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WAUCHULA, Fla. — With less than two hours until showtime, a man sits amid the backstage chaos and studies his image in a propped-up mirror. The eyes are grayish blue, the goatee trim, the long dark hair flecked with gray. Not there yet. He scoops another dab of makeup to continue the annual transformation of Mike Graham, now 58, into Jesus Christ, forever 33. An assistant hustles over with a sky-blue robe that an anxious Mr. Graham wriggles over his bare torso and summer shorts. “Too little on me,” he says apologetically, working his way out of it. Someone else asks him to assess a young girl’s angel costume. “I’d like her to be glittered,” he says, before asking whether the child has been warned how to behave around the camels.
Then the man who plays Jesus for a living turns back to his imperfect reflection.
For more than two decades, Mr. Graham, a preacher, has directed and assumed the lead role in a gritty Passion play, “The Story of Jesus,” that unfolds 10 nights a year in the modest Cattleman’s Arena, in rural Hardee County. Across its dirt-floor stage come chariots and sword fights, miracles and betrayals, exotic animals and a cast of hundreds.
Over time, Mr. Graham’s play has survived many trials, some natural, some economic and some, he suspects, the work of the devil. In 2004, the production weathered both the competition of the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of the Christ” and the wrath of a hurricane that nearly swept Wauchula away but spared the play’s many costumes and long-suffering donkey.
Other challenges, he says, have included his divorce years ago, which alienated many followers; a decline in attendance, due in part to competition from the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando; and other, curiously timed setbacks — a car accident, a sudden illness — that nearly prevented him from picking up his cross.
Finally, Mr. Graham knows the folly of trying to slow time, although he has tried. For one thing, he has enlisted a 27-year-old bridge inspector to play Jesus in certain taxing scenes. “He handles the Trial, the Ascension, the Resurrection,” Mr. Graham explains. “I do all the miracles, basically. The adult life of Jesus, the Last Supper, the garden of Gethsemane scene, and the Crucifixion.”
Mr. Graham cuts his hair just once a year, and works out every morning in his home gym so that he is able to carry a heavy cross dozens of yards across the stage. Still, he has no desire to follow the great Josef Meier, who played Jesus in performances in South Dakota and in Lake Wales, just north of here, well into his 80s. A miracle in itself.
For now, Mr. Graham must set aside these concerns, and focus. The first Passion play of the season is just 90 minutes away.
Props, Paint and Petting Zoo
Under the late-afternoon sun, white cast members take turns getting spray-painted a color called Sebring brown, a shade that Mr. Graham thinks approaches a Middle Eastern skin tone. A man in a “Sprayin’ & Prayin’ ” T-shirt dilutes the chocolate muck in plastic buckets, while another man, with a praying-hands tattoo on his left leg, paints a succession of outstretched arms, splayed legs and wincing faces.
This ritual is one of many that have evolved over the last quarter-century, ever since Mr. Graham, as a guitar-wielding youth pastor from southern Illinois, staged a crucifixion scene at a church banquet with a few teenagers and a couple of props. Some of those here tonight have never been in a Passion play; others have never known a spring without one. They are united now by glistening coats of Sebring brown.
Alongside the arena, clusters of ticketholders gather for some nonalcoholic tailgating, while a Roman centurion trots past on a horse. In a tent nearby, volunteers set out various souvenirs for sale, including cardboard license plates that say: The Story of Jesus — I Was There! — Wauchula, Florida.
A kind of off-limits petting zoo has sprung up beyond the arena’s back entrance, with pens containing ducks, sheep, horses, two oxen, a donkey and three camels, just arrived from Ocala. Their owner, Butch Rivers, 70, a former stunt rider who now uses a cane — “You pay for it,” he says of certain passions — is excited to see the play again.
“The first time I saw this play it put chills on me,” Mr. Rivers says.
