Summer Camp Permit Wars Heat Up Again In Ulster County

KINGSTON, N.Y. — Ulster County is no longer facing a legal challenge over its decision last year to issue health permits for four southern Ulster County summer camps to one of the two warring factions of the conservative Satmar Hasidic sect.

But with the issue over which of the two factions of the Satmar community owns the camps in Wawarsing and Rochester still unresolved, and the summer camp season rapidly approaching, the county finds itself once again in the position of deciding who will get the necessary permits to run the camps.

County Attorney Bea Havranek said the county has once again received applications from both sects to operate the camps. She said those applications, along with applications from others looking to open summer camps throughout the county, are currently being reviewed by the county Health Department, which issues the permits.

“We’re at the very initial stages,” said Havranek. “No decisions have been made.”

Last year, County Executive Michael Hein decided that the health permits needed to open the camps would be issued to David Rosenberg, acting as an agent of Jeno Kahan, long-time operators of the camps, and an ally of the Zalman Teitelbaum-faction of the sect.

Zalman Teitelbaum and his brother Aaron Teitelbaum, who also applied for permits to run the camps, are locked in a bitter feud over who is the rightful leader of the Congregation Yetev Lev, in Brooklyn, which owns the camps. Zalman Teitelbaum draws his support from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

Aaron Teitelbaum’s faction is in charge of the Orange County village of Kiryas Joel in the town of Monroe.

Last year, when the county decided to issue the health permits to Rosenberg, representatives of “Freidman faction,” which is aligned with the Aaron Teitelbaum faction, filed a lawsuit against the Zalman Teitelbaum faction and Ulster County.

In a decision issued in January, state Supreme Court Justice James Gilpatric dismissed the case against the county, saying the county’s action was “a pragmatic, ministerial function, not a quasi-judicial determination or expression of official policy.”

He rejected the claim that by awarding the permits to one group over the other the county was favoring one faction over the other or that it was tantamount to recognizing the Kahan-Zalman Teitelbaum faction as “the true and legitimate representative” of the congregation.         Daily Freeman