Satmar

The article suggest a simple model, based on the distinction between principles and supra-principles, as a tool for tracking the continuity that may exist between teacher and follower in spite of the apparent difference between them.
The model is exemplified through a particular case study: Isaac Breuer was the grandson of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, and presented himself as his disciple. However, a critical examination of the opinions of the two regarding the crucial question of Jewish nationalism reveals that their principles were quite different: Hirsch was against Jewish nationalism, Breuer fought for it. Notwithstanding, in the level of supra-principles they the continuity is preserved: Advocating the supra-principle of "Torah In Derekh Eretz, both viewed "Torah" (i.e. the Halakhah) as eternal and immutable and "Derekh Eretz" as the demand to give changing responses to the changing challenges of each time. The change in the principles towards Jewish nationalism entailed, therefore, from the change in the challenges.
This model is found similarly applicable to the opposite change that took place in Hungarian Ultra-Orthodoxy, from warm support of Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael to fierce opposition to it. The supra-principle of building fences against the "New" (i.e. the modern and the moderns) stood behind both of them.

25 Comments E-mail Print In this review of an adulatory biography of the Satmar Rebbe, first published February 17, 2011, Allan Nadler considers Judaism's most traditional-and most alienated-community.-The Editors __________ A prospect terrifying to secular Israelis and Zionists worldwide has been the rapid growth of the Jewish state's ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community. Given the stranglehold of haredi political parties on recent coalition governments, and the encroachments by non-Zionist haredi clerics upon Israel's chief rabbinate, once religiously moderate and firmly Zionist, the fear is not entirely irrational. Birthrates among haredim are more than quadruple the national Jewish average; the large majority do not serve in the army; the male unemployment rate is at an astounding 70 percent; and the ultra-Orthodox community subsists largely on a variety of government welfare programs and Jewish aid from abroad. A great historical irony lurks in this scenario of an emerging theocracy in the land of Israel. It could all have been avoided had the leading haredi figures, during the country's nascent years, heeded the strong admonitions of the most virulently outspoken anti-Zionist rabbi who ever lived. This was Joel Moshe Teitelbaum (1887-1979), the "Satmar" rebbe. Born into a hasidic dynasty, Teitelbaum served in and around the Hungarian (later Romanian) town of Satmar until World War II, when he was rescued from death in the Holocaust. After a brief postwar sojourn in Jerusalem, he settled for good in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, later establishing Kiryas Joel, a Satmar town named for him, in New York's Orange County. From the start, he would have absolutely no relations, political or financial, with the Jewish state, prayed daily for its demise, and instructed his adoring followers to do likewise. A massive new biography of the rebbe-privately published in Montreal, and the first of its kind in English-has now appeared. Composed by Rabbi Dovid Meisels, the son of one of Teitelbaum's closest

Hasidic Judaism was founded in the 18th century Eastern Europe by Rabbi Yisroel Ben Eliezer – the Baal Shem Tov. According to Mintz, (1968: 26), ”the core of Hasidic faith has been said to consist in their belief that the presence of God permeates and sustains all living matter and in the intense enthusiasm that they impart to their every action.” By the 1830s Hasidism spread throughout Ukraine, Galicia, central Poland, and there were Hasidic Jews in Belarus, Hungary and Romania. Satmar is a Hasidic sect that originated in Satu Mare in Romania, where it was founded by Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum. The Hasidim of Satu Mare lived in a pious community, with a unique social structure, with their own customs, sartorial norms, and they spoke Yiddish as their vernacular. Yiddish or mame-loshn, as its speakers refer to it, was the language of the Ashkenazic Jewry which gained its own sacred status in the Hasidic movement. In the aftermath of WWII, Satmar Hasidim settled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and recreated their communities on the American soil, becoming one of the largest Hasidic movements in the world. The transplanted Satu Mare shtetl has retained the customs, social structure and the language of di alte haym. The sociolinguistic field-work conducted in this community from August 2012 to November 2013, describes acquisition, use and maintenance of Yiddish, English and the Holy Tongue.

The history of the ethnic borderlands of Hungary and Romania in the years 1867–1944 were marked by changing national borders, ethnic conflicts and economic problems. Using a local case study of the city and county of Szatmár/Satu-Mare, this thesis investigates the practice and social mechanisms of economic nationalizing. It explores the interplay between ethno-national and economic factors, and furthermore analyses what social mechanisms lead to and explain inclusion, exclusion and annihilation.

