The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter last week asking the supervisor of the Sullivan County town of Forestburgh to change a recently imposed zoning ordinance that might illegally discriminate against a Hasidic Jewish development, while also warning that the process that led to the law’s adoption might have violated government transparency rules.

The zoning ordinance, Local Law 3, created requirements for religious institutions that are stricter than the requirements for buildings used for secular purposes, wrote Jill Faber, the Chief Deputy Attorney General for Regional Affairs. The letter cites the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that, among other things, prohibits zoning laws that discriminate against religious institutions.

“Local Law 3 appears to violate state and federal law by discriminating against religious uses,” Faber wrote. “And the adoption of Local Law 3 raises concerns about Forestburgh’s compliance with the Open Meetings Law.”

The letter comes amid a yearslong legal battle over Lost Lake Resort, a proposed development that seeks to house 2,600 homes in Forestburgh, a town near the Catskills, in an area where there is a growing year-round Haredi community. The Hasidic owners who bought the land in 2020 have sued the town twice, arguing in both cases — with support from the Haredi organization Agudath Israel of America — that it made changes purposely designed to keep Hasidim out. The lawsuits are both ongoing.

Dan Hogue, the town supervisor, to whom the letter was addressed, told the Albany Times-Union he believed the zoning law was not discriminatory. He said Lost Lake Resort has been the subject of 13 lawsuits, “nine of which have been judged in the town’s favor.”

“The zoning does not specifically call out any race, religion or anybody,” Hogue told the outlet. “To call it that (discriminatory) it just reeks of political undertones given the current lawsuits brought on by this developer. ... I believe it’s just politically motivated by a developer.”

The Attorney General’s letter also warned Hogue that, before the ordinance was passed, a copy of it should have been made available to the public at least 24 hours before town leaders discussed it.

“We request that you promptly review Local Law 3 make any amendments needed to

comport with state and federal law,” Faber wrote. “We further ask that you provide our office with any proposed amendments resulting from your review before their enactment.”

Matis Rutner, also known as Abe Rutner, a leader at the Sullivan County Jewish Community Council, told Hamodia he was happy to see the letter. 

“We are glad that the New York State AG has looked into the what has transpired in the town of Forestburgh,” Rutner said. “Together with the Justice Department, who has written to the judge concerning the Lost Lake law suit, we expect the township to conduct themselves in compliance with the law and treat us without any discrimination.”

The judge overseeing a criminal trial of former president Donald Trump contradicted a claim that he scheduled proceedings on Jewish holidays in order to prevent Orthodox Jews from serving on the jury, NBC News reported.

Right-wing pundits accused Judge Juan Merchan of scheduling proceedings on Fridays and Passover in order to prevent Orthodox Jews from serving on the jury, Newsweek reported.

Merchan said on Monday that there would be no trial on any day that conflicts with the religious observance of any juror — including Passover.

Jury selection began on Monday and is expected to take one to two weeks. The trial itself is expected to last six to eight weeks and will take place every weekday except Wednesday.

“Leftwing anti-Trump Democrat judge in phony case against Trump starting tomorrow has purposely scheduled trial days to include Fridays to prevent more conservative pro-Trump Orthodox Jews from serving on the jury,” Fox News pundit Mark Levin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Dan Schneider, vice president for the Free Speech Alliance at the Media Research Center, a conservative organization, posted a similar comment, writing in part that the judge sought to “exclude all Orthodox Jews from the jury pool.”

The court closes at 5 p.m. Between now and June, Shabbat will begin after 7 p.m., though, for many observant Jews, preparations begin much earlier.

Trump made history on Monday as the first former president to face a criminal trial. He pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records during his 2016 campaign, punishable by up to four years in prison. 

Prosecutor Chris Conroy said that Trump attempted to “undermine the election” by making hush money payments to three people: porn star Stormy Daniels, Playboy model Karen McDougal, and Dino Sajudin, a former Trump Tower doorman who claimed Trump had a child out of wedlock.

Prospective jurors will have to answer 42 questions, including what news sources they follow and whether they’ve ever attended any Trump rallies or anti-Trump protests. The prosecutor and Trump’s attorneys can each ask additional questions. The trial will have an anonymous jury.

Many Haredi New Yorkers support Trump. In both the 2016 and 2020 general elections, the former president won a vast majority of votes in the largely Haredi neighborhood Borough Park. According to an online survey conducted during the summer, ninety percent of Haredi respondents said they planned to vote Republican in the 2024 presidential election, compared to only 39% of Modern Orthodox respondents.

A Rockland town’s insurance carrier paid a Haredi school $200,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit, Lohud reported. As part of the settlement with Ateres Bais Yaakov, members of the Clarkstown land use board must also take classes on the Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act, a federal law from 2000 meant to prevent discrimination against religious organizations.

