You Have The Right to Freedom From Religion, Except in Woodbury
New signs in Monroe, Woodbury, are raising concerns about an emboldened group of real estate developers, using religion as cover to fatten their wallets.
We’re back.
How to Protect Yourself From Fascists and Weirdos, my new book, is finished. It’ll be out in (about) a month as an audiobook and a PDF. Both are being made available for free, and if you’d like to know when they’re ready, all you gotta do is subscribe to our Stupid Sexy Privacy newsletter. It’ll help keep you safe from fascists and weirdos.
We'll talk a lot more about the book later. For now, it's time to get The Monroe Gazette on track. Tell your friends we're back up and going. You can send us news, anonymously, via Signal. I can be reached at bjmendelson.32 or via the mail. If you send something by mail, please do not include a return address. Send to our anonymous P.O. box at 5, 996 Route 17, Stop 2, Arden, New York, 10910. I check it once a month. I'd check it more, but I am still without a car and will be without one for quite some time. As much as I like being an investigative journalist, it does not pay the bills. If you’d like to help keep the lights on, you can become a paid subscriber to this newsletter below.
The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we're looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.
Brigadoon Is Now Saint Levi?
Pictured Above: Woodbury resident Jimmy Ng captured one of the signs in question after learning about its existence in a Woodbury Facebook group. The one I keep telling people to avoid.
If you’re in the Families of Woodbury group, leave it and join For a Better Woodbury. Families of Woodbury has served as a vector of disinformation for people like the Fabbros and Freibands. With another election around the corner for Supervisor in the Town of Woodbury, between incumbent Supervisor Jacqueline Hernandez and Lying Luciani, you can expect Families of Woodbury and other Facebook groups controlled by Kathryn Luciani's friends to continue distributing misinformation and disinformation like they did last time.
The sign above, translated loosely and potentially incorrectly via Google Translate, reads:
First section: “Kiryas Joel, bits of Passion.”
Second section: “Welcome, to measure the discerning guests.”
Third section: “Neighboring Saint Levi.”
While we encourage residents and readers from Rockland, Sullivan, and Orange County to use the Google Translate app on their phone to translate Yiddish into English, we have to caution that Google Translate isn't exact, and it often doesn't understand Yiddish idioms, slang, and anything else that would be considered non-standard use of my people's beloved language.
For example, I have a two-hour-or-so conversation featuring South Blooming Grove's "co-mayors", Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern, speaking in Yiddish; however, the conversation has proven difficult to translate. This is because Stern in particular happens to use a lot of German along with his Yiddish, for example, in talking about all the fun ways that exist to use RLUIPA to get around zoning and other building regulations. RLUIPA, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, was a gift President Bill Clinton gave the Haredi and other religious groups on his way out of office to assist in Hillary Clinton's run for the Senate. We believe anyone running for Congress representing the State of New York should support the elimination of the RLUIPA law. If you agree, we hope you’ll call Pat Ryan’s DC office at (202) 225-5614, tell them you want RLUPIA to be overturned, and that you will continue to call each week until his office clarifies his position on doing so.
So. What's the deal with these signs?
The early word is that nobody seems to know. Or at least, they do not want to take credit for it. We reached out to Gedalye Szegedin, Village Administrator for the Village of Kiryas Joel, who told us that the signs were not made or distributed by the village, and that the screenshot (which you see above) is the first time he's been made aware of their existence. We’ve also reached out to the Mayor, Town Supervisor, and Chief of Police in Woodbury for comment.
Additionally, the Town of Monroe's deeply problematic "Jewish Liaison" was contacted for comment as well, since Monroe residents have reported seeing similar signs on Quaker Hill Road in the Town. (If you're wondering what makes the Jewish Liaison problematic, we'll give you a hint: Despite the name, he's not interested in serving the needs of the entire Jewish community. Just one small part of it. This wouldn't be an issue, except for the title itself and that, at the time of this writing and despite being about 40% of the community in Monroe, there is no equivalent Latino Community Liaison, creating the appearance of political favoritism. Something you'd think this Town would have been smart enough to avoid after ridding itself of Dorey Ghoul and Tony Cardone. If there's one thing we can tell you about the Town of Monroe right now, it's that they keep stepping on rakes, and Dorey Houle is mumbling about a come back. Over our dead body, Dorey.
