Sons of The Father

A prayer singer hops atop a 70-yard-long center table and strides toward the dais. Wearing a shtreimel , the round fur hat favored on formal occasions, the singer bows deeply before Aaron, who has been clapping rhythmically, his eyes downcast. With a thespian's timing, he looks up at the singer and smiles, then wags his hand at the young men in the bleachers. They cannot contain themselves. Their decibel level keens higher.

This is Aaron's sanctum, and these yungerleit , the young men, are his truest believers. Hasidism is a youth culture; the median age in Kiryas Joel is 15. (Married women stay home with the children; younger women are consigned to the second floor of the synagogue, behind wood-mesh screens.)

The village has the structures of municipal government -- a mayor, trustees, a constable and zoning board, all of whom are Satmars. But the rebbe is the boss of this theocracy; his is the only voice on matters spiritual. An invitation to his tisch , the Sabbath dinner on Friday, is much sought after; young men vie to clap and sing and seek advice.

Not all Satmars rely on the rebbe. But Aaron's most fervent followers call at any hour. They seek blessings for births and bris, the ritual circumcision, for engagements and weddings, surgeries and funerals. A few carry X-rays -- the rebbe might have a thought about a relative's condition or know a surgeon to call late at night. Others ask advice on a wayward child, a loan to tide through bad times, a blessing for a business venture. (It is the same in Williamsburg, where the Zalis head to Zalmen's home.)

Menachem Fischer is making his way as a home builder. Some nights he drives up the hill to Aaron's house on Sanz Court and stands in line. He is never turned away.

"I ask him if we should build, if we should buy land," says Fischer, who possesses an open face and dark, expressive eyes. "Sometimes he tells you, 'Build.' Sometimes not. Sometimes he just gives you a blessing."

The Satmars don't believe their rebbes have a pipeline to God, not precisely. But miracles surely happen. As Fischer says: "The faith we have in him, our love, gives him the power."

Out of Eastern Europe

Ba'al Shem Tov was the first and greatest Hasidic rebbe, a charismatic steeped in the mysticism of Kabbalah who emerged from the pogroms and false messiahs of 17th-century Eastern Europe.

He preached that God permeates existence; by prayer and dance and love -- rather than scholasticism -- anyone can know Him. His disciples filtered across Eastern Europe, their sects taking the name of the towns they settled, the Belz from Belza in Eastern Poland, the Lubavitchers from Lubavitch in Belarus, the Bobover from the Galician town of Bobowa. The Satmars took their name from Satu Mare, the Romanian city where Joel Teitelbaum, the sect's founder, was appointed rabbi in 1934.

Within the decade, the Satmars were all but extinguished. In 1944, the Nazis marched into Hungary and deported or killed 70 percent of the Jews. Teitelbaum was shipped to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, only to be released in a deal the young Zionist Reszo Kastner made with Adolf Eichmann to purchase the freedom of 1,684 Jews, not least Rebbe Joel.

It was an unexpected deliverance. The Satmars are ardent anti-Zionists.

"Everyone ignores the fact that it has been these Zionist groups that . . . have violated the oath against establishing a Jewish entity before the arrival of the messiah," Teitelbaum wrote after the war. "It is because of the Zionists that six million Jews were killed."