THE CHASSIDIC PRESENCE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT ARTICLES THE CHASSIDIC PRESENCE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE HUDSON VALLEY Gerald Benjamin* Two bills opposed by separate Chassidic-run Hudson Valley local governments met their demise in the closing days of the 2015 New York State legislative session. In the State Senate, majority Republicans declined to pass a measure giving the Board of Regents power to appoint a special monitor to oversee the operations of Rockland County’s East Ramapo School District.1 On the executive side, Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have made it harder to annex additional territory to the Satmar Chassidic Village of Kiryas Joel.2 In East Ramapo, the conflict was internal to the school district. In-migration and rapid population growth gave a fast-growing Chassidic community control of a long-established school board;3 notably, Chassidic children do not attend public schools.4 Governance practices of the Board persistently diminished educational opportunities for public school children, many of whom were members of other racial or ethnic minority groups, while providing resources in support of Chassidic children in private schools.5 With no hope of gaining control of the school district, critics of the board and its practices sought state intervention.6 * Gerald Benjamin is a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of The Benjamin Center for Public Policy Initiatives at SUNY New Paltz. 1 See S. B. 3821-A, 238th Reg. Sess. (N.Y. 2015); Joseph Spector, Criticism Follows Failed East Ramapo Monitor Bill, LOHUD (June 27, 2015), http://www.lohud.com/story/news/educ ation/2015/06/26/criticism-follows-failed-east-ramapo-monitor-bill/29343887. 2 See S. B. 5643, 238th Reg. Sess. (N.Y. 2015) (veto no. 186 (2015)). 3 See Michael Powell, A School Board That Overlooks Its Obligation to Students, N.Y. TIMES (Apr. 7, 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/nyregion/a-school-board-that-over looks-its-obligation-to-students.html?_r=0. 4 Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Them and Them, N.Y. MAG. (Apr. 21, 2013), http://nymag.com/ news/features/east-ramapo-hasidim-2013-4/. 5 See id. 6 See, e.g., Editorial, Monitor Can Help Heal East Ramapo, LOHUD (June 8, 2015), http:// www.lohud.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/06/06/east-ramapo-monitor/28631039/. 1383 THE CHASSIDIC PRESENCE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 1384 Albany Law Review [Vol. 80.4 With the second bill, the dispute was between the Village of Kiryas Joel, explicitly created to be entirely Chassidic, and non- Chassidic neighbors outside its borders.7 The village population was growing exponentially,8 and it sought more land through annexation.9 Neighbors feared a Hobson’s Choice—having to move out of their homes or becoming a minority in a community in which Chassidic religious authority was conflated with, and dominated, local governance.10 Annexation required agreement from the Town of Monroe, but it, too, had become largely politically controlled by Chassidic votes.11 With no power in Kiryas Joel and little in Monroe, opponents to annexation sought passage of a state law— general in language, specific in effect—that would make harder the extension of the village’s boundaries.12 Though decided at the state level (in itself interesting), these appear to be parochial disputes, only locally important. But in fact, they raise fundamental questions of governmental structure, system, and process in New York’s suburban and rural areas: should the creation and dissolution of local governments be an available tactic for use in intra- and intercommunity disputes? Where Chassidic populations are growing rapidly, and have become or likely will become a local political force, may we still rely upon the validity of the assumptions about community and democracy on which the state’s arrangements for local self-governance are based? I. CLASHING IDEAS OF COMMUNITY Understanding clashing ideas of community and community membership is fundamental to approaching this question. Local governments are geographically defined.13 The boundaries of a “place” may have been initially drawn for administrative convenience, but over time become central to defining the 7 See Wallace-Wells, supra note 4. 8 Joseph De Avila, In Monroe, N.Y., Tensions Rise Over Proposals to Annex Land, WALL STREET J. (Sept. 4, 2015), http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-monroe-n-y-tensions-rise-over-prop osals-to-annex-land-1441381916. 9 See id. 10 See, e.g., Chris McKenna, Special Report: Clashing Cultures at Heart of Battle Over Kiryas Joel Annexation, TIMES HERALD: REC., http://www.recordonline.com/article/20150822/ NEWS/150829816 (last updated Aug. 23, 2015) [hereinafter McKenna, Special Report]. 11 See id. 12 See Chris McKenna, The Fray: Orange Municipal Leaders Back Annexation Bills, TIMES HERALD: REC. (June 6, 2015), http://www.recordonline.com/article/20150606/NEWS/150609 575 [hereinafter McKenna, Municipal Leaders Back Annexation]. 