Copyright 1994 The Chronicle Publishing Co.  
The San Francisco Chronicle
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MARCH 25, 1994, FRIDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1

LENGTH: 2157 words

HEADLINE: SPECIAL REPORT
First of Two Parts
Church-State Conflict in Jewish Town

BYLINE: Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer

DATELINE: Kiryas Joel, N.Y.

BODY:
Over the past two decades, thousands of Hasidic Jews have moved their families from the mean streets of Brooklyn to this ultra-Orthodox utopia in the snow-covered hills of southern New York.

They came to withdraw from the world, to shield their chil- dren from television, Christianity and the perceived evils of secular American culture.

But in an ironic turn of events, the secular media spotlight is now focused on this fast- growing enclave of 12,000 Satmar Hasidim and a coming Supreme Court decision that could redefine American ideas about the separation of church and state.

''We want isolation. That's why we have no TVs or radios,'' said Rabbi Elliot Kohn, dean of Beth Rochel religious school for girls. ''We don't want to expose our kids to the entire society, to the entire world. We want to keep to our tradition.''

Along with the Chabad-Lubavitch, a more outgoing Hasidic sect that seeks to bring nonobservant Jews into the Orthodox fold, the Satmars are increasing their numbers and making their presence known on the American religious scene.

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the constitutionality of the Kiryas Joel Public Union Free School District, established in 1989 to provide special education to 220 Satmar schoolchildren with Down syndrome, speech and hearing impairments, and other learning disabilities.

New York's Court of Appeal ruled that the state law creating the district was ''an attempt to camouflage, with secular garments, a religious community as a public school district.''

Some observers, however, say the Supreme Court's decision to review Kiryas Joel indicates that the justices may want to establish new legal guidelines regarding religion in the public schools. The case presents the thorny question of how much the government should take account of religion and accommodate religious needs.

Except for the 220 special- needs children attending the Kiryas Joel public school, all of 5,000 children in this self-contained village of large duplex homes and garden apartments attend private religious schools.

Boys, who wear the distinctive payes, or earlocks, of the Hasidim, focus on intensive study of the Bible and Jewish law. Girls receive a more varied, yet highly traditional, curriculum of Jewish education.

It was two weeks before Passover when Rabbi Kohn offered a guided tour of the Kiryas Joel religious schools, but preparations for the Jewish holiday were already under way.

Work crews were busy cleaning the synagogue, and Kohn was giving his students the next two weeks off to help their mothers prepare food for the Passover table -- to scrub every pot, pan and dusty cupboard in the kosher kitchens of Kiryas Joel.

''You know, it's not so easy for the women,'' said Kohn. ''They have to prepare all the meals, and the house is always so clean.'' He and his wife have 13 children -- not an extraordinary number in a community where the average family size is 10.

Descendants of a Jewish sect from the Romanian city of Satu- Mare, these Hasidic Jews are part of an ecstatic and pietistic Jewish movement that caught on in Eastern Europe in the 18th century.

Nearly destroyed by the slaughter of the Nazi Holocaust, the Hasidim took root again in New York, where they have maintained the Jewish rituals and cultural trappings of their past.

Their strict adherence to the 613 commandments of Jewish observance -- laws governing diet, sexuality, prayer and the keeping of the Sabbath -- separates them from most American Jews, particularly from the more liberal Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism.

NO DRUGS OR WEAPONS

''We are proud of our way of life, even if it looks strange to mainstream Americans,'' said Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the spiritual leader of Kiryas Joel, and the son of Satmar Grand Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum. ''We have no drugs. The children and teenagers haven't even seen how drugs look. There are no weapons, knives, guns or metal detectors in our schools. Everybody is happy. Everybody helps one another.''

Teitelbaum, who like most Satmars speaks Yiddish in his daily life, sat in the book-lined study of his home in Kiryas Joel. His wife of 28 years, the daughter of the grand rabbi of a smaller Hasidic sect in Israel, helped him find words in English.

''We are not like the Amish. We have electric. We have cars and the other things the modern world gives,'' he said. ''But we want to live like our forefathers did -- dress like them, speak the same language.''

Before the public school district was formed, some of the disabled children of Kiryas Joel attended classes in the nearby Monroe-Woodbury School District, where mixing with mainstream children created problems for the Hasidim.

Malka Silberstein, the mother of 12 children, including a 19-year- old daughter with Down syndrome and a son with a less serious learning disability, did not like sending her children to Monroe-Woodbury.

''They would go out to lunch at McDonald's, and our children are not supposed to eat at McDonald's,'' said Silberstein, the daughter of Holocaust survivors. ''My daughter's retarded. How can I explain to her that eating kosher is very important to us?

''They also had a Christmas program in the public school. They are not really secular. She came back one day as Rudolph the Red- Nosed Reindeer.''

Another problem faced by the Kiryas Joel children was getting bilingual instruction in English and Yiddish. There were also taunts from classmates because of their unusual appearance and customs.

''We look different -- like a person from a different planet,'' said Rabbi Teitelbaum. ''These children feel hurt if they go to a different school. They are broken children anyway.''

Although most observers agree that the disabled students are getting better care inside Kiryas Joel, New York's Court of Appeal ruled that the creation of a public school district with exactly the same boundaries as the Hasidic enclave was unconstitutional.

The Court of Appeal, the state's highest court, relied on Supreme Court precedent. Although the Satmars say all they want is to keep their school open, some religious groups want the Supreme Court to use the case to re-examine its church-state precedents to permit greater constitutional accommodation of religious practice.

