Historical Overview

Yeshivas Maharit D’Satmar is one of the many institutions based on the teachings of the legendary Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum of blessed memory. Following the Holocaust, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum who was the Grand Rabbi in Satmar, Hungary, arrived on these shores and established the Satmar community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The new movement gave strength and vitality to the broken Jewish Hungarian refugees, reaffirming their connection to their traditions of the past while enabling them to carry forward into the “new world”. Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum’s values and way of life are now well established in America, as well as in other countries around the globe. The Satmar community of Williamsburg expanded and in the 1970’s established a secluded community in Monroe, NY.

This new community was based on the principles of the Torah of their fathers: to learn its sacred laws and live by its ideals. The settlement is completely set up with its own school system, Kashruth and outreach organizations. The Satmar Chassidim continue to dress in the ways of their forebears, speak the Yiddish language, and live behind an opposing wall of segregation from the immorality and immodesty which is rampant in today’s society.

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum was also known as the “VaYoel Moshe”, after the books he authored under that name. He was adamant in the belief that Torah should be studied through the old method of emphasis on a broad knowledge of the texts and the established commentaries rather than through the pursuit of speculation and analysis that may compromise the latter. The “VaYoel Moshe” also emphasized that the learning should be “Shmmtza Alibah D’Hilcheseh”, meaning, to study the Gemorah/Talmud and arrive at the practical Halucha (laws).

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum instituted this method from the onset of the educational system, seeking to instill the yoke of Torah and fear of Heaven in the children from a young age. In 1988, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum’s students began establishing a new educational infrastructure, pursuing the model of the “VaYoel Moshe”. The goal was and is to raise the next generation to live with Torah Ethics and carry the ideals of the Satmar Chassidus into the future. In 2010, this was furthered by the creation of Yeshivas Maharit D’Satmar for the college-level students of the community.