(JTA) — The head of a Satmar Hasidic faction slammed the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, the Satmar rebbe in Kiryas Joel, a haredi Orthodox village in upstate New York, at an event Saturday night at the New York Expo Center in the Bronx condemned the White House announcement made several days earlier by 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, 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.”
Satmar is anti-Zionist and does not recognize the formation of the State of Israel.
Teitelbaum was speaking to thousands of followers at the annual event marking Chuf Alef 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.
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