Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By simmons on November 25, 2017

Under the settlement between Kiryas Joel and the nonprofit group Preserve Hudson Valley, the village agreed to drop an earlier campaign to annex more than 500 acres of land while the group agreed to drop its appeal of the towns approval of the 164-acre annexation. Instead, the village will annex 56 more acres, for a total of 220. And Kiryas Joel agreed not to acquire any more land for at least 10 years.

Turnout was heavy on Election Day and the proposition passed with more than 80 percent of the vote. The new Town of Palm Tree, which will officially come into existence in 2020, derives its name from Grand Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Hasidic leader who founded the village of Kiryas Joel. The name Teitelbaum means date palm in Yiddish, and the palm tree is used as a logo for Satmar groups.

Under the new government structure, the borders of the new Town of Palm Tree will be the same as those of the Village of Kiryas Joel, along with the 56 new acres. Only a handful of towns and villages in New York State have conterminous boundaries. Under New York State law, all villages must be contained within a town.

In a bustling shopping center here at dusk, women in ankle-length skirts and men in broad-rimmed black hats shopped for food and ran errands with children in tow. One after another, women politely refused to answer questions about the recent vote splitting Kiryas Joel from the Town of Monroe.

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Call It Splitsville, N.Y.: Hasidic Enclave to Get Its Own ...

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