In Quiet New York Village, Unusual Jewish Sect Embraces Past : Religion: Only 70 miles from the frenetic pace of Manhattan, the village of 8,000 is reminiscent of the Jewish ghettos of old Europe.

Just beyond the shopping malls and fast-food joints that link the suburbs to New York City thrives a village of fervently religious Jews whose laws, customs and dress hark back to old world Eastern Europe.

For the 8,000 residents of Kiryas Joel, Yiddish is the language of everyday conversation and the word of the grand rabbi is law.

The village boundaries are drawn to adhere to membership in Hasidism’s Satmar sect, an ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist and messianic Jewish fringe group with roots in 19th-Century Hungary.

Only 70 miles from the frenetic pace of Manhattan, life in Kiryas Joel is more reminiscent of the shtetls , the Jewish ghettos of old Europe, and old customs are strictly observed.

Men don traditional black frocks with brimmed hats and wear uncut locks of hair, called payes , curled over their ears. The women upon marriage shave their heads and wear wigs so as not to appear attractive to other men. The two sexes pray apart.

There is little contact with the outside world. Outsiders are regarded as sheigetz , the Yiddish word for infidel.

Life is austere, particularly for its school-age males. Leopold, 16, has never watched television, seen a movie or dated.

Instead, from sun’s first light until 10 p.m., six days a week, he is absorbed in the study of his religion. On Saturdays, the Jewish sabbath, he and 600 other male students from the religious school spend hours studying and praying.

“We miss everything,” said Leopold, who asked that his last name not be used. “We can’t watch TV or video. We can’t do sports or drive. I only learn the Jewish religion.”

“We’re not upset about it,” he added. “If we knew about other things when we were young, we would demand it. But we don’t know anything, so we don’t need anything.”

He said his life will follow a preordained pattern. He will wed at 18--possibly in an arranged marriage--and is expected to have from eight to 12 children.

“My family is small,” he said. “I only have six brothers and sisters.”

The hilltop village was incorporated in 1977 by followers of the late Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum.

The rabbi, who died in 1979, is revered as a heroic figure who brought the estimated 100,000-strong Satmars out of Nazi-occupied Hungary to Romania and Palestine.

Because the sect is--among Jews--uniquely opposed to the existence of Israel, believing that only the Messiah can deliver it to them, the rabbi and his followers moved yet again to Brooklyn.

Many later followed him to the lower Hudson Valley to escape crime and urban decay.

The Satmars shun outside interference. Internal disputes are settled by rabbinical courts. It is blasphemy to seek redress though secular courts, stemming from times when Jews were routinely killed without trial.

But the village was recently rocked by an imbroglio over its religious leadership.

While the grand rabbi lived, his disciples made no decision about their lives--from schooling to careers and marriage--without his blessing.

“We thought he was going to deliver us to the Messiah,” said Joseph Waldman. “When he died, many of us felt more sadness than on the day our own fathers died.”

Rebbe Joel, as his followers affectionately called him, left no heirs. His nephew, Moses Teitelbaum, succeeded him and appointed his own son, Aron, as chief rabbi of Kiryas Joel.

But dissident Satmars say Moses Teitelbaum wields dictatorial political power but lacks the spiritual stature of his predecessor.

The factional dispute has led to shouting matches, harassing phone calls, stone-throwing and vandalism.

Both sides agree Moses Teitelbaum does not fill the vacuum left by his uncle, but his supporters argue that it cannot be held against him.

“Does George Bush have the same stature as Thomas Jefferson?” asked Martin Deutsch, the school district clerk, who is a firm supporter.

“Some people feel justly or unjustly victimized in the village. There is a need by the discontented to create noise. (But) they have never presented a viable alternative to the leadership,” he said.

Last spring the dispute boiled over when hundreds of Satmars left Yetev Lev, the village’s main synagogue, marched across the street and stoned the home of Waldman, then the sect’s leading dissident.

Dissidents were even forced to create their own school, B’Nai Joel, in the nearby town of Highland, when the village’s Establishment expelled the children of those who questioned rabbinical authority.

Waldman has since agreed to a cease-fire, and dissidents have clammed up.

Police say there have been no reported incidents since the truce last May.

The ancient rituals of daily life have largely returned to normal.

Recently, thousands came to the village cemetery to pray for the soul of Rabbi Joel on the 11th anniversary of his death.

The Satmars chanted ancient Hebrew prayers at his tombstone, swaying to and fro to create a bobbing, bending sea of black.

The mourners later filed past some Satmars in need. There was a man whose diabetic wife was in need of an operation, an orphaned student engaged to be married, but who had no money for a wedding. There were a hundred other stories, all uttered in Yiddish.

Each time a passer-by gave money he received a prayer directed to Rabbi Joel.

Even in death the rabbi’s spirit looms large.