Exodus from Brooklyn

"It is said of a certain Talmudic master that the paths of heaven were as bright to him as the streets of his native town," wrote Martin Buber in The Way of Man. "Hasidism inverts the order: It is the greater thing if the streets of a man's native town are as bright to him as the paths of heaven." For nearly 40 years, the majority of Hasidic Jews in the U.S. have sought to make paths of heaven out of the streets of a grimy corner of New York City: the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

Along Lee Avenue, sign after sign in Hebrew announces the purity of the kosher meats or the freedom from animal fats of baked goods. On the sidewalks, young boys with shaven heads and long, curling sideburns are watched by women in high-necked, long-sleeved dresses and old men in untrimmed grey beards, broad-brimmed felt hats and ankle-length black coats. Now this colorful way of life is coming to an end, partly because of a disconcerting complication. New 22-story apartment buildings are replacing many of the tenements of Williamsburg, but the Hasidim cannot live in them: they are forbidden to ride elevators on the Sabbath.

Next month the best-known Hasidic community in Williamsburg, congregation Yetev Lev, headed by the famed, venerable (about 75) Satmar rabbi, Joel Teitelbaum, will begin building ranch-style and split-level houses on a 500-acre tract in Mount Olive Township. N.J. Besides the houses (average price: $15,000), the congregation plans to build a mikveh (ritual bath), a shopping center, a matzoth bakery, a rabbinical seminary and a synagogue. A number of Hasidic Jews who operate garment factories in lower Manhattan plan to move them to a tract adjacent to their new homes. Ultimately, the move to the suburbs may cost $20 million.

The exodus to the New Jersey suburbs will be something new in the history of the Satmar congregation. The families are mostly Hungarian or Rumanian by birth; the congregation gets its name from the Rumanian village of Satmar, where Rabbi Teitelbaum, a descendant of a long line of Hasidic teachers, taught until World War II. The Satmar Jews are probably the strictest group in Orthodox Judaism. They will eat only kosher food that comes from their own stores. They refuse to watch television, will not ride in cars or use any mechanical device on the Sabbath, wear clothes that conform strictly to the rules of modesty laid down in the Old Testament. Williamsburg has other devout Jews, but the Satmar congregation proudly regards itself as the true voice of Hasidism--the mystical, lyrical interpretation of the Jewish faith that developed in the ghettos of eastern Europe during the 18th century.

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