An hour until showtime, and the Cattleman’s Arena awaits its first-century bustle. The dirt has been raked and sprayed with water, to keep the dust down. All soda cans and other remnants of the future have been removed. The still-life setting is as serene as the blue-dyed river dug into the dirt, stage right.
But just a few yards away, in an exhibit hall serving as backstage, a large industrial fan stirs the nervous air. Actors hunt through a long rack of costumes that runs beneath a portrait gallery of beauty queens, the “Cattlemen’s Sweethearts” of the near and distant past. Children wolf down treats and Gatorade before assuming the roles of angels and demons. Girding thespians reach for their fake spears and swords.
Behind the Scenes
Here is Joann Grantham, 56, volunteer prop master, who has done everything from scour discount stores for plastic fruit to retouch the throne of the child king. She has also helped to decide whether you’re a shop owner, an apostle or a member of the Sanhedrin. (Mr. Graham, by the way, is aware of the history of anti-Semitic Passion plays, and takes pains not to traffic in stereotypes.)
In the past, Ms. Grantham has often played a “false witness” who spits on Jesus. But she chose to remain behind the scenes this year, after undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for breast cancer. When she goes to Wal-Mart, she says, she wears a hat to cover her bald head, but tonight she feels at home, hatless and happy.
Here, too, is Michelle Puma, 54, volunteer makeup artist, who has set up shop in the 4-H Club’s concession booth. Everything is in its place: the long-haired wigs set on Styrofoam heads; the various jars of fake blood; the blue boxes of Jesus beards; the Ace Hardware bucket containing various props, including a crown of thorns.
One of Ms. Puma’s challenges is to make young people look older, which is the opposite of Mr. Graham’s task, as he peers critically into a mirror leaning against a menu board. “My hair’s just crazy tonight,” he says.
Mr. Graham’s words seem rooted more in worry than vanity. Because he deeply believes that this play is how God wants him to spread the Word, his mind races with all the things that could distract from that message, and have: camels arriving a week late, a teenager texting on stage, a stray chicken flying out of Lazarus’s tomb. How about the time a couple of camera-carrying tourists wandered into the John the Baptist crowd scene?
He is also thinking of a shortfall. The production costs about $250,000 a year, which includes the modest salaries for Mr. Graham and his wife, Diane, who will play Mary Magdalene tonight, and various rentals, from the arena to the camels ($1,000 a night).
And, of course, here he is again, trying to be 33. But Mr. Graham has a plan: to replace “The Story of Jesus,” at least next year, with a new production, “The Story of Noah,” featuring himself in the lead role of the biblical patriarch, who was said to have lived several hundred years. Maybe someday, if he raises enough money, he will be able to build an outdoor theater of his own.
Fifteen minutes to showtime. Mr. Graham, now in full Jesus attire, climbs on top of a table, near a sign promoting beef (“Real Food for Real People”), and uses a microphone to deliver some last-minute reminders.
No cellphones. No gum. No glasses. No watches. And if you’re a teenage girl who is wondering, “Can I hang out with the Sanhedrin?” — the answer is no!
Mr. Graham leads everyone in a short prayer and a rallying hymn, then releases his energized flock with:
“Let’s go! Do it!”
A Happy Ending
Showtime, and on a dirt stage in a darkened arena, the Story unfolds again.
An innkeeper, played by a Sebring-brown student of Harley-Davidson mechanics, leads a couple to shelter. The baby Jesus, played by an infant named Angelina, is raised triumphantly into the air, while four white-robed angels, teenage girls strapped into harnesses, glide by pulley across the ceiling.
Hear the wails of mothers whose baby boys have been slaughtered by Herod’s soldiers. See the colorful scrum of early commerce. Breathe the dust kicked up by the scurry of sheep and the plodding of oxen. Marvel as Jesus raises a child from the dead, halts the stoning of an adulteress and, thanks to a concealed harness and a fog machine, walks on water.
