AMERICAN SHTETL: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (Princeton University Press; on-sale: December 7, 2021) by Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers is a compelling account of how a group of Hasidic Jews established its own local government on American soil.
A history, ethnography, and legal analysis, American Shtetl opens with a textured portrait of daily life in Kiryas Joel that explores the community’s guiding religious, social, and economic norms. Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States. Stolzenberg and Myers tell the story of how this group of pious, Yiddish-speaking Jews has grown to become a thriving insular enclave and a powerful local government in upstate New York. While rejecting the norms of mainstream American society, Kiryas Joel has been stunningly successful in creating a world apart by using the very instruments of secular political and legal power that it disavows.
Stolzenberg and Myers chart the rise of Kiryas Joel as an official municipality with its own elected local government. They show how constant legal and political battles defined and even bolstered the community, whose very success has coincided with the rise of political conservatism and multiculturalism in American society over the past forty years. The country’s history is filled with examples of religious sub-communities that found their place on the American landscape. What distinguishes Kiryas Joel is that its very success—as measured by its meteoric growth—coincided with, and may well have come about because of, constant conflict.
Timely and accessible, American Shtetl unravels the strands of cultural and legal conflict that gave rise to one of the most vibrant religious communities in America, and reveals a way of life shaped by both self-segregation and unwitting assimilation.
https://history.ucla.edu/faculty/david-myers
