K.J. Satmarstry to block wife's leaving

By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record - February 11, 2006


Kiryas Joel - When police arrived at the apartment building that Sunday afternoon in December, a crowd had gathered on Lizensk Boulevard for what appeared to be a domestic dispute that had somehow aroused a lot of attention.

Since then, a curious tale has emerged, one of a teenage Jewish couple spirited out of the Middle Eastern country of Yemen 11 years ago and absorbed into this insular Hasidic community. This is where they had seven children in rapid succession and then found themselves at loggerheads.

What went wrong in the Alnahari household is a matter of dispute, soon to play out in Family Court. Seven young children are caught in the middle, pawns in a larger struggle involving the Satmar Hasidim and the Yemenite Jews they rescued from persecution.

The Satmar hosts are cast as sinister prison guards, bent on separating Yemenite children from their parents; the self-described rescuers are reviled for seeking to corrupt fellow Jews by dispatching them to a secular Israel.

The story might have stayed within the Satmar world, but for the repeated police involvement. The conflict rose a notch when state troopers arrested three men who allegedly forced their way into the Alnahari apartment to berate the 27-year-old mother, Sanaa, and two women who have been helping her.

Felony burglary charges were filed against Israel Grunhut, 27; Issac Weinstock, 29; and Israel Rolnitsky, 44. The three Kiryas Joel men were briefly held in the Orange County Jail in Goshen until each posted $25,000 cash bail.

Virtually no one involved in the case wanted to discuss it yesterday. The lone exception was Barbara Strauss, a Goshen lawyer representing Sanaa's 29-year-old husband, Youssef, in his pending custody battle with his wife.

"It would be nice," she said, "if everyone got out of Mr. and Mrs. Alnaharis' business. It's just a sad situation."

What keeps drawing crowds to the Alnaharis' basement apartment - including yesterday - is the presence of two women determined to help the wife: Yocheved Mauda, a Yeminite immigrant who lived in Kiryas Joel for 17 years; and Rina Birnbaum, an Israeli immigrant who lives in New City.

They claim the husband conspired with Satmar authorities last year to commit Sanaa to a psychiatric ward for six weeks and place the couple's 2-month-old baby and six other children with various families while she was away. They have shuttled her to the state police barracks to file complaints and to Family Court, where they helped her petition for custody.

The husband, meanwhile, has told police and the court that his wife suffered post-partum depression and threatened suicide before she was committed to a New York City hospital last year. He claims he temporarily placed the children in other homes so she wouldn't be overwhelmed when she came home.

In Kiryas Joel, residents familiar with the situation believe Mauda and Birnbaum are trying to spirit Sanaa Alnahari and her children off to Israel. Satmar members regard Israel as an abomination and a secular society. They believe the Bible dictates that Israel shouldn't exist until the Messiah comes.

Their revulsion for Israel induced some community members to visit Yemen in the 1990s and collect its remaining Jews, whose customs held a unique link to the world of the ancient Jews. Most Yeminite Jews had fled to Israel decades earlier to escape persecution in the predominantly Muslim country.

Interviewed in December, Sanaa Alnahari, who speaks little English, gave no indication she actually wanted to go to Israel. She didn't seem at all certain what she wanted, except to have her children back. At that time, four of the seven children had been retrieved by Mauda or found their way home. Two more were returned.

The baby, who is reportedly disabled, was brought home, but is now in another foster home.