Orange County, NY - Chabad Still Feuds Over Who's Boss

Orange County, NY - The touchy question of which Chabad family - the Borensteins or the Burstons - is authorized to run Jewish outreach programs in Orange County on behalf of their Hasidic movement seemed to be settled. Pesach and Chana Burston are the valid representatives, a spokesman for the worldwide organization declared in a story about the Monroe couple in the Sunday Record on May 28.

But that statement has incurred the wrath of the Rabbi Yakov Borenstein and his wife, Hindy - installed as Chabad emissaries in Poughkeepsie 20 years ago - and reopened an ugly internal spat between them and their organization leaders.

The gist is that Chabad leaders say Yakov Borenstein is a renegade and irritant they fired several years ago for outlandish behavior. They drove home the point a week ago with a letter saying Borenstein - along with three other rabbis - can no longer use the Chabad-Lubavitch name.

Borenstein - who has installed his nephew in Goshen to represent Chabad in Orange County - disputes nearly everything his critics say, even that he was ever fired. He claims his attempts to bring the matter to a neutral rabbinical court have been rebuffed. "You can't just tell me, 'Close down your shop,'" Borenstein says, referring to Rabbi Yisroel Rubin, the Chabad regional director in Albany. "He doesn't pay me."

His defense is a 2004 letter from the Beth Din (rabbinical court) of Brooklyn, which prohibits Rubin from appointing emissaries in Orange County and bars the Burstons from settling there until a neutral court rules. Chabad spokesman Zalman Shmotkin replies that the Brooklyn Crown Heights court is a neighborhood panel with no jurisdiction over Chabad.