
The lawsuit said the dissidents recently established a wedding hall outside the village where couples could be married by rabbis not sanctioned by the grand rebbe.
I looked up another interesting artical from The New York Times which does seem to show a group of people that can cheat the system legally and receive Medicade, food stamps and government vouchers as well as other federal and State monies in order to run their religious organization. It is interesting because of its Hasedic foundation.
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/nyregion/kiryas-joel-a-village-with-the-numbers-not-the-image-of-the-poorest-place.html?_r=1
Village With the Numbers, Not the Image, of the Poorest Place
The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.
And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.
About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.
About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.
Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.
Continue reading by going to the link above the artical