The Haredi girls’ school had sued the town of Clarkstown and the advocacy organization CUPON, alleging religious discrimination after the town prevented it from purchasing a former church property. The Anti-Defamation League, which fights against antisemitism, filed an amicus brief in support of Ateres, arguing that the case represented a trend in which zoning laws are used to discriminate against Orthodox Jews.

In 2022, a district court dismissed Ateres’s claims, saying that it didn’t have standing for its argument. But in December, a federal panel of judges reversed that decision, saying that Ateres did have standing. Now, the case against Clarkstown is settled, but the case against CUPON is ongoing.

Clarkstown Deputy Town Attorney Kevin Conway told Lohud that the settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing. 

Yehudah Buchweitz, an attorney for Ateres, said the school was satisfied with the settlement. "We are pleased with the outcome of the case with respect to the town as we continue the case against the CUPON entities," Buchweitz told Lohud. 

Since suing Clarkstown, the school has established itself at a different location, in the town of Ramapo.

Many Monsey residents will soon welcome Shabbos with music each week, according to Haredi news outlets.

Thanks to a new Satmar synagogue being completed in the area of Remsen Avenue and Route 59, Monsey residents will get to hear “warm songs and harmony” that spread “the true peacefulness of Shabbos,” Rockland Daily reported. The new sounds will come from what is described as an “innovative bell” installed at the new synagogue.

Until now, Monsey had a siren that went off each week, once 15 minutes before the start time of Shabbos, and another to signal the actual start time. It is unclear if the new musical “bell” will replace the shrill siren heard in the past, or will be in addition to it. The Monsey community has grown significantly over the years, and the current siren is not heard throughout the entire area.

Many Haredi neighborhoods have long had sirens announcing the beginning of Shabbos, following a custom originally initiated in Jerusalem and which goes back to Talmudic times, when the sound of shofar blasts would signal the onset of the day of rest.

In recent decades, sirens have been installed in Haredi neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Monsey, though not without controversy. In Brooklyn, a Shabbos siren installed near Bedford Stuyvesant drew complaints from neighbors, who said it was unusually loud and sounded like an “air raid siren.” One neighbor said the siren was “loud and painful” and gave her “headaches for days.” 

A Shabbos siren was first instituted in Monsey during the 1990s, originally leading to tension between some Haredi groups over differing customs for the start time of Shabbos, though the tensions have dissipated over the years.

The new musical sounds in Monsey will play for the first time this Friday evening.

Results from one largely Haredi district in Brooklyn showed that about one in three Democratic voters rejected President Joe Biden in Tuesday’s presidential primaries. This contrasts with results from the city as a whole, which showed that over 90% chose Biden.

The results do not include blank ballots.

Democratic primary election results for Simcha Eichenstein’s Assembly District, which includes most of Borough Park and part of Midwood, showed that 20% of voters chose businessman Dean Philips, even though he dropped out of the race in early March, and another 12% chose longshot candidate and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson.

The votes don’t necessarily reflect whom these voters favor as president. Some Haredi leaders have been encouraging voters to register as Democrats even if they intend to vote for Republican candidates in the general election, as this allows them to participate in Democratic primaries — in which many New York City elections are decided.

About half of voters in the district are registered Democrats, and only about 15% are registered Republicans. But in 2020, a vast majority of voters in the area chose Trump over Biden, according to an analysis by the New York Times.

In Tuesday’s Republican primary, results showed over 88% of voters chose former president Donald Trump. 

These results are unofficial. They may also skew the real results, as some pro-Palestinian activists in the state encouraged voters to submit empty ballots in the Democratic primary, but the New York City Board of Elections did not immediately include those in the elections results.

A recent online survey found that 90% of Haredi respondents planned to vote Republican in the 2024 general presidential election.

State Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo is proposing a new bill that would exempt matzah bakeries and pizzerias from a new city rule meant to reduce restaurants’ carbon emissions, the New York Post reported.

Pirozzolo, a Republican who represents parts of Staten Island, including growing Haredi communities in Willowbrook and Manor Heights, told the Post that the city’s Department of Environmental Protection rule constitutes “discrimination against ethnic restaurants.”

The DEP’s rule, set to take effect on April 27, requires existing coal- and wood-fire restaurants to install expensive air filtration systems that significantly reduce emissions.

DEP spokesperson Ted Timbers explained the rationale for the rule in 2023. “All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air, and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” he said, adding that the agency consulted members of the restaurant industry when drafting the rule.

“Commercial cooking is a common source of PM2.5 — which is the most harmful urban air pollutant,” Timbers said. “It is small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, which can worsen lung and heart disease and lead to hospital admissions and premature deaths.”

At the time, Alter Eckstein, a Williamsburg matzah bakery manager, told the Haredi news outlet Matzav that he opposed the rule. “This is how we bake for the past thousands of years, and we don’t want to change anything,” Eckstein said. He told the outlet his business had put $600,000 toward mitigating the ovens’ environmental impact. 