During the brief intermission, take in the orange-blossom air of the Florida night. Buy a “Story of Jesus” fan for $2. Enjoy some nachos, or a bowl of mini doughnuts slathered with whipped cream. Return, then, to brace for the bloody, violent passion. The scourging, the spitting, the echo of nails hammered into hands and feet. The death.
But everyone in the aluminum bleachers knows: This is not how the play ends.
Soon the resurrected Jesus returns to the stage in glory. His crown of gold glittering, his sword raised high, he races back and forth on a galloping steed, perfect in its whiteness. The applause and cheers of 1,400 ring through a rodeo arena in central Florida.
When it is over, Mr. Graham, exhausted, 58, ready to do it again tomorrow, takes the microphone to thank the audience and ask for parting donations. And if anyone wants to be baptized, there are robes, towels and a manmade river dyed a deep blue.
Then the man who plays Jesus for a living turns back to his imperfect reflection.
For more than two decades, Mr. Graham, a preacher, has directed and assumed the lead role in a gritty Passion play, “The Story of Jesus,” that unfolds 10 nights a year in the modest Cattleman’s Arena, in rural Hardee County. Across its dirt-floor stage come chariots and sword fights, miracles and betrayals, exotic animals and a cast of hundreds.
Over time, Mr. Graham’s play has survived many trials, some natural, some economic and some, he suspects, the work of the devil. In 2004, the production weathered both the competition of the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of the Christ” and the wrath of a hurricane that nearly swept Wauchula away but spared the play’s many costumes and long-suffering donkey.
Other challenges, he says, have included his divorce years ago, which alienated many followers; a decline in attendance, due in part to competition from the Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando; and other, curiously timed setbacks — a car accident, a sudden illness — that nearly prevented him from picking up his cross.
Finally, Mr. Graham knows the folly of trying to slow time, although he has tried. For one thing, he has enlisted a 27-year-old bridge inspector to play Jesus in certain taxing scenes. “He handles the Trial, the Ascension, the Resurrection,” Mr. Graham explains. “I do all the miracles, basically. The adult life of Jesus, the Last Supper, the garden of Gethsemane scene, and the Crucifixion.”
Mr. Graham cuts his hair just once a year, and works out every morning in his home gym so that he is able to carry a heavy cross dozens of yards across the stage. Still, he has no desire to follow the great Josef Meier, who played Jesus in performances in South Dakota and in Lake Wales, just north of here, well into his 80s. A miracle in itself.
For now, Mr. Graham must set aside these concerns, and focus. The first Passion play of the season is just 90 minutes away.
Props, Paint and Petting Zoo
Under the late-afternoon sun, white cast members take turns getting spray-painted a color called Sebring brown, a shade that Mr. Graham thinks approaches a Middle Eastern skin tone. A man in a “Sprayin’ & Prayin’ ” T-shirt dilutes the chocolate muck in plastic buckets, while another man, with a praying-hands tattoo on his left leg, paints a succession of outstretched arms, splayed legs and wincing faces.
This ritual is one of many that have evolved over the last quarter-century, ever since Mr. Graham, as a guitar-wielding youth pastor from southern Illinois, staged a crucifixion scene at a church banquet with a few teenagers and a couple of props. Some of those here tonight have never been in a Passion play; others have never known a spring without one. They are united now by glistening coats of Sebring brown.
Alongside the arena, clusters of ticketholders gather for some nonalcoholic tailgating, while a Roman centurion trots past on a horse. In a tent nearby, volunteers set out various souvenirs for sale, including cardboard license plates that say: The Story of Jesus — I Was There! — Wauchula, Florida.
A kind of off-limits petting zoo has sprung up beyond the arena’s back entrance, with pens containing ducks, sheep, horses, two oxen, a donkey and three camels, just arrived from Ocala. Their owner, Butch Rivers, 70, a former stunt rider who now uses a cane — “You pay for it,” he says of certain passions — is excited to see the play again.
