Chaptzem Blog!      

I have just read the most detrimental letter/document about Kiryas Joel. Here's the rub: KJ is a grand scale of what we are all facing in Orange and Sullivan counties. One only has to look to Bloomingburg for further proof. These subsets of Hasidim are popping up all along our beautiful counties without regard to the obvious decimation of our communal lands.The Stevensville Hotel, Day Top, it just never ends what property they will accumulate to their end, which is, of course, tax exempt.

Further, they claim that because "never again" that they will repopulate the Hasidic community, we should continue to give them land and perpetuate their illegal dependence on New York state. They claim that within KJ that they have virtually no teenage pregnancy. I don't know how to phrase this properly, but if they marry off teenagers to propagate their population, duh, they don't have unwanted/unplanned pregnancies. Their teenage girls get married to further enhance their "inevitable growth." In my lifetime, it would have been considered statutory rape.

They marry within the community to ensure pure children but end up with an inordinate number of mentally deficient children. And that necessitates an inordinate number of tax-free schools for the handicapped! In our own Beechwood Community here in White Lake, we are facing the same reality. Shaya Boymelgreen seeks to build 30,000 square feet of dwellings in this tiny community. That figure only includes the housing specifically. Then there are driveways, perhaps swing sets, tennis, whatever, which, obviously will increase their "need" for 30,000 square feet of property carved into the woods here. There is currently a place of worship - shul, temple? - that is not allowed in this community. Further, I have recently learned that since their marriages are not recognized by New York state and occur within their strict community, they have legal rights to welfare and medicaid and food stamps as each family is considered with an "unwed" mother, of teenage years to begin having children throughout child-bearing years, into the thirties. Welfare fraud, to say the least, is a serious situation in this area. They're killing us!