Kiryas Joel, Monroe, NY - Sons Fight Who Should Succeed Father

Kiryas Joel, Monroe, NY - The expected angling for ultimate leadership of as many as 120,000 Satmar Hasidic Jews in Kiryas Joel and around the world has begun in earnest with the death of Satmar Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum.

Two rival Teitelbaum sons whose supporters have been waging a bitter power struggle in court for five years each met with their partisans before the first funeral for the late rebbe Monday night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY and each was announced as the rightful successor, community members said yesterday.
Followers of Zalmen Teitelbaum, the brother who leads the main Satmar congregation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, boast that a will signed by the grand rebbe on March 4, 2002 - and read aloud before a rabbinical court that night - vindicates their rabbi by naming him the successor.

But supporters of Zalmen's older brother, Aron, chief rabbi of the Satmar congregation in Kiryas Joel, question both the validity of the will and its ability to transfer power in the Satmar dynasty. "There is no tradition to having the successor to the grand rebbe picked through the deceased grand rebbe's will," said a spokesman for Aron's side.
He added that "any will that he wrote would be suspect in any case," since the grand rebbe has had Alzheimer's disease "since at least 1998."
"The will of the grand rebbe is under a serious question mark," he said.

Samuel Heilman, a Queens College professor and authority on ultra-Orthodox Judaism, believes the Satmar movement could wind up with two rebbes if the two factions cannot resolve their dispute. "It's not necessarily the case that you have to have only one rebbe," Heilman said. "In the old days in Europe, you would have one rebbe for one city and a different rebbe for another city, and it would be no big deal."

But in this case, the two rival rebbes might occupy not only the same city but the same section of Brooklyn. Sources say that Aron Teitelbaum plans to move to Williamsburg - where his brother now presides - to assume the leadership of the whole Satmar sect, leaving his son, Mendel, to fill his place in Kiryas Joel.

The legal issues are now before the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court.
The outcome could prove vital to the succession question. A spokesman for Aron's side, said that it was the corporate board that chose the late rebbe to succeed his uncle and predecessor, Joel Teitelbaum, after the uncle's death in 1979.

Both sides were back in court yesterday, with the Zalmen's side protesting to the Appellate Division about orders issued a day earlier by acting Supreme Court Justice Stewart Rosenwasser. Those orders had been requested by Aron's side to ensure that Zalmen's side granted them equal access to all funeral and memorial events.
Another issue being debated yesterday was whether Aron would be allowed to sit shiva at the house in Williamsburg where the rebbe had lived.
Zalmen supporters were arguing that Aron had violated an unsigned agreement between the two sides by asking his son, Mendel, who was not on the list of speakers, to deliver a eulogy at the end of the second funeral for Grand Rebbi Moses Teitelbaum in Kiryas Joel yesterday morning. They claim no grandchildren of the grand rebbe was supposed to speak at the two funerals.

That dispute triggered a brief confrontation in the Kiryas Joel synagogue about 4:50 a.m., as Aron shouted and partisans packed tightly in the front of the synagogue threw punches.
Shortly afterward, Zalmen supporters whisked the casket through the crowd and out the front door, with no speech from Mendel Teitelbaum.
"Aron is not agreeing to anything," Joel Braver, 26, a supporter of Zalmen. "If he cannot have everything, he will destroy everything."