The Rev. Robert Drinan, a professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington, said he hopes the court will strengthen the First Amendment's clause guaranteeing the free exercise of religion -- even if it that means relaxing current standards to guard against the government establishing a religion.

''The fulfillment of the religious freedom of parents of the 220 handicapped children should be the centerpiece of the debate,'' Drinan said in a recent article in America magazine.

Such a ruling, even if limited to the unique circumstances of Kiryas Joel, ''would be in the finest traditions of U.S. accommodation of religious groups that are outside the mainstream of American life,'' Drinan said.

According to the state court, however, the school district violates all three guidelines established to judge religious involvement in public schools. The court found that the district aids one religious group, that its primary effect is to enhance religion and that it represents an excessive entanglement of religion and government.

The Supreme Court will not necessarily rewrite the constitutional law of church and state. Several times in recent years, the justices have seemed ready to overturn the precedent, only to end up issuing a narrow ruling that preserved the ambiguous status quo.

'WHY NOT?'

During a recent tour of the New York school, where children get individualized attention using the latest computers and other special education techniques, Superintendent Steven Benardo defended the district.

''The question is not, 'Why should this community have a school district?' The question is, 'Why not?' If this were a community of 12,000 Scandinavians or 12,000 vegetarians, you wouldn't ask that question,'' he said.

Neither Benardo nor any of the teachers at the Kiryas Joel public school are Satmar Hasidic, who rarely obtain the college degrees necessary for special education.

Most of the district's teachers and other employees are Jewish, but Benardo said that is because of the requirement that the staff be bilingual in English and Yiddish, the daily language of the Satmars.

In addition to teaching the disabled Hasidim, the public district has also begun using state funds to teach English as a second language to girls attending the private religious school in Kiryas Joel.

So far, the parents and religious authorities of Kiryas Joel have refused to let the boys in the religious school learn English. That would require them to mix with girls and to take time out from their religious study.

''Even here, the boys never, never meet any girl,'' said Rabbi Kohn, speaking English with a thick Yiddish accent. ''They only have boy friends. They never meet girls or see all those things on television.''

Marriages are arranged by parents after their children mark their 18th birthdays.

Kohn spoke during a tour of the religious school for boys, a bustling building where outside visitors are rarely seen.

All of the students stood at attention as Kohn burst into a classroom where students were memorizing Scripture and engaged in exercises designed to teach them respect for their parents.

Kohn drove past the small shopping strip of Kiryas Joel, past the toy shop, variety store and kosher meat market.

Male visitors other than Kohn are even more unusual in the girls' school, where high school students discuss Hebrew prayers in Yiddish.

The women do not wear the distinctive black garb, hats and hairstyle of Hasidic men, but they are required to dress modestly. That was less of a problem earlier this month, when the 16th winter storm of the season was blowing through New York.

''In summer, it's hard to tell girls that they must dress modestly and in tights when it's 100 degrees,'' he said. ''But if the girls are exposed to the way other girls dress in the summer, we are afraid we will lose them.''

VISITING A CLASSROOM

Meanwhile, back at the public school, instructor Bella Helprin and 10 girls crowd into a white trailer used to teach English as a second language. Four girls sit at computers doing individual exercises, while Helprin sits at a small table with a half-dozen other students.

''How do you say spiegel in English,'' asks Helprin, using the Yiddish word for mirror.

Walking out of the trailer, Benardo says it was not easy persuading some of the parents to let their daughters in the trailer.

At first, they thought the computer screens were TV sets.

Abraham Weider, president of the Kiryas Joel public school district, said parents in the Hasidic community could not afford all the special equipment needed to provide a proper education for disabled children in the village's private religious schools.

Weider, who has a daughter with a hearing impairment, said the public school has dramatically changed the Satmars' attitudes about disabled children, where problems like Down syndrome were even more of a stigma than in mainstream society.

''These children were kept in the closet, secluded,'' he said. ''It was an indescribable dilemma.''

LINKING RELIGION AND STATE

Weider, who runs a wire cable factory and is one of the wealthier residents of Kiryas Joel, is also president of the village's religious congregation.

Such interlocking interests between the school board and the religious community are cited by critics who see the district as an unconstitutional blending of church and state.

They also charge that the religious leadership of Kiryas Joel backs an official slate to run for school board in public elections in the community.

Joining the New York State School Board Association in its lawsuit against the district are Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Jewish Committee.

Samuel Rabinove, legal director of the American Jewish Committee, said the Kiryas Joel school district is more than a symbolic union of church and state, but is ''a real union of synagogue and state -- which is equally impermissible.''

Weider denied that there is any religious involvement in the running of the public school.

What about children who are taught in Spanish in public schools in a Latino neighborhood? he asked. ''The only difference is these children are Jewish and getting a Yiddish bilingual education.''

''We just want to live like our parents and grandparents lived,'' Weider said. ''The melting pot doesn't mean everyone has to dissolve in it. The greatest thing about this country is that everyone is allowed to practice their religion the way they choose. That's why we fled to this country.''

(Tomorrow -- Messiah Fever among the Hasidim in Brooklyn.)



GRAPHIC: PHOTO (4), MAP,(1-2) At left, Rabbi Elliot Kohn, dean of Beth Rochel religious school for girls, talked with students; above, a 9-year-old student at the public special education school carried crayons 'just like the supermarket men' back to the cupboard where they belong, (3) Three-year-old Yosef practiced using his walker at the public special education school in Kiryas Joel, (4) Eight- and 9-year old students listened attentively during class at the religious school for boys; they wear the distinctive payes, or earlocks, of the Hasidim , PHOTOS BY ERIC LUSE, THE CHRONICLE

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