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====Internal friction==== Joel Teitelbaum had no son, and thus no clear successor. His nephew, Moses, was appointed by the community's committee members. But not all Satmar accepted Moses as the community leader, and even some of those who did questioned some of his actions and pronouncements. He responded by running the village in what they called an autocratic manner, through his deputy, Abraham Weider, who also served as mayor and president of the school board, as well as the main [[synagogue]] and [[yeshiva]] in the village.<ref name="1992 NYT story">{{cite news|last=Winerip|first=Michael|author-link=Michael Winerip|title=Pious Village Is No Stranger To the Police|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/20/nyregion/on-sunday-pious-village-is-no-stranger-to-the-police.html|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=September 20, 1992|access-date=May 13, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150526055320/http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/20/nyregion/on-sunday-pious-village-is-no-stranger-to-the-police.html|archive-date=May 26, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1989, the village forbade any property owner from selling or renting an apartment without its permission. Teitelbaum elaborated that "anyone that rents without this permission has to be dealt with like a real murderer ... and he should be torn out from the roots".<ref name="1994 TNR story">{{cite news|last=Rosen|first=Jeffrey|title=Village People|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/politics/village-people|newspaper=[[The New Republic]]|date=April 11, 1994|access-date=May 13, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150915105344/http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/village-people|archive-date=September 15, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> In the early 1990s, the [[New York State Police]] responded many times to the village, which has a generally low crime rate otherwise, when self-described dissidents reported harassment such as broken windows and graffiti containing profanity on their property. In one incident, troopers rode a school bus undercover to catch teenage boys [[stoning]] it; the boys later stoned a back-up police cruiser when it arrived. One of Weider's nephews was among those arrested. He admitted that some of the village's young men took it upon themselves to act violently against dissidents because they could not bear to hear the grand rebbe criticized, although he said most of them were provoked to do so by dissidents.<ref name="1992 NYT story" /> "Someone not following breaks down the whole system of being able to educate and being able to bring up our children with strong family values", Weider told ''The New York Times'' in 1992. "Why do you think we have no drugs? If we lost respect for the Grand Rabbi, we lose the whole thing."<ref name="1992 NYT story" /> In January 1990, the village held its first, and, for a decade, only, school board election. "It's like this", Teitelbaum explained when he announced the names of seven hand-picked candidates. "With the power of the [[Torah]], I am here the authority in the rabbinical leadership ... As you know, I want to nominate seven people, and I want these people to be the people."<ref name="1994 TNR story" /> One dissident, Joseph Waldman, decided nevertheless to run on his own. He was made unwelcome at the synagogue, his children were expelled from yeshiva, his car's tires slashed, and his windows broken. Several hundred residents marched in the streets in front of his house chanting, "Death to Joseph Waldman!", after posters calling for that fate were posted in the synagogue. After the election, in which Waldman finished last, but still won 673 votes, 60 families who were known to have voted for him were barred from visiting their fathers' graves in the village cemetery that was owned by the rabbi, and banned from the synagogue (also, at the time, the village's only polling place). Waldman compared Teitelbaum to Iran's [[Ayatollah Khomeini]].<ref name="1994 TNR story" /> After the election, a state court ruled that Waldman's children had to be reinstated at the yeshiva, an action that was only taken after the judge held Teitelbaum in [[contempt of court|contempt]] and fined him personally. Friction continued as some of the dissidents banned from the synagogue circulated a petition calling for the polls to be moved to a neutral location. It originally drew 150 signatures, but all but 15 retracted their names after being threatened with [[excommunication]] by the grand rabbi, signing a document that they had not actually read the petition. One of the dissidents who signed was attacked while praying, and state troopers had to be called in again to disperse a mob that gathered on Waldman's lawn and broke his windows.<ref name="1992 NYT story" /> In November 2017, a local divorce mediator and an Israeli rabbi with ties to the village were involved in the [[Kiryas Joel murder conspiracy|planning of a contract killing]] on an estranged husband. They were sentenced to prison.<ref name="Orthodox Jewish">{{cite magazine |last=Gajanan |first=Mahita |date=September 7, 2016 |url=https://time.com/4483189/orthodox-jewish-men-arrested-kidnap-murder-plot/ |title=Rabbi and Orthodox Jewish Man Plotted to Kidnap and Murder Husband to Get Divorce for his Wife, Officials Say |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161114154106/http://time.com/4483189/orthodox-jewish-men-arrested-kidnap-murder-plot/ |archive-date=November 14, 2016 |url-status=live |magazine=Time }}</ref>
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