“The first time I saw this play it put chills on me,” Mr. Rivers says.
An hour until showtime, and the Cattleman’s Arena awaits its first-century bustle. The dirt has been raked and sprayed with water, to keep the dust down. All soda cans and other remnants of the future have been removed. The still-life setting is as serene as the blue-dyed river dug into the dirt, stage right.
But just a few yards away, in an exhibit hall serving as backstage, a large industrial fan stirs the nervous air. Actors hunt through a long rack of costumes that runs beneath a portrait gallery of beauty queens, the “Cattlemen’s Sweethearts” of the near and distant past. Children wolf down treats and Gatorade before assuming the roles of angels and demons. Girding thespians reach for their fake spears and swords.
Behind the Scenes
Here is Joann Grantham, 56, volunteer prop master, who has done everything from scour discount stores for plastic fruit to retouch the throne of the child king. She has also helped to decide whether you’re a shop owner, an apostle or a member of the Sanhedrin. (Mr. Graham, by the way, is aware of the history of anti-Semitic Passion plays, and takes pains not to traffic in stereotypes.)
In the past, Ms. Grantham has often played a “false witness” who spits on Jesus. But she chose to remain behind the scenes this year, after undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for breast cancer. When she goes to Wal-Mart, she says, she wears a hat to cover her bald head, but tonight she feels at home, hatless and happy.
Here, too, is Michelle Puma, 54, volunteer makeup artist, who has set up shop in the 4-H Club’s concession booth. Everything is in its place: the long-haired wigs set on Styrofoam heads; the various jars of fake blood; the blue boxes of Jesus beards; the Ace Hardware bucket containing various props, including a crown of thorns.
One of Ms. Puma’s challenges is to make young people look older, which is the opposite of Mr. Graham’s task, as he peers critically into a mirror leaning against a menu board. “My hair’s just crazy tonight,” he says.
Mr. Graham’s words seem rooted more in worry than vanity. Because he deeply believes that this play is how God wants him to spread the Word, his mind races with all the things that could distract from that message, and have: camels arriving a week late, a teenager texting on stage, a stray chicken flying out of Lazarus’s tomb. How about the time a couple of camera-carrying tourists wandered into the John the Baptist crowd scene?
He is also thinking of a shortfall. The production costs about $250,000 a year, which includes the modest salaries for Mr. Graham and his wife, Diane, who will play Mary Magdalene tonight, and various rentals, from the arena to the camels ($1,000 a night).
And, of course, here he is again, trying to be 33. But Mr. Graham has a plan: to replace “The Story of Jesus,” at least next year, with a new production, “The Story of Noah,” featuring himself in the lead role of the biblical patriarch, who was said to have lived several hundred years. Maybe someday, if he raises enough money, he will be able to build an outdoor theater of his own.
Fifteen minutes to showtime. Mr. Graham, now in full Jesus attire, climbs on top of a table, near a sign promoting beef (“Real Food for Real People”), and uses a microphone to deliver some last-minute reminders.
No cellphones. No gum. No glasses. No watches. And if you’re a teenage girl who is wondering, “Can I hang out with the Sanhedrin?” — the answer is no!
Mr. Graham leads everyone in a short prayer and a rallying hymn, then releases his energized flock with:
“Let’s go! Do it!”
A Happy Ending
Showtime, and on a dirt stage in a darkened arena, the Story unfolds again.
An innkeeper, played by a Sebring-brown student of Harley-Davidson mechanics, leads a couple to shelter. The baby Jesus, played by an infant named Angelina, is raised triumphantly into the air, while four white-robed angels, teenage girls strapped into harnesses, glide by pulley across the ceiling.
Hear the wails of mothers whose baby boys have been slaughtered by Herod’s soldiers. See the colorful scrum of early commerce. Breathe the dust kicked up by the scurry of sheep and the plodding of oxen. Marvel as Jesus raises a child from the dead, halts the stoning of an adulteress and, thanks to a concealed harness and a fog machine, walks on water.