City Councilmember Justin Brannan has proposed a tax break for restaurants affected by the rule.

Joel Eisdorfer, a senior advisor and Jewish community liaison to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, is being sued for failing to pay a $355,000 broker’s fee on a restaurant deal, the New York Daily News reported. The deal to buy a restaurant in South Brooklyn was effectively canceled after Eisdorfer’s $300,000 deposit check bounced, but the real estate agent who brokered the deal is still suing for payment.

Several months after he began working for the mayor, Eisdorfer signed a contract to pay $3.55 million to buy Tamaqua Marina, a restaurant and dock in Gerritsen Beach, according to the lawsuit in Kings County Supreme Court. But when Eisdorfer later backed out of the deal, he allegedly failed to pay the agreed-upon broker’s fee to real estate agent Danny Odato. Odato’s suit says a judge should order Eisdorfer to pay the 10% broker’s fee.

The Daily News said there was no indication that Eisdorfer violated any laws by trying to buy the restaurant while working for the mayor. City officials like Eisdorfer are allowed to own private companies while in public service as long as they don’t do business with any municipal agencies.

Eisdorfer, who has worked in City Hall since early 2022, was added on Wednesday to a list of city employees with “substantial” influence over public policy. The list includes employees who have “major responsibilities and [exercise] independent judgment in connection with determining important agency matters,” according to rules from the city’s Conflict of Interest Board. 

In an email, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said that there are over 3,000 individuals on the substantial policy discretion list from across city government, and argued that someone’s inclusion on the list “does not reflect whether they are actually making policy.” The spokesperson did not say why Eisdorfer was not previously on the list, or whether Eisdorfer consulted the COIB about the deal. 

Eisdorfer did not respond immediately to Shtetl’s request for comment. The COIB deferred questions about the reasoning for the addition to the mayor’s office.

Eisdorfer has previously served as a board member for the Borough Park Jewish Community Council and a member of Brooklyn Community Board 12, according to Hamodia. He started working for Adams when Adams was a state senator. When Adams became Brooklyn borough president, Eisdorfer was also part of his senior staff.

In 2022, Eisdorfer described his work for the mayor in comments to JTA, saying, “I ensure that the needs and concerns of the many different Jewish communities of New York City are addressed.”

This article has been updated to reflect comments from the New York City mayor’s office.‍

Five people were hospitalized on Friday morning after a fire broke out in an apartment above a Hasidic synagogue in Borough Park, ABC7NY reported. 

The fire began in the home of a rabbi who lives above the Stavnitz congregation’s synagogue, which the rabbi leads. The building is located on 60th Street between 18th and 19th avenues.

The fire began shortly after 6 a.m. and the New York City Fire Department responded to the call soon after, accompanied by members of Hatzolah. According to the FDNY, the fire was under control by around 7:30 a.m. The department said the fire was caused by a cooking accident.

According to the Haredi news outlet Boro Park 24, three people were trapped on a front porch and had to be rescued by fire emergency personnel. The rabbi, his wife, and their 13-year-old son were among those hospitalized, and are reported to be in serious condition.

Photos and videos published on Haredi news outlets showed the Torah scrolls being rescued from the synagogue wrapped in prayer shawls.

Shmiel, Yoil, and Yakov Weingarten, three brothers from the Lev Tahor sect who helped kidnap two children in 2018, were convicted on Wednesday by a jury in White Plains federal court, Lohud reported. The U.S. government has now convicted all nine people involved in the kidnapping.

Wednesday’s verdict came after Shimon Malka, a 24-year-old former Lev Tahor member, testified that he also helped kidnap the two minor siblings from their mother. The mother had fled Lev Tahor, which is currently based in Guatemala, after her daughter, a 14-year-old was forced into marriage, to which the mother objected. The mother then joined a more mainstream Haredi community in New York. The kidnapping was intended in part to return the “bride” to her “husband.”

The brothers argued that they were rescuing the children from abuse, not kidnapping them, but the jury believed otherwise. Charged with transporting a minor for sex, international parental abduction, and conspiracy charges, the brothers face up to 30 years in prison.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams called Lev Tahor an “extremist” sect and praised the verdict. “The defendants’ conduct — which included forced child marriages, physical beatings, and family separations — is unthinkable and has caused irreparable harm to children in their formative years,” Williams said. “Whether in the name of religion or any other belief system, subjecting children to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse will never be tolerated by this Office.”

Founded in 1988, Lev Tahor has practices that distinguish it from most other Haredi communities, such as marrying children as young as 12 years old. Many Haredim disapprove of the sect, but there are some who support it. In 2014, the Haredi magazine Ami profiled the group positively, describing what it called “the unjust persecution of a group of pious Jews” after the group met trouble with Quebecois authorities, who accused them of child abuse and neglect.

