Aron Tzvi "Aaron" Rabiner is the hasidic candidate in today's election for the village board of Bloomingburg, New York, the tiny 420-person village in the Catskills that had the misfortune to have a stealth front man for Modern Orthodox developer Shalom Lamm sell it on a low-density golf course vacation home complex only to find later that the new development was really a 396-unit high-density Satmar hasidic village called Kiryas Yated Lev. Satmar has moved to take over the tiny village, and many locals – a number of them non-Orthodox Jews – are fighting to prevent that from happening. This may be the last election which will see a non-hasidic majority elected.
Above: Aron Tzvi "Aaron" Rabiner
Aron Tzvi "Aaron" Rabiner is the hasidic candidate in today's election for the village board of Bloomingburg, New York, the tiny 420-person village in the Catskills that had the misfortune to have a stealth front man for Modern Orthodox developer Shalom Lamm sell it on a low-density golf course vacation home complex only to find later that the new development was really a 396-unit high-density Satmar hasidic village called Kiryas Yated Lev.
Satmar has moved to take over the tiny village, and many locals – a number of them non-Orthodox Jews – are fighting to prevent that from happening. This may be the last election which will see a non-hasidic majority elected.
Rabiner, who is the son of an Israeli ba'al teshuva and his Minnesota-born wife who converted to Judaism through Chabad in the late 1980s, has apparently won his election. According to the Times Herald-Record, the unofficial vote total is 75 for Rabiner, 73 for his opponent.
Aron Tzvi's parents were my friends when they lived in St. Paul. Aron Tzvi was perhaps seven years old the last time I saw him.
What the following video doesn't tell you is that while Aron Tzvi claims to have lived in Bloomingburg for about a year, his vote in the last election was thrown out because his driver's license showed residency in a different town and the property lease he submitted to prove Bloomingburg residency was undated.
Some locals claim that Rabiner has addresses in Brooklyn, Harris and elsewhere – at the very least, four in all, counting his newest in Bloomingburg. But in New York State, residency is very easy to achieve, and voters can essentially choose among whatever residences they have with almost no restriction. So Rabiner likely qualifies as a Bloomingburg resident this time, and he may very well be elected.
If he is, he'll likely serve a term or two until Satmar completely controls Bloomingburg, at which point they'll push him out and put in one of the their lifers who is close to the Williamsburg Satmar Rebbe Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum. His job asa ringer for Satmar will be over.
How did Aron Tzvi end up as a stooge for Satmar?
His father is vehemently anti-Zionist. He bad experiences growing up in Israel which he blamed on Israeli secularism, so much so that he used to take the Israeli flag that stood at one side of the aron ha-kodesh (holy ark) in the Orthodox synagogue in St. Paul that is now completely Chabad controlled but was then not so much so and hide it in the basement. The American flag that stood at the other side of the aron ha-kodesh was usually left undisturbed. Every once and awhile, I would sneak down to the basement, grab the Israeli flag Rabiner's father had tossed in an unused room, and sneak it back upstairs when he wasn't looking, usually during the amidah prayer. And when Rabiner's father would open his eyes after praying, there in front of him would be the hated symbol of Zionism, back in its place.
Despite this, Rabiner's father and I were friends. I could overlook his vehement anti-Zionism and he overlooked my near-continual need to pull off pranks like that.
After a few years, the Rabiners moved to Brooklyn and I lost touch with them, and other than a brief phone call from Aron Tzvi's father several years ago, we've been completely out of touch.
I'm saddened that Aron Tzvi has ended up being a ringer for Satmar, and that he likely will be exploited by them and then discarded (or at least pushed aside) in a few years.
But I'm more saddened that Satmar and Lamm have run roughshod over a tiny and naïve little village, Lamm for financial gain, Satmar for power and cheap housing.
Related Posts:
Exclusive – The 2006 Secret Agreement Between Lamm's Straw Man Developer And Lamm's Company.
Official List Of All Voters Disqualified And The Reasons For That Disqualification.
Lamm Lied, Is Registered To Vote In West Hempstead.
All Shalom Lamm/Bloomingburg/ Satmar Kiryas Yated Lev Scandal Posts.