During the brief intermission, take in the orange-blossom air of the Florida night. Buy a “Story of Jesus” fan for $2. Enjoy some nachos, or a bowl of mini doughnuts slathered with whipped cream. Return, then, to brace for the bloody, violent passion. The scourging, the spitting, the echo of nails hammered into hands and feet. The death.
But everyone in the aluminum bleachers knows: This is not how the play ends.
Soon the resurrected Jesus returns to the stage in glory. His crown of gold glittering, his sword raised high, he races back and forth on a galloping steed, perfect in its whiteness. The applause and cheers of 1,400 ring through a rodeo arena in central Florida.
When it is over, Mr. Graham, exhausted, 58, ready to do it again tomorrow, takes the microphone to thank the audience and ask for parting donations. And if anyone wants to be baptized, there are robes, towels and a manmade river dyed a deep blue.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/us...ef=todayspaper
By SAM ROBERTS
The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.
And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.
About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.
About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.
Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.
Women marry young, remain in the village to raise their families and, according to religious strictures, do not use birth control. As a result, the median age (under 12) is the lowest in the country and the household size (nearly six) is the highest. Mothers rarely work outside the home while their children are young.
Most residents, raised as Yiddish speakers, do not speak much English. And most men devote themselves to Torah and Talmud studies rather than academic training — only 39 percent of the residents are high school graduates, and less than 5 percent have a bachelor’s degree. Several hundred adults study full time at religious institutions.
The concentration of poverty in Kiryas Joel, (pronounced KIR-yas Jo-EL) is not a deliberate strategy by the leaders of the Satmar sect, said Joel Oberlander, 30, a title examiner who lives in Williamsburg. “It puts a great strain on their resources,” he said. “They would love to see the better earners of the community relocate as well to balance the situation, but why would they?”
Still, the Census Bureau’s latest poverty estimates, based on the 2005-9 American Community Survey released last year, do not take into account the community’s tradition of philanthropy and no-interest loans. Moreover, some families may be eligible for public benefits because they earn low salaries from the religious congregations and other nonprofit groups that run businesses and religious schools. Nearly half of the village’s residents with jobs work for the public or parochial schools.
“If people want to work in a religious setting and make less than they would earn at B & H, that’s a choice people make,” said Gedalye Szegedin, the village administrator, referring to the giant photo and video retail store in Manhattan whose owner and many of whose employees are members of the Satmar sect.
“I don’t want to be judgmental,” Mr. Szegedin added. “I wouldn’t call it a poor community. I would say some are deprived. I would call it a community with a lot of income-related challenges.”
Because the community typically votes as a bloc, it wields disproportionate political influence, which enables it to meet those challenges creatively. A luxurious 60-bed postnatal maternal care center was built with $10 million in state and federal grants. Mothers can recuperate there for two weeks away from their large families. Rates, which begin at $120 a day, are not covered by Medicaid, although, Mr. Szegedin said, poorer women are typically subsidized by wealthier ones.
One lawmaker, Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, a Republican who represents an adjacent district in Orange County, has demanded an investigation by state officials into why Kiryas Joel received grants for the center. “They may be truly poor on paper,” Ms. Calhoun said. “They are not truly poor in reality.”
The village does aggressively pursue economic opportunities. A kosher poultry slaughterhouse, which processes 40,000 chickens a day, is community owned and considered a nonprofit organization. A bakery that produces 800 pounds of matzo daily is owned by one of the village’s synagogues.
Most children attend religious schools, but transportation and textbooks are publicly financed. Several hundred handicapped students are educated by the village’s own public school district, which, because virtually all the students are poor and disabled, is eligible for sizable state and federal government grants.
Statistically, no place comes close to Kiryas Joel. In Athens, Ohio, which ranks second in poverty, 56 percent of the residents are classified as poor.
