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Moving To Monticello by Malky Lowinger
Moving To Monticello
An Inside Peek into a New Upstate Year-Round Community
BY MALKY LOWINGER
Imagine being a young Chassidic couple with two or three kids living in a high-rise building somewhere in Williamsburg. You know it’s time to move out of your cramped 2-bedroom apartment with the laundry room in the basement and the elevator out of service much of the time. So you start to look for housing only to discover that there’s barely anything available and that the prices are sky high, not just in Williamsburg but also in Boro Park, Monsey, and Monroe.
You’re basically stuck in this little hovel staring out the window at the asphalt and the crowded sidewalks.
Unless you are willing to consider moving to Monticello.
Yes, Monticello. Located in the center of Sullivan County on 4.1 square miles of land, the village of Monticello boasts a population of close to 7,000 as well as a county jail, a local radio station, and the Monticello Raceway. In its heyday, Monticello was the center of the Borscht Belt entertainment district with trendy shops and boutiques lining its main street, Broadway. But those days are long gone, and much of Broadway has become derelict and abandoned over the past few decades.
Today, there’s a thriving summer-focused community in the area with tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews spending the summer (and increasingly the spring and fall) in the various bungalow colonies, developments, resorts, camps, and hotels in the area around Monticello and beyond. It’s a thriving, pulsating bed of activity from June through September, and the construction never seems to end.
But you knew all that already.
What you may not know is that an increasing number of mostly Chassidic young families are deciding to make the town of Monticello their yearround home. And the trend is catching on, quietly but steadily. WHEN the Chassidic community recognizes an opportunity, they do what they have to do to make it work. And with the housing market in traditional areas all but maxed out, they look for alternative solutions. So began the renaissance of the Monticello Jewish community. By now, an estimated 80-100 families have moved in.
Year-round Orthodox communities in the Catskills are not a new concept. A small yeshiva community is based near the South Fallsburg Yeshiva and is comprised mostly of kollel yungeleit. An established Vizhnitz community is located in Kiamesha on the site of the old Gibber’s Hotel. A Breslov community currently exists in Liberty. And pockets of frum Jews live in the towns of Woodridge, Mountaindale, and beyond.
A coordinator for Catskills Hatzolah comments on the growing year-round population in Sullivan County. “Just five years ago,” he said, “we had one Hatzolah ambulance stationed upstate for emergency situations. Today, we have four, plus a full-time paramedic who is stationed all year in the Raleigh Hotel.”
He estimates that there are about 500 families living in the area year-round, with an increasing number of shops and stores open all year to accommodate them.
I visited the Chassidic community in Monticello, located off Broadway, behind Fialkoff’s Pizza. Cruising around the area, I saw groups of young Chassidic girls playing jump rope and boys riding their bikes while a non-Jewish neighbor looked on from his own porch across the street. The houses are modest but there’s a front lawn and a backyard and gently sloping tree-lined streets. Compared to the asphalt sidewalks of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, it’s a slice of Heaven.
The community was born four or five years ago when ten brave young Chassidic families decided to move upstate mostly because it was easier to obtain social services there than back in the city. These families rented their homes, and, to be honest, most of them eventually moved back to Monsey and Williamsburg. Winters were hard, chinuch was complicated, and family was a hundred miles away.
But one family decided to stay. They liked the peace and quiet, the front lawn and the backyard and the crisp clean air. And of course, they were thrilled with the cost of housing.
Rabbi Yakov Mandelovics lives in the burgeoning Monticello community, and he says the average home in the area is being sold for $160$180K. No, that’s not a typo. He says his neighbor purchased a home on a two-acre property for $234K. And another neighbor spent $129K on a beautiful brick house.
As the demand for homes steadily grew, developers and investors began looking seriously at construction opportunities in the area. With a limited number of homes on the market, the community split into two neighborhoods, about twenty minutes walking distance from each other. There are already three shuls serving the
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4 1. The cheder boys during the kevias mezuzah of the cheder building; 2. Putting up the mezuzah on the cheder building a few weeks ago; 3. At the chumash seudah on Sunday; 4. The community’s shul
community, as well as Monticello’s renowned Landfield Avenue Synagogue.
Rabbi Mandelovics, who is also the administrator for the mossad, acknowledges the community’s amazing growth, but he insists it’s not just about the price.
