American Shtetl: An Interview with Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers

Plus, 2-28 commemoration in Taiwan, solidarity rally with Ukraine, and book club details

We’re delighted to share this interview with Nomi Stolzenberg and David Myers about their brilliant book, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, A Hasidic Village in Upstate New York. Just this week it received the National Jewish Book Award from the National Jewish Book Council. Congratulations, Nomi and David!

If you’ve never heard of Kiryas Joel, it’s considered one of the most successful “separatist” religious communities in the United States. Located in Orange County, New York, a rural upstate area with high poverty rates, it has approximately twenty-five thousand practicing members of the Satmar, a Hasidic Jewish group. Should you visit, you’ll find the sign that welcomes you to town prescribes a host of rules: cover your neckline, wear sleeves past the elbow, wear long skirts or pants, respect “gender separation in all public areas.” Men pray three times a day; the schools teach primarily in Yiddish. Even the bus stop signs are bilingual, in Yiddish and English. As Nomi and…