Sentencing is scheduled for July 9.

A former student at the elite Chabad-Lubavitch boys’ school Oholei Torah has sued the school, alleging that when he was around nine years old, a lifeguard named Yoni Marrus forced the child to grope him on school premises.

The alleged assault took place in or around 1999 and caused “serious psychological injuries and emotional distress, mental anguish, and embarrassment” for which the plaintiff, who sued as a John Doe in Kings County Supreme Court, seeks compensation.

In 2016, a detailed report in Newsweek described how administrators at Oholei Torah allegedly ignored or covered up physical and sexual abuse by the school’s employees. Afterward, Oholei Torah released a letter in which it did not respond to specific allegations but described new measures to prevent abuse, such as training designed to help students react to “improper behavior.”

The civil lawsuit, which was filed under the Gender Motivated Violence Act, adds to three lawsuits that have been filed since 2019 against Oholei Torah under the Child Victims Act that are currently pending in Kings County Supreme Court.

The GMVA allows victims of sexual abuse that took place in New York City to seek compensation in civil courts for injuries resulting from abuse. In 2022, the New York City Council created a “lookback window”: for two years beginning on March 1, 2023, victims can make claims under the GMVA regardless of how long ago the abuse occurred. 

Oholei Torah did not immediately respond to Shtetl’s request for comment. Marrus did not immediately respond either. 

Read more in Shtetl:

Chabad special ed teacher sued for child sexual abuse, banned from school premises

What’s in the investigations of 18 Haredi schools found to be providing inadequate secular education

A New Jersey man, Quamel Benton, was arrested on Friday in connection with the attempted kidnapping of a Lakewood girl and other incidents, Asbury Park Press reported. 

On Thursday evening, a man attempted to pull a teenage girl into his vehicle in Lakewood, New Jersey,  according to the Ocean County prosecutor’s office. The incident occurred in Lakewood’s Forest Park Circle neighborhood, a heavily Haredi area. The girl was able to break free and run home unharmed.

Lakewood Shomrim, known officially as Lakewood Civilian Safety Watch, or LCSW, responded to the call and assisted the police in the search for the suspect.

Later that night, police in nearby Toms River responded to a call about a female victim who had been sexually assaulted. The suspect evaded the police by speeding away in his vehicle, but police were able to identify the man through the vehicle registration. Based on his description, police were able to connect the man to the Lakewood incident and to an aggravated assault that took place earlier that day in Willingboro.

The suspect was arrested on Friday afternoon after a high-speed police chase caused him to crash into a pole. After attempting to flee on foot, Benton was chased and caught.

Benton, a Farmingdale resident, was charged with attempted kidnapping, criminal sexual assault, and several other charges, Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer said.

Ramapo police have recovered a $14,000 shtreimel that was stolen from a car in New Square and returned it to its owner, according to multiple Haredi news outlets.

The valuable fur hat, which was set to be delivered to a customer by the manager of Gold Shtreimel, a New Square shtreimel shop, was stolen during a nighttime spree of car break-ins in late February. The Haredi news outlet Monsey Scoop said the break-ins took place on Slavita Road and Stern Street. 

Police arrested Fraimy Miguel Morel-Rojas and Jorge Perez for the theft, Detective Lieutenant Chris Franklin told Shtetl. “I don’t think they understood the full value of it,” Franklin said. “I’m sure they knew it had some value, but certainly not to the extent that it did.”

Police worked in coordination with New Square Ershte Hilf, a local volunteer organization that responds to both emergency and non-emergency calls for aid, to identify the thieves. According to the Haredi news outlet Rockland Daily, the police returned the shtreimel to the Gold Shtreimel store manager last Wednesday.

Married Hasidic men of most sects wear shtreimels, or shtreimlech in the Yiddish plural, on Shabbos and Jewish holidays, as well as for festive occasions, such as weddings. In a smaller number of sects, particularly those originating in central or northern Poland, such as Gur, Amshinov, or Aleksander, members wear a spodik, a fur hat that is narrower and taller than a shtreimel.

A shtreimel typically costs thousands of dollars, and is made of sable or marten fur, usually imported from Canada. Per custom, a Hasidic groom receives his first shtreimel for his wedding, with the cost covered by parents and in-laws. 

Shtreimel fashion has evolved over the years, from about four inches tall in the ‘50s and ‘60s to eight inches or more for a top-of-the-line modern shtreimel today. They have also grown significantly more expensive. In the ‘90s, shtreimel prices ranged from $1,000 to $4,000. Today, such prices would be a steal.

This is not the first time a thief set his sights on the furry headgear. In February 2021, ABC7 reported one particularly brazen incident, in which a thief in Williamsburg snatched a shtreimel right off a Hasidic man’s head. That shtreimel was reported to have cost $8,000.