Kiryas, Joel - Court Battle Enlivens Internet Chat Rooms

Kiryas Joel, Monroe, NY - In a place where rabbis condemn the Internet for poisoning impressionable minds, young Web users zip to an Israeli Web site called Hyde Park to post their rumors, photos and partisan potshots.

It is in two Hyde Park chat rooms for the Satmar Chasidim that visitors blast updates on the bitter, high-stakes court battle being waged by two Satmar factions in Kiryas Joel and Brooklyn.
Now, this free-for-all Yiddish bulletin board has itself become fodder in the Satmar legal fight.

An attorney for the side supporting Rabbi Zalmen Teitelbaum of Williamsburg has complained to a state appellate court about recent Hyde Park postings that purport to say how its judges have voted behind closed doors on two pending Satmar cases, and both decisions supposedly sided with supporters of Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum of Kiryas Joel, Zalmen's older brother and rival for control of the Satmar empire.

The lawyer, Scott Mollen, acknowledges in his June 26 letter that "anyone can make predictions," but calls these "exceedingly troubling" in light of a previous Hyde Park scoop about a judge recusing himself that turned out to be true.
Lawyers for Aron's faction responded June 28 with a letter to the court mocking Mollen for his "ill-considered and inflammatory letter" and for his "visit to an Internet chat room, which is virtually the lowest form of public discourse."

However accurate the Hyde Park predictions prove to be, Aron's side wasn't celebrating yesterday. One Aron supporter in Kiryas Joel called the "victory" postings a hoax that Zalmen supporters placed in their own Hyde Park chat room to sow confusion.
"Everybody knows it's a joke," he said.
The same goes, he added, for almost all rumors traded on Hyde Park: "It's not a serious place for discussion. The serious place for discussion is the mikvah, not the Internet."