c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) The recent death of Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum in New York at age 91 attracted more than 100,000 people to his funeral, and provided a rare up close view of a vibrant religious movement in American life: the Satmar Hasidism.
Hasidim is the Hebrew term for “pious or faithful ones.” The word Satmar is derived from Satu Mare, the city in northwest Romania that was the pre-World War II center of the Teitelbaum family’s spiritual dynasty.
Moses Teitelbaum was no ordinary rabbi. He was the seventh generation in a line of rabbis who have led the Satmar Hasidism since the early 1800s. The Satmars, as they are called, are quite different in religious beliefs and practices from most of today’s American Jews.
The Hasidic movement developed as a direct response to what many East European Jews perceived as the cold rationalism and arid intellectualism that dominated their religious lives in the 18th and 19th centuries. Hasidism offered an exuberant expression of Judaism that included charismatic miracle-working rabbis whom their followers affectionately and reverently called “rebbes.”
Hasidism’s critics, then and now, have charged that the movement, among other things, places far too much emphasis on a rebbe-centered personality cult, neglects or minimizes “halachah,” (Jewish religious law and tradition), and encourages ecstatic acts of prayer and other behavior that lack control and inhibition. Despite _ or perhaps because of _ such criticism, Hasidism spread and became a significant part of Jewish life before the Holocaust.
Hasidic dynasties in Europe included imperial-like regal courts, but the movement was often filled with bitter internal rivalries and conflicts. Hasidic leaders, especially the Teitelbaum family, vigorously opposed the elements of modernity that emerged in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The anti-modernist streak can be seen today in the beards and distinctive black clothing worn by Hasidim that is associated with pre-modern Eastern Europe. Hasidic rebbes often don the elegant apparel that was worn by Polish Catholic nobility.
During the Holocaust, Hasidic life was destroyed in Europe. Many Hasidim were victims of mass murder, but some escaped the Nazi German death camps. One of them was Moses Teitelbaum’s father, Joel, who came to New York City in 1947, and began to rebuild the devastated remnant Satmar community.
Both father and son were successful in that effort, and in a remarkable testimony to faith and religious zeal, the Satmar movement today maintains New York state’s fourth-largest school system. Satmars traditionally marry young and have many children, fulfilling the biblical commandment in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply.” The large number of births is also a powerful reaction to the loss of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. At his death, it is estimated that Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum had 86 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Unfortunately, an internal struggle is under way among the Satmars. Not unlike other religious or secular dynasties, two of Moses’ sons, Aaron and Zalman, are vying to succeed their father as the leader of the movement. With that leadership comes enormous spiritual and temporal power.
Regardless of who wins, certain things are not likely to change within the Satmar community. Hebrew, the “Holy Tongue,” will still be limited to liturgy and sacred text study. Satmars in the U.S. speak English, but they also converse in Yiddish, the classic language of East European Jews. Satmars oppose Hebrew’s use as the daily language in Israel and in other parts of the world.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the Satmars is their long opposition to Israel based on the belief the modern secular Jewish state was not religiously founded by the personal intervention of the Messiah. Moses Teitelbaum’s father was an especially vocal opponent of Israel.
While the overwhelming majority of Jews throughout the world _ including me _ reject that anti-Israel position, I salute the extraordinary Satmar Hasidic rebirth that has taken place during the last 60 years.
Are the Satmars controversial? Of course.
Do they have critics? Name a religious group that does not.
Are they growing in number and providing diversity within Jewish life? You bet.
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious
adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
