Head of Satmar Hasidic sect slams US recognition of Jerusalem
Anti-Zionist leader says Trump’s decision doesn’t alter group’s opposition to Zionism, which he says ‘has nothing to do with the city’
The head of a Satmar Hasidic faction slammed the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe in Kiryas Joel, an ultra-Orthodox village in upstate New York, condemned the White House announcement made several days earlier by US President Donald Trump.
“We declare in the name of Haredi Judaism: Jerusalem, the holy city, will not be the capital of the Zionist state, even if the president of the United States says it is,” Teitelbaum said at an event Saturday night at the New York Expo Center in the Bronx, Israel National News reported.
“Just as Haredi Jews did not recognize President Truman’s declaration in 1948 that Israel is the Jewish state, we don’t recognize it today,” he said, using the Hebrew word ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Satmar is anti-Zionist and does not recognize the State of Israel.
Teitelbaum was speaking to thousands of followers at the annual event marking the 21st day of the Jewish month of Kislev, which commemorates the day that the late Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the founder of the Satmar movement in America, escaped from the Nazis during the Holocaust in 1944.
“Jerusalem is a holy city, a city of piety. Zionism is the opposite of fearing God and Torah, and it has nothing to do with the city of Jerusalem,” Teitelbaum also said.
