From off-Shabbos plans to Erev-Shabbos jams, all roads lead to KJ

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

• It might be a dark leil shishi, or perhaps even a Friday afternoon. Van after van pulls up in front of an enormous beis medrash, disgorging black-hatted bochurim. Most disperse quickly to specific addresses, while some gather their belongings and walk slowly up the grand stairs at the front of the building, surveying the scene slowly, not quite sure where to start.
• A young Yeshiva University student, heading to a shabbaton in Upstate New York on a short Friday in January, runs into car trouble along Route 17. He pulls over to the side of the highway, gaze flitting from the steaming hood to the steadily dropping sun. With Shabbos approaching, it dawns on him that he’s facing much bigger problems than a repair bill.
• Shacharis is just ending in the yeshivah when fire alarms blare, and the hallway fills with smoke. After everyone is evacuated safely to the parking lot, the roshei yeshivah’s eyes meet in immediate concern: It’s mere hours to Rosh Hashanah, and the building is uninhabitable. What will be?
• The setting sun on Friday afternoon doesn’t concern this non-Jewish family at all, but their pleasant drive along Seven Springs Road comes to a halt when ominous sounds of distress emerge from the backseat. Mom looks back, and her hand flies to her mouth. “Oh, my G-d, stop, stop!” she shrieks. “Stop the car, she’s having a seizure!” Dad pulls over and hurries to his little daughter, whose breathing is coming in short, shallow gasps; a tinge of blue spread across her features. Mom hastily fumbles for her phone and dials 911. Will help arrive on time?
• Urgent call wrapped up, a tireless Chaveirim volunteer runs to the store for some last-minute shopping before heading home to get ready for his daughter’s Shabbos sheva brachos. Between the aisles, he encounters a group of 25 lost-looking young men. They need help; can he do something?

There may not be a common thread woven through these emergencies, but there was certainly a common solution.

Two letters: KJ.

Perched at the gateway to the Catskill Mountains, midway between Monticello and Brooklyn or Lakewood, Kiryas Joel often provides solace for trapped travelers or stuck sojourners. The brainchild of the Satmar Rebbe, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum ztz”l, the town was designed to provide a protected, rarified environment for the chassidim, minimalizing exposure to outside influences. Far from the cultural melting pots of Boro Park or Williamsburg, nestled at the nexus of mountains and highways, this enclave would allow the Satmar kehillah, violently uprooted from the hallowed shtetlach of Eastern Europe, the privacy to pursue their avodas Hashem in relative peace until Mashiach’s arrival.

That vision has largely held, and the kehillah’s location and strength of community allow it to serve as a powerful resource for chesed, kiddush Hashem, and hospitality. In recent years, it’s also become a destination for bochurim seeking a brief change of pace, an exploration of the new and different, and a spark of inspiration or flame of warmth.

Fortress of Chesed

Reb Yitzchok Shea Kornbluh is a Kiryas Joel icon. “He’s the type of person who will do anything for anyone,” a resident of the village tells me. “There’s nothing too difficult for him, nothing beneath him, when it comes to helping others. He’ll crawl under a bus if necessary, and host dozens of people minutes later. He stops at nothing.”

Kornbluh, a dispatcher for Chaveirim of KJ and all-around doer, has 13 children and a host of personal responsibilities; you would think he has enough on his plate. But for many people in trouble in the area, KJ is the answer, Kornbluh is the name, and his is the number.

The family hosts people who couldn’t make it to wherever they were going nearly every Shabbos. The first English word some of his children learned, trying to talk to impromptu guests, is “stuck.”

“The Satmar community is thrilled with the opportunity to do chesed and hachnassas orchim,” Reb Shea says, humbly deferring any credit or accolades. “Rav Yoelish of Satmar taught all the world the value of chesed. People often get stuck before Shabbos on the road nearby, and the kehillah takes them in and finds places for them.”

In January 2023, David Tanner, a young man who self-describes as “a clean-shaven, techeiles-sporting YU student,” was traveling from Washington Heights to Monticello for the YUnite shabbaton, when car trouble stranded him on Route 17. With the sun setting and no time to make it to his destination, he called Chaveirim, and quickly got into a taxi, giving the driver the Kornbluh’s address. “I was filled with apprehension,” David later wrote in The YU Commentator, the school’s student newspaper. “Would I be received kindly in the insular Satmar world of Kiryas Joel?”

Tanner was surprised to find himself warmly welcomed by everyone, and describes a wonderful Shabbos experience. “Davening was slow, loud, and meaningful,” he writes. “Everyone I made eye contact with said ‘Good Shabbos’ and ‘shalom aleichem,’ and asked where I was from.

“Reb Shea and I exchanged divrei Torah and zemiros,” Tanner continued. “Reb Shea was very curious about YU, and I was curious about the chinuch system in Kiryas Joel….” Other chassidim also had interesting exchanges with Tanner, on everything from Toras hachassidus to the writings of Rav Soloveitchik. He left with a changed perspective of chassidim, and an invitation to return — and for other bochurim from YU to visit as well. He has since been back several times, and has found the Shabbosim increasingly enriching.

On Erev Rosh Hashanah five years ago, a fire broke out in Yeshiva Ohr Naftoli, 20 minutes up the road from Kiryas Joel in New Windsor, New York. The fire was quickly extinguished, but the building suffered internal damage that rendered it uninhabitable for Yom Tov. Kornbluh, along with KJFD firefighter Yitzchok Bernath and askan Isaac Weinberger, leapt into action.

Kiryas Joel’s yeshivah gedolah was out of session for bein hazmanim at the time (they have bein hazmanim before Rosh Hashanah), and the three got to work transforming it into a temporary home for Ohr Naftoli. “We were moving furniture, seforim, and food for Yom Tov until right before the zeman,” Bernath says. “We didn’t look to see whom it was — there were Yiddisher kinder that needed help, and we were here to help.”

The results were spectacular, for both the yeshivah and the community. “Rosh Hashanah in Kiryas Joel was incredible,” says Rav Moshe Silberberg, rosh yeshivah of Ohr Naftoli. “You would never have imagined the bochurim were uprooted from everything they were used to,” Rabbi Nochum Rosenberg, 12th-grade rebbi, adds.

“Rosh Hashanah was beautiful… the bochurim davened with a flam fire!” Weinberger says, “I know they say it was a zechus for them. We feel the same way, we had the zechiah to have the yeshivah here.”

The chesed of the KJ kehillah is not limited to Jewish passers-by or neighbors. A non-Jewish family was traveling on Seven Springs Road near Kiryas Joel on Friday afternoon, minutes before Shabbos, when they realized their young daughter was having a seizure. “Her breathing was shallow, and she was turning blue,” the father later shared. They pulled over to the side of the road, and the father worked on the girl while her mother attempted to reach emergency services. Within moments, a resident of Kiryas Joel pulled over and called Hatzolah members directly, who arrived and began administering life-saving treatment.

“The men who came from KJ emergency services were so professional and on target on how to proceed forward with treatment and transport to the hospital,” the father wrote. “I thank my lucky stars that this occurred in KJ and not… somewhere else where we would have been on our own for several moments until help arrived. My daughter is okay like nothing ever happened. My wife and I are extremely grateful for the help we received….”