July 12, 2006
Zalmen faction wins big in ruling By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record [email protected]
Kiryas Joel - Supporters of Rabbi Zalmen Teitelbaum won a huge victory yesterday in their five-year-long legal brawl with followers of his brother, Aron, for control of Satmar Hasidic synagogues and other assets in Brooklyn.
An appeals court panel in Brooklyn issued two rulings siding with Zalmen's faction.
One affirmed a lower court decision from 2004 that left Zalmen's side in charge of the Satmar congregation in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn by refusing to intervene in what was deemed an off-limits religious dispute.
The other overturned a decision Stewart Rosenwasser made in February as an acting state Supreme Court justice in Orange County, a decision that waded firmly into the religious dispute and declared Aron's side the winners.
The long-awaited decisions by the Appellate Division of Supreme Court are a stinging defeat for Aron Teitelbaum, who has led the dominant Satmar congregation in Kiryas Joel for a quarter century and was long seen as the heir apparent to the Satmar crown.
That future was thrown into doubt in 1999 when his father, Moses Teitelbaum, the grand rebbe of the Satmar Hasidim, recalled Aron's younger brother Zalmen from Jerusalem and placed him in charge of the premier Satmar congregation in Williamsburg.
The rivalry between the two brothers erupted in 2001, when their supporters held competing elections for leadership of the Williamsburg congregation and declared their respective slates the winners. What followed was the no-holds-barred litigation on which the appeals panel ruled yesterday.
Both rabbis, Aron and Zalmen, have been declared Satmar grand rebbe by their followers since their father, Moses, died in April.
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