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In 1989, a school district for the entirely Satmar Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel was created. Louis Grumet, the lawyer who spearheaded a lawsuit against the district that ultimately went to the Supreme Court, has written a memoir of the case.

As the opponent of the district, the account is biased against the district, and Grumet is clearly no fan of Satmar. That said, I don't think, based on my prior knowledge of the situation and of New York politics, that Grumet is terribly unfair. He also acknowledges that Monroe-Woodbury failed to meet the needs of the Satmar children (though he's too dismissive of issues surrounding Christmas), in effect giving KJ the impetus to demand control, and that the KJ district did hire highly qualified personnel and provide a good program.

The account is interesting as an insider view of New York politics. I've long viewed it as a corrupt cesspit, and the book does little to dispel that view, with its accounts of political machines, bloc voting, and legislative manipulation. It contains a lot of detail about legal strategy and Lemon v. Kurtzman, the previous Supreme Court decision that the court cases focused on. (The New York Supreme Court chose not to focus on the state level Blaine Amendment.)

It's a bit of a specialist topic, but those people interested in religion and politics in New York State will find this a good read.
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arosoff | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jul 11, 2021 |
It’s not always the evangelicals

The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel: The Rise of a Village Theocracy and the Battle to Defend the Separation of Church and State by Louis Grumet and John Caher (Chicago Review Press, $27.99).

The New York village of Kiryas Joel has been a subject of controversy from its inception. The mostly Orthodox town has had the distinction of being the poorest city in the U.S., and the leader of the Hasidic boys’ school is under investigation for sexual abuse.

It’s the school district itself that is the subject of this book by Louis Grumet and John Caher.

Kiryas Joel, situated in upstate New York, is an expansion of the ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect of Jews, long established in Brooklyn. Normally, their children would attend private religious schools. However, with an especially large number of children with disabilities (many due to an inherited genetic disease), the community wanted public education–with a religious twist. This led to the creation of a special public school district for Kiryas Joel.

Uh, yeah, isn’t that unconstitutional? You’d think.

The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel relies as much on Grumet’s own memory of the 1989 law creating the special district and the resulting lawsuit, which went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994; Grumet was one of the litigants. That means that this book is less scholarly legal work and more personal memoir. It’s not necessarily a bad mix, but Grumet’s personal stake does affect the tenor of the book.

That said, it’s a good insider view of how New York state politics and the power of a large special interest group to lobby officials can circumvent what seem to be obvious barriers to using taxpayer money for a religious purpose.

What’s intriguing about this particular foray into erasing the line between church and state, though, is how the political power of the Satmar sect held sway over both Democrats (Mario Cuomo) and Republicans (George Pataki). And Kiryas Joel itself is an interesting situation, determined to remain separate from secular culture while getting every public dollar they can; a similar case exists among radical groups who seek to “bleed the beast,” drawing taxpayer-funded benefits while hating the government that provides them.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com
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KelMunger | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jul 14, 2016 |
A seasoned political operative, who ran the NY association of school boards, explains the political history behind the lawsuit against Kiryas Joel. The extremist Hasidic sect that populated the town votes in a bloc, with no Republican or Democratic precommitments, and thus exercises extreme power in New York’s political world. Though most children go to private religious schools, children with disabilities were entitled to services and initially got them from the surrounding public schools, but they were culturally and linguistically a bad fit—with their strange accents, clothes, etc. they suffered abuse from other children. To solve this problem and extract even more money from the state (unlike the Amish, the Satmar Hasidim have no problem taking public money, just obeying public laws), they got New York to create a special school district just for them, contrary to New York’s school policies in general. After the Supreme Court struck down this as an unlawful favoritism for religion, they went back to the legislature several times to get a school district created under “neutral” rules that, in practice, only applied to Kiryas Joel; eventually, and depressingly, this tactic succeeded, and now they’re back to religious segregation and denying female bus drivers the opportunity to drive school buses because they believe women shouldn’t drive. Although Grumet classes this a victory in principle, because of the Supreme Court case, it’s hard for me to see it that way—Kiryas Joel is growing fast, bolstered by “extremely low local taxes and incredible amounts of politically acquired state and federal aid.” Combined with another story about Ramapo, where the ultra-Orthodox took control of the school board and voted to strip the public schools of as much funding as possible (because they don’t send their children to public schools and didn’t want to pay), it’s another example of the I’ve-got-mine attitude that seems to infect so much of this country these days.… (lisätietoja)
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rivkat | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 17, 2016 |

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#553,378
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