13 See Jonathan Boyarin, Note, Circumscribing Constitutional Identities in Kiryas Joel, 106 YALE L.J. 1537, 1543 (1997). THE CHASSIDIC PRESENCE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 2016/2017] The Chassidic Impact on Local Government 1385 “community.”14 People come to be regarded as community members by living and engaging within those boundaries, in those places.15 And they have, or ought to have, standing as citizens in those places.16 Some places have populations that are demographically homogenous, others are heterogeneous.17 Whatever the level of diversity, there is a normative presumption—however imperfectly realized—that all in a place are part of the community.18 For Chassidic people, place is either irrelevant or incidental to the definition of community.19 The essence of their lives is religious communalism.20 An explicit goal of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the movement in 17th century Eastern Europe, was to have the entire “Jewish community . recognize and joyously participate in God’s actual presence in the entire world.”21 Community members are those who adhere to an extensive, strictly-defined set of inter- generationally transferred religious norms and standards.22 They share an understanding of the manner in which they must live in accord with those standards, conduct relationships with others who choose to live in that manner, and adhere to the authority of the community’s leader—the Rebbe—whose defining authority with regard to those standards they embrace in all elements of their lives.23 Communal boundaries are therefore social, not geographic. There are community members and “others;” for the latter category, the norm is exclusion, not inclusion.24 One cannot claim community membership by virtue of simply by being in a place. As a result, the 14 See id. at 1543 n.39. 15 See id. 16 See id. 17 See Abner S. Greene, Kiryas Joel and Two Mistakes about Equality, 96 COLUM. L. REV. 1, 4 (1996). 18 See Robert M. Cover, The Supreme Court, 1982 Term: Foreword: Nomos and Narrative, 97 HARV. L. REV. 4, 14 (1983). 19 See Boyarin, supra note 13, at 1548. 20 See id. at 1539. 21 LOUIS GRUMET & JOHN CAHER, THE CURIOUS CASE OF KIRYAS JOEL: THE RISE OF A VILLAGE THEOCRACY AND THE BATTLE TO DEFEND THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE 14, 15 (2016). 22 See Sarah M. Sternlieb, Comment, When the Eyes and Ears Become an Arm of the State: The Danger of Privatization through Government Funding of Insular Religious Groups, 62 EMORY L.J. 1411, 1417–18 (2013). 23 See id. at 1418. 24 See H.S. Geyer, “Place” Qualities of Urban Space: Interpretations of Theory and Ideology, in 1 INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF URBAN POLICY: CONTENTIOUS GLOBAL ISSUES 190, 191 (2007) (“‘[C]ommunity’ always implies differentiation or classification of some kind . [a]nd that is not possible without determining limits or boundaries, a depiction of certain people who fall inside relative to those who fall outside a particular boundary or definition.”). THE CHASSIDIC PRESENCE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 1386 Albany Law Review [Vol. 80.4 place-based governmental jurisdiction serves the community; it neither defines nor delimits the community.25 Local government is one means for extending religious authority, and is a conduit for maximizing external resources available to community members.26 The manner in which emergency medical response is delivered in Orange County nicely illustrates these two contrasting ideas of community. Once regulatory requirements are met, the New York State Department of Health authorizes the provision of ambulance services within geographically defined “primary area[s] of operating authority.”27 The Kiryas Joel Emergency Medical Service (“KJEMS”) provides paramedic services both within the Village of Kiryas Joel and for the Orthodox Jewish population outside the village—members of the Chassidic community as that community defines it.28 This is ostensibly done as “mutual aid” to other local community-based emergency services.29 But according to one recent study, “those responses are not always clearly communicated to the home ambulance service. Local EMS officials indicate that there is a tacit understanding that KJEMS is willing to respond anywhere in Orange County to provide ambulance [service] for residents of Kiryas Joel or other Orthodox Jews.”30 Unlike for other EMS organizations, geographic boundaries do not define community for KJEMS’s delivery of this service. It sees itself as serving the entire Chassidic community, as it defines itself.31 The case of the “New Square Four” offers another example. Kalmen Stern, David Goldstein, Benjamin Berger, and Jacob 25 See id. (stating that while boundaries are sometimes geographically based, it is not always the case; some communities are culturally, intellectually, religiously, or economically based). 26 See, e.g., id. (“[I]ndividuals operate more regularly and more intensely within community context at the local level [and that is] where the social impact is direct and .