Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the de facto leader of the mostly Satmar village of Kiryas Joel in upstate New York, delivered a speech last Sunday in which he declared areas near Kiryas Joel part of the village and gave them Jewish names. The rabbi expressed hope that doing so would inspire Hasidic residents there to comply fully with the strict religious expectations placed upon residents of Kiryas Joel.

Teitelbaum named parts of the towns of Blooming Grove, Woodbury, and Monroe – locations to which Hasidim from Satmar and other sects have moved in recent years. The expansion of the Hasidic community outside of Kiryas Joel’s boundaries has sometimes led to tensions with non-Hasidic residents of those areas.

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“On all sides, all the areas and neighborhoods that are near this town, all are Kiryas Joel,” Teitelbaum said, asserting that the existing boundaries are for legal purposes only, such as taxes and building permits, but not for religious and spiritual purposes. “Anyone who comes to live here, who moves to this area from elsewhere, must know that he lives in Kiryas Joel.” Teitelbaum went on to cite a passage in the Talmud, and said that anyone who lives in the listed areas is “obligated to accept ‘the stringencies of the place he has come to’ in every aspect and without any changes.”

The rabbi explained that he thought giving Jewish names to places in the area would remind people to follow Kiryas Joel’s customs. “I now want to go even further, and to declare the sacred name upon all the areas surrounding Kiryas Joel,” he said. “May this stand as a reminder to all that they live, indeed, within Kiryas Joel.”

“We live in exile in America, in a decadent land, and we need to be sealed away from our surroundings, so as to remember that we do not reside in America; we are only in America at present,” Teitelbaum said.

Kiryas Joel's population is rapidly expanding: according to census data, its population went from 20,175 in 2010 to 32,954 in 2020. In his speech, Teitelbaum said, “44,000 individuals live in Kiryas Joel.”

Meanwhile, the cost of housing has risen in recent years in Kiryas Joel as the Satmar community’s high birth rate and the migration of families from Brooklyn have created high demand for housing. The community has looked outside of Kiryas Joel to try to address this demand.

The places named by Teitelbaum range in size from housing developments to entire neighborhoods. Hasidic residents of some of the places mentioned regularly travel to and from Kiryas Joel, for school and for other purposes.

Teitelbaum renamed three areas in the town of Woodbury, including two in the hamlet of Highland Mills. He referred to a recent housing development called Woodbury Villas as having a “goyishe name” and named it “Chasam Sofer,” the alias of a rabbi who lived in the early 19th century. To a circular residential street called Country Hollow and its surrounding areas, he gave the name “Chacham Tzvi,” the name of a 17th century rabbi.

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Teitelbaum divided the town of Blooming Grove into three neighborhoods. He named them after three rabbis who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries: “Zera Kodesh,” “Divrei Chaim,” and “Shaagas Arye.” In 2022, after a buyer purchased the house of the mayor of South Blooming Grove for roughly ten times its apparent worth, The Kiryas Joel Weekly, a Yiddish-language newspaper, celebrated the deal as an "expansion of the holy borders" of Kiryas Joel.

The rabbi called the residential area of Highland Lake Estates, where relations between Hasidim and non-Hasidim have been tense, “Beis Yosef,” a reference to the 16th-century author of one of the most-cited codes of Jewish law. In 2018, Hasidim filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the Highland Lake Estates homeowners’ association alleging antisemitism after the homeowners’ association prevented Sunday real estate showings and fined residents when they put up an eruv, a string that enables Haredim to carry items on Shabbat in accordance with Jewish law. Later that year, directors of the homeowners association filed a counterclaim, according to Westfair Online, a business news outlet in White Plains.

Teitelbaum gave Smith Farm, a 181-home development in Monroe that was marketed to Hasidic families, the name “Boruch Taam” after an 18th-century rabbi.

Teitelbaum gave the speech to commemorate the anniversary of the death of his uncle, Joel Teitelbaum, for whom Kiryas Joel is named. The speech was printed in the Yiddish-language publication Heimshtut.