In August 2023, Grand Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum declared multiple neighborhoods outside of the Town of Palm Tree/Village of Kiryas Joel belong to the Village of Kiryas Joel, and renamed them. This includes Woodbury Villas, which he renamed Chasam Sofer, and Country Hallow, which he renamed Chacham Tzvi. Both are located within the hamlet of Highland Mills. In Monroe, the criminal behind the Clovewood development in South Blooming Grove, Ziggy Brach, is the same man responsible for the Smith Farms development behind Shoprite, which Teitelbaum renamed Boruch Taam. (Brach is currently associated with the second, smaller annexation attempt currently going on in Woodbury. His track record in environmental fines levied by the DEC alone should be enough to disqualify any annexation attempt that man files anywhere on this Earth.)
Brigadoon, which is also in Highland Mills and where this new sign was found by Jimmy Ng and others, apparently was given a new name by the Rebbe—or another member of the administration known as Hanhallah—at some point after the Rebbe's 2023 declaration.
Or so goes the working hypothesis; however, what's more concerning is the potential that these signs didn't come from Aaron Teitelbaum at all, but came from his brother Zalman. Unlike Aaron Teitelbaum, Zalman Teitelbaum and his version of Hanhallah (Yiddish for leadership or administration, depending on your preference), have been outright hostile toward secular residents. They have broken laws left and right with impunity because New York State Attorney General Letitia James, the New York State Comptroller's Office, the New York State DEC, the New York State Department of Health, the New York State Division of Election Law Enforcement, and pretty much every department under Steve Neuhaus's purview in Orange County, have made it abundantly clear they have no interest in enforcing any laws that are broken by Zalman Teitelbaum and his criminal friends, Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein. (Hence why, when The Monroe Gazette files its lawsuit against South Blooming Grove, we'll be doing so in federal court.)
We will continue to investigate the matter of these new signs and let you know what we find out. For now, we want to make a point that often gets lost in the discourse about religious freedom in the United States. Our Founding Fathers, George Washington and James Madison, among others, were adamant that you have the right to believe whatever you’d like. And that the government will play no role in obstructing you from believing whatever you wish. This is fine. Most Americans have no problem with that part. Our Haredi neighbors are our brother and sisters. All are welcomed here.
But.
Washington, Madison, and others were equally adamant that you also have the freedom from religion. Meaning, you can believe whatever you'd like, but you can't go around renaming neighborhoods that don't belong to you and claiming that they're now operating under your rules. And for those who may have forgotten, Kiryas Joel has rules, such as maintaining gender separation in public, wearing long skirts or pants, and using "appropriate language." (Something that, after living in this community on and off for almost forty years, nobody seems to be able to define for me.)
And regardless of which Teitelbaum brother is doing what, the Haredi press, such as The KJ Weekly, refers to areas controlled by Zalman Teitelbaum in South Blooming Grove as being part of the City of Kiryas Joel. That means, if these neighborhoods outside of Kiryas Joel are being declared as part of Kiryas Joel, it doesn't matter who's doing it.
What matters is the expectation that secular residents may now have to conform to someone else's religious rules while living in their own neighborhood. And don’t forget, there are many members of the Satmar community who choose to live in Woodbury and Monroe exactly because it’s not Kiryas Joel, and they are beyond the reach of the Grand Rebbe’s rules and notice. So for them, these signs may indicate that this freedom from the Rebbe may not be as complete as they’d like it to be. Especially if modesty patrols or something like them begin to circle these “new” neighborhoods looking for infractions to report.
The worst case scenario here is that a few real estate developers, like Moche Halpern's Blooming Realty, are putting up these signs in an effort to drum up business from Satmar and other Haredi relocating from New York City to find communities where there are other Satmar. If that’s so, there are far better, and less antagonistic, ways to do that. (Unless of course the antagonism is the point, which with Zalman’s group, it seems to be.)
It's clear that the real estate developers linked to Stern and Ekstein, both of whom played an active role in last year's Woodbury elections, are expecting a bonanza based on friendly elected officials in both the Town of Monroe, their new puppet government in the Village of Monroe, and support for Lying Luciani's bid to take back control of the Town of Woodbury and return it to the dark ages.
We'll bring you more on this story as it develops. For now, if you spot any more of these signs in the wild, please send them to us via Signal on bjmendelson.32.