Still, poverty is largely invisible in the village. Parking lots are full, but strollers and tricycles seem to outnumber cars. A jeweler shares a storefront with a check-cashing office. To avoid stigmatizing poorer young couples or instilling guilt in parents, the chief rabbi recently decreed that diamond rings were not acceptable as engagement gifts and that one-man bands would suffice at weddings. Many residents who were approached by a reporter said they did not want to talk about their finances.
New housing on the rise in Kiryas Joel. Public assistance is common: about half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and federal housing vouchers
“I cannot say as a group that they are cheating the system,” said William B. Helmreich, a sociology professor who specializes in Judaic studies at City College of the City University of New York, “but I do think that they have, no pun intended, unorthodox methods of getting financial support.”
All of which prompts a fundamental question: Are as many as 7 in 10 Kiryas Joel residents really poor?
“It is, in a sense, a statistical anomaly,” Professor Helmreich said. “They are clearly not wealthy, and they do have a lot of children. They spend whatever discretionary income they have on clothing, food and baby carriages. They don’t belong to country clubs or go to movies or go on trips to Aruba.
“They’re not scrounging around, though. They’re not presenting a picture of poverty as if you would go to a Mexican neighborhood in Corona. They do have organizations that lend money interest-free. They’re also supported by members of the community who are wealthier — it’s not declarable income if somebody buys them a baby carriage.”
David Jolly, the social services commissioner for Orange County, also said that while the number of people receiving benefits seemed disproportionately high, the number of caseloads — a family considered as a unit — was much less aberrant. A family of eight who reports as much as $48,156 in income is still eligible for food stamps, although the threshold for cash assistance ($37,010), which relatively few village residents receive, is lower.
Joel Steinberg, who lives in the village with his family and works as a comptroller for a real estate firm, said that before Passover, “the No. 1 project in the community was raising funds for food.”
Mr. Steinberg recalled encountering a neighbor soliciting help door-to-door last fall: “He had received two shut-off notices from his utility company, he’s behind with tuition and that his food stamps gets used up before the end of the month. He’s paying too much for transportation to his job, and he had had an unexpected expense that forced him into debt.”
William E. Rapfogel, chief executive of the Metropolitan Jewish Council on Poverty, said, “Sure, there are probably people taking advantage and people in the underground economy getting benefits they’re not entitled to, but there are also a lot of poor people.”
Mr. Szegedin, the village administrator, said critics tended to forget that state taxpayers were generally spared because thousands of village children are enrolled in religious schools. Nearby, the Monroe-Woodbury school district, with roughly the same school-age population, spends about $150 million annually, about one-third of which comes from the state. (Albany provides about $5 million of Kiryas Joel’s $16 million public school budget.)
“You also have no drug-treatment programs, no juvenile delinquency program, we’re not clogging the court system with criminal cases, you’re not running programs for AIDS or teen pregnancy,” he said. “I haven’t run the numbers, but I think it’s a wash.”
The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.
And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.
About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.
About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.
Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.
Women marry young, remain in the village to raise their families and, according to religious strictures, do not use birth control. As a result, the median age (under 12) is the lowest in the country and the household size (nearly six) is the highest. Mothers rarely work outside the home while their children are young.
Most residents, raised as Yiddish speakers, do not speak much English. And most men devote themselves to Torah and Talmud studies rather than academic training — only 39 percent of the residents are high school graduates, and less than 5 percent have a bachelor’s degree. Several hundred adults study full time at religious institutions.
The concentration of poverty in Kiryas Joel, (pronounced KIR-yas Jo-EL) is not a deliberate strategy by the leaders of the Satmar sect, said Joel Oberlander, 30, a title examiner who lives in Williamsburg. “It puts a great strain on their resources,” he said. “They would love to see the better earners of the community relocate as well to balance the situation, but why would they?”
