New York, USA - Five years after a family feud between two Hasidic rabbis erupted into a wave of litigation, a New York State appellate court ruled yesterday that the civil judicial system cannot interfere with religious organizations’ administrative matters, affirming a lower court decision.
The ruling benefits Zalmen Teitelbaum, the younger of two rival brothers who have claimed succession to their father’s role as grand rabbi of the Satmar sect of 100,000 Hasidic Jews around the world. The religious role implicitly comes with secular authority over hundreds of millions of dollars of assets that are owned by the group, including vast real estate holdings and a matzo factory.
The father, Moses Teitelbaum, who died in April, asked Zalmen to take over the Yetev Lev D’Satmar congregation, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1999 — a move that surprised his eldest son, Aaron, whom many had assumed to be the designated successor by Hasidic tradition. Aaron Teitelbaum serves as the rabbi in Kiryas Joel, a Satmar settlement of about 17,000 in Orange County, about 55 miles from Manhattan.
In addition to violence and ill will, the split between the two brothers generated competing board elections — the issue at the heart of the lawsuit — as Aaron Teitelbaum and his supporters attempted to gain control over authority and assets through the civil court system.
In the 3-to-1 decision yesterday, however, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, reviewing a decision issued in Brooklyn in 2004, cited the First Amendment in ruling that “the resolution of the parties’ dispute would necessarily involve impermissible inquiries into religious doctrine and the congregation’s membership requirements.”
Supporters of the younger brother applauded the judicial restraint. “We’re grateful that the Appellate Division recognized that it is truly an ecclesiastical dispute that no civil judge is qualified or would even want to become embroiled in,” said Scott E. Mollen, who represented Zalmen Teitelbaum. “It would open the door to civil courts determining who is sufficiently Catholic or Protestant or Muslim in resolving other religious disputes.”
Supporters of Aaron Teitelbaum, however, were upset that the court declined to separate the secular and religious functions of the group, which is incorporated in New York.
“It has a broad impact over all religious groups,” said Jeffrey D. Buss, Aaron Teitelbaum’s lawyer, who said he intended to appeal the decision. “It exempts them from accountability to their members and it allows them to avoid judicial review of actions taken in the name of a religious corporation.”
Aaron Teitelbaum sued in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn in 2001, arguing that the bylaws of the religious group gave the board of directors — rather than the grand rabbi — the authority to manage the secular affairs of the organization, which has about 35,000 members in Williamsburg.
Zalmen Teitelbaum’s supporters argued that the grand rabbi is the ultimate authority in all matters involving the congregations, religious and secular. Leaders achieve an almost mystical status in the sect, an ultra-Orthodox movement with origins in Transylvania that stresses Talmudic scholarship, a strict adherence to Jewish law and a rejection of what it sees as the outside world’s impurities.
In a separate decision issued yesterday, the Appellate Division unanimously invalidated a deed transfer that would have given half ownership of the cemetery in Kiryas Joel where Moses Teitelbaum and his uncle, Joel Teitelbaum, the founder of the Satmar movement, are buried to the congregation there, which is under Aaron Teitelbaum’s authority. Instead, the court left the entire control of the cemetery with the Williamsburg congregation and under Zalmen Teitelbaum’s authority.