All the Young Jews: In the Village of Kiryas Joel, New York, the Median Age Is 13
Photos by Caleb Ferguson When school gets out, hundreds of children roam Kiryas Joel.
Abandoned toys litter the village. Tricycles are toppled on lawns. Red wagons rest beneath mailboxes. Big Wheels are strewn across apartment-complex courtyards. Hundreds of toys are sprawled over these 691 acres, but there's not a child in sight. It's midmorning, and all the kids are in school.
There's no need to secure the toys behind locked doors, because this is a safe place. It's the poorest municipality in America if you go by poverty rate and food-stamp use, but it's a place of order and community. There are strict rules, as a sign along the road that leads to the village alerts outsiders passing through:
Welcome to Kiryas JoelA Traditional Community of Modesty and Values
In keeping with our traditions and religious customs, we kindly ask that you dress and behave in a modest way while visiting our community
This Includes
Wearing long skirts or pants • Covered necklines
Sleeves past the elbow • Use appropriate language
Maintain gender separation in all public areas
Thank you for respecting our values and please enjoy your visit!
When a group of Yiddish-speaking Satmar Hasidic Jews carved the Village of Kiryas Joel out of the woods in the 1970s and named it after their leader, Grande Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, they intended for it to be a peaceful and isolated place. It was tiny then -- about 500 people -- but it grew quickly; within three generations, the population has topped 23,000. The founders had had lots of children and their children had lots of children, and these new families needed homes of their own, so the village built more. The homes became smaller and the buildings became taller and the trees disappeared. Now four-story apartment complexes with corrugated walls and bare-wood exterior staircases line the roads. It is as though inner-city housing projects have been dropped along the winding streets and cul-de-sacs of a suburban subdivision. On weekday afternoons a dozen minivans wait at stop signs. The shopping center's parking lot is full from morning till night. Men wearing wide-brimmed black hats and long beards and white dress shirts beneath black coats shuffle past the storefronts. Women in long-sleeve knits and skirts that reach to their shins push strollers across busy intersections.
With growth came industry and jobs. Locals turned basements into clothing shops and jewelry stores. Outsiders came in search of work. Now Hispanic men unload moving trucks and labor at the many construction sites. West Indian housekeepers commute two hours by bus from Brooklyn. White men in blue Kiryas Joel Public Safety uniforms make rounds in patrol cars. At the kosher poultry plant, 200 gentiles gut chickens.
As the village grew, it did not remain peaceful and isolated. Growth brought development and money and registered voters for politicians to please. Growth brought trouble: divisions and tensions, loyalists and dissidents. There were the years of fires and stonings and beatings and excommunications -- the War Time, some locals call it. When the loyalists banished the dissidents from the village schools and from the cemetery, the dissidents built schools and a cemetery on land just outside Kiryas Joel's boundaries.
Kiryas Joel became overcrowded. The median age is 13 -- it's the only place in America with a median age under 20. Satmar families spilled onto the surrounding, unincorporated property. In December 2013, village leaders put forth a proposal to annex more than 500 acres of wooded land. The townspeople of Monroe resisted with protests and petitions. And so the village that once sought to isolate itself began to battle its neighbors.
Every afternoon, a parade of school buses rumbles along the winding roads. The children step out and the toys come to life. Big Wheels race down sidewalks. Boys pull wagons filled with younger boys. Girls sit on staircases and on swings. Teenagers huddle in conversation. Parking lots are roped off. The entire village has become a playground. The mothers sit in plastic patio chairs in groups of three or four, watching the children playing. "What do we do for fun?" one mother says. "Take care of our kids. We're not busy with computers or anything. We just enjoy our families."
Laughter and shouts fill the air. The sun is low, but darkness and dinnertime are hours off. At times the village looks just like the isolated utopia the grande rebbe envisioned all those years ago.
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