Kiryas Joel, New York

Orange County

36-39853

Kiryas Joel (also Kiryas Yo'el or KJ, Hebrew קרית יואל, "City of Joel" ) is a village within the Town of Monroe in Orange County in the U.S. state of New York. The vast majority of residents are Hasidic Jews who live strictly according to the rules of the Torah and its commandments, and belong to the worldwide spread Satmar movement.

Most residents speak Yiddish as their mother tongue. The Village has the youngest average age (15 years) of all population centers over 5,000 residents in the United States. The Jewish residents of Kiryas Joel typically have large families, as well as in other Charedim communities is often the case. Furthermore, it is the place in the United States with the highest percentage of people with Hungarian origin: In 2000, 18.9% of the population had Hungarian ancestors.

Census data from 2008, according to the Village has the highest poverty rate in the country - more than two-thirds of the residents live below the poverty line of U.S.; 40 % receive food stamps ( food stamps ).

History

Kiryas Joel Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum is named after, the Rebbe of Satmar and driving force behind the project was. Teitelbaum helped himself a few years before his death in 1979 with the selection of the location for the future Jewish village. The rabbi, originally from Hungary, built the Satmar dynasty in the years after the Second World War again; the Satmars who founded Kiryas Joel came from Satu Mare, Romania.

In 1946, Teitelbaum and his followers settled in the neighborhood of Williamsburg New York borough of Brooklyn. In the 1970s it but decided to relocate the growing church in a place that was not far from the business center of New York, but yet secluded from the bad influences from their perspective and the immorality of the outside world. Teitelbaum's choice fell on Monroe; the country should be founded on the Kiryas Joel, was acquired in 1977, and 14 families of the Satmar settled here. When Rabbi Teitelbaum died in 1979, he was the first to be buried in the local cemetery. His funeral drew more than 100,000 mourners after Kiryas Joel.