“Like me, a lot of people came here from Monsey, Williamsburg, and Boro Park,” he shares. “We saw an opportunity to be a part of something new. We come from big kehillos where we’re surrounded by family and friends, but at the end of the day, we were just another number. We never felt choshuv.
“Here, it’s totally different. We matter. We are like one big family. We come to shul and we learn and we daven and we shmooze, all with the same people. It’s not so much about the price. It’s also the lifestyle.”
It’s a self-made kehilla, and it’s also a study in achdus. Families from Satmar, Skver, Klausenberg, and Rachmanstrivka all live together in harmony.
“All these kids learn together in cheder,” Rabbi Mandelovics says. “The fathers daven and learn together. And everyone gets along.”
Chaya, who lives on Nelshore, says that the families may be members of different kehilos but the community is actually quite homogeneous, sharing the same language, the same dress code, and the same Torah values.
The biggest issue, notes Rabbi Mandelovics, is chinuch. At first, the community sent their young children to the Vizhnitz Cheder in Kiamesha. But eventually they grew too big, and busing became a huge headache so they decided to open their own mosdos. A cheder with just ten children and a girl’s preschool with nine little girls were started. Two buildings were recently purchased to house the mosdos, and the community just celebrated a new milestone – their very first Chumash seudah.
What about the older children?
“Most of the original families left,” Chaya says. “Anyone with older girls had to move out. There’s no local high school for them and that means they had to travel to Monsey or Monroe.”
But as younger families move in, the infrastructure is already being set up for them. The small class sizes, compared to the big city, is an attractive bonus to many newcomers. At the end of the day, it’s the mosdos ha’chinuch that give a community a sense of permanence and stability.
I ask Chaya about the cold winters upstate, and she acknowledges that “yes, it does snow. A lot.”
She expects her kids to be home several times during the winter for snow days, although she admits that this past winter was especially hard. But the snowy weather is expected, and Monticello roads are promptly and properly cleaned as soon as the snow stops falling.
Shopping can be a challenge, especially in a community where the women don’t drive and are accustomed to finding everything they need just down the block on Lee Avenue or 13th Avenue. But the women figured out creative solutions, and they make it work. A year-round grocery in Kiamesha provides van service for the women of the community to do their shopping. And a supermarket in Monroe arranges deliveries on a regular basis.
As the community grows, the entrepreneurial spirit thrives. One community member opened a children’s shoe store; another one opened a Shabbos take-out store. There’s also a dry good store, and a women’s wear shop operating out of people’s homes. When all else fails, there are car services available to take the women to their destinations.
This summer, a new mall opened in Monticello within walking distance to the community. It’s a study in contrasts. Honda Odyssey minivans are parked alongside pick-up trucks in the mall’s spacious parking lot. An Aldi and a Dollar Tree sit on one end of the mall, and a Schreiber’s kosher market is on the other end. Shoppers can visit Chezky’s Pizza, Merkaz Judaica, and the Shabbos
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5. The Suklener Rebbe from Monsey visiting the community; 6. The kids playing in cheder
Depot, as well as Rialto Wines, a hair salon, and, for those who are not part of the community, a non-kosher Chinese restaurant.
Rabbi Mandelovics notes that some members of the community have found parnassah in the construction industry.
“We have an electrician and two plumbers who live and work here, as well as a few guys in real estate management. That’s besides the seforim store, the Shabbos Depot, a computer kiosk, and a shoe store that are owned by members of our community,” he says.
Living far from extended family can be difficult, especially in a community where it’s customary to walk to the shvigger on Shabbos afternoons and attend vach nachts and sholom zachors on a regular basis. But those who live here have made peace with the fact that they won’t be attending every family simcha back in Brooklyn.
On the other hand, living far from family is what makes this community so cohesive and united.
“We need each other,” Chaya explains. “We don’t have our parents or in-laws here, so we depend on one another. It’s like one big, happy family.”
Will the “big, happy family” continue to grow and to live happily ever after?
No one can predict the future. But Rabbi Benzion Chanowitz, the rav of Monticello’s Landfield Synagogue for twenty-six years, is not surprised that this unique Jewish community seems to be setting up roots. He says there’s always been a steady and faithful frum community in the town, and the shul has consistently had a minyan over the years.
He seems pretty confident when he says, “There’s no question that this community is here to stay. And it’s certainly growing.”
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