New York - Eliot Spitzer, Snub or oversight?

New York - Eliot Spitzer might not have realized what he was stepping into when he paid a condolence visit April 30 in Brooklyn to Zalmen Teitelbaum, son of Moses, the late grand rebbe of the Satmar Hasidim. The problem was that he failed to call also on Aron Teitelbaum, Zalmen’s older brother and rival for the Satmar throne.

The next day, New York City tabloids speculated about whether the attorney general and would-be governor had snubbed Aron.
After all, politicians such as Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Hillary Clinton had all taken pains to see both brothers and avoid alienating one faction within the bitterly divided Satmar community.
Spitzer representatives said it was a harmless oversight: They thought Aron was at home in Kiryas Joel, rather than in Williamsburg, when Spitzer met with Zalmen.
They were said to be trying to set up a separate meeting with Aron.

But some Aron supporters concluded that Spitzer’s chief of staff, Richard Baum, who supported Kiryas Joel’s anti-Aron dissidents a decade ago as Democratic minority leader of the Orange County Legislature, had steered his boss to Zalmen alone. Spitzer’s office did not return a call for comment.