Satmar Plan Anti-Zionist Rally At Brooklyn’s Barclays Center
Barclays Center Image by Getty Images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis June 6, 2017
Sign up for Forwarding the News, our essential morning briefing with trusted, nonpartisan news and analysis, curated by Senior Writer Benyamin Cohen.
The Satmar Hasidic group is planning an anti-Zionist rally on Sunday at the Barclays Center, the massive arena in the heart of Brooklyn that’s home to the Brooklyn Nets.
The rally, organized by a Satmar-dominated rabbinical group called the Central Rabbinical Congress, will protest an Israeli law, passed in 2014, that limits exemptions from military conscription for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The Satmar Hasidic group is theologically anti-Zionist. Its leaders called a similar protest in 2013. It’s unclear whether both factions of the split Satmar court will participate in the Barclays rally, or just the Brooklyn-based followers of Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum.
The rally comes amid ongoing riots and unrest in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem, where some groups have adopted violent protest in opposition to the draft law.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