The underlying principle of economic nationalizing in both countries was the separation of citizens into ethnic categories and the establishment of a dominant core nation entitled to political and economic privileges from the state. National leaders implemented a policy of economic nationalizing that exploited and redistributed resources taken from the minorities. To pursue this end, leaders instrumentalized ethnicity, which institutionalized inequality and ethnic exclusion. This process of ethnic, and finally racial, exclusion marked the whole period and reached its culmination in the annihilation of the Jews throughout most of Hungary in 1944.

For nearly a century, ethnic exclusion undermined the various nationalizing projects in the two countries: the Magyarization of the minorities in dualist Hungary (1867–1918); the Romanianization of the economy of the ethnic borderland in interwar Romania (1918–1940); and finally the re-Hungarianization of the economy in Second World War Hungary (1940–1944).

The extreme case of exclusion, namely the Holocaust, revealed that the path of exclusion brought nothing but destruction for everyone. This reinforces the thesis that economic nationalizing through the exclusion of minorities induces a vicious circle of ethnic bifurcation, political instability and unfavorable conditions for achieving economic prosperity. Exclusion served the short-term elite’s interest but undermined the long-term nation’s ability to prosper.

האיש על קצה הקשת – חייו ומאבקיו של הרבי מסאטמר

סקירת ביקורת על ספרו של מנחם קרן-קרץ, הקנאי – הרבי מסאטמר, רבי יואל טייטלבוים, מרכז זלמן שזר תשפ"א.

גישה מקוונת:

https://www.panas.org.il/post/%D7%94%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%A7%D7%A6%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%A9%D7%AA-%D7%97%D7%99%D7%99%D7%95-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%91%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%95-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%90%D7%98%D7%9E%D7%A8

The process of destruction and renewal that the Jewish people endured during the 20th century resulted in different ways and camps of the Orthodox community, within them the extreme views of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum (referred to below as R.Y.T), of Satmar.  Some of his doctrines are based on the foundations of the eschatological teachings of the Maharal of Prague in his work Netzach Yisrael. This research reveals the issues where the bond between R.Y.T and the Maharal are evident, considers the role of treatise of the philosophy of R.Y.T, and critically assesses the explanations rendered by R.Y.T.  As well, the Author indicates many other characteristics where there is a philosophical common denominator between the two doctrines.

Mysticism Substitutes: A General Model for the Theological Development of Hasidism in the Nineteenth Century
Abstract

During the 19th century, Hasidism underwent a deep ideological transformation. From a small circle with more or less common mystical ideals, it became a decentralized movement in which various personalities and groups had a range of different religious ideals, the vast majority of which were not mystical. In this article, I would like to present a general thesis claiming that these ideals acted in the Hasidic groups that developed them as “mysticism substitutes”.

The article examines seven samples of 19th century Hasidic ideals. I show how each ideal demonstrates the direct connection between the late ideal and the early-Hasidic mystic value from which it originated and was “transformed”. The concluding chapter explains the phenomenon of mysticism-substitutes as follows: After Hasidism adopted a traditionalist character, it could no longer preserve its original values; however, it also could not discard them altogether. Therefore, the "natural" compromise was to transform them. Once developing into a conservative movement it became entangled in a paradox: the values it inherited were revolutionary, and the shift to traditionalist values required a change, which was, in turn, opposed to conservatism ("the paradox of conservatism"). Hasidism opted for "translating" the old mystic concepts into traditionalist ones, or turning practices that served as a medium for the mystical experience into ends in and of themselves. Hence, the mystic energy was not lost entirely, but rather became "conserved" in new forms that rendered a variety of non-mystic religious challenges.

In rejecting Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court created a presumption that segregation equals discrimination. However, alongside this assertion, American space has become increasingly separate. A socio-legal analysis identifies three generations of spatial segregation in the United States and calls for recognizing the fourth generation—separate, therefore equal—in which minority communities require voluntary self-segregation to achieve equality. This fourth generation of spatial separation requires the law to embrace a protective role, by which it will defend the ability of minority communities to segregate spatially, the autonomy of individual community members, and the welfare of the society at large.