Still, the Census Bureau’s latest poverty estimates, based on the 2005-9 American Community Survey released last year, do not take into account the community’s tradition of philanthropy and no-interest loans. Moreover, some families may be eligible for public benefits because they earn low salaries from the religious congregations and other nonprofit groups that run businesses and religious schools. Nearly half of the village’s residents with jobs work for the public or parochial schools.
“If people want to work in a religious setting and make less than they would earn at B & H, that’s a choice people make,” said Gedalye Szegedin, the village administrator, referring to the giant photo and video retail store in Manhattan whose owner and many of whose employees are members of the Satmar sect.
“I don’t want to be judgmental,” Mr. Szegedin added. “I wouldn’t call it a poor community. I would say some are deprived. I would call it a community with a lot of income-related challenges.”
Because the community typically votes as a bloc, it wields disproportionate political influence, which enables it to meet those challenges creatively. A luxurious 60-bed postnatal maternal care center was built with $10 million in state and federal grants. Mothers can recuperate there for two weeks away from their large families. Rates, which begin at $120 a day, are not covered by Medicaid, although, Mr. Szegedin said, poorer women are typically subsidized by wealthier ones.
One lawmaker, Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, a Republican who represents an adjacent district in Orange County, has demanded an investigation by state officials into why Kiryas Joel received grants for the center. “They may be truly poor on paper,” Ms. Calhoun said. “They are not truly poor in reality.”
The village does aggressively pursue economic opportunities. A kosher poultry slaughterhouse, which processes 40,000 chickens a day, is community owned and considered a nonprofit organization. A bakery that produces 800 pounds of matzo daily is owned by one of the village’s synagogues.
Most children attend religious schools, but transportation and textbooks are publicly financed. Several hundred handicapped students are educated by the village’s own public school district, which, because virtually all the students are poor and disabled, is eligible for sizable state and federal government grants.
Statistically, no place comes close to Kiryas Joel. In Athens, Ohio, which ranks second in poverty, 56 percent of the residents are classified as poor.
Still, poverty is largely invisible in the village. Parking lots are full, but strollers and tricycles seem to outnumber cars. A jeweler shares a storefront with a check-cashing office. To avoid stigmatizing poorer young couples or instilling guilt in parents, the chief rabbi recently decreed that diamond rings were not acceptable as engagement gifts and that one-man bands would suffice at weddings. Many residents who were approached by a reporter said they did not want to talk about their finances.
New housing on the rise in Kiryas Joel. Public assistance is common: about half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and federal housing vouchers
“I cannot say as a group that they are cheating the system,” said William B. Helmreich, a sociology professor who specializes in Judaic studies at City College of the City University of New York, “but I do think that they have, no pun intended, unorthodox methods of getting financial support.”
All of which prompts a fundamental question: Are as many as 7 in 10 Kiryas Joel residents really poor?
“It is, in a sense, a statistical anomaly,” Professor Helmreich said. “They are clearly not wealthy, and they do have a lot of children. They spend whatever discretionary income they have on clothing, food and baby carriages. They don’t belong to country clubs or go to movies or go on trips to Aruba.
“They’re not scrounging around, though. They’re not presenting a picture of poverty as if you would go to a Mexican neighborhood in Corona. They do have organizations that lend money interest-free. They’re also supported by members of the community who are wealthier — it’s not declarable income if somebody buys them a baby carriage.”
David Jolly, the social services commissioner for Orange County, also said that while the number of people receiving benefits seemed disproportionately high, the number of caseloads — a family considered as a unit — was much less aberrant. A family of eight who reports as much as $48,156 in income is still eligible for food stamps, although the threshold for cash assistance ($37,010), which relatively few village residents receive, is lower.
Joel Steinberg, who lives in the village with his family and works as a comptroller for a real estate firm, said that before Passover, “the No. 1 project in the community was raising funds for food.”
Mr. Steinberg recalled encountering a neighbor soliciting help door-to-door last fall: “He had received two shut-off notices from his utility company, he’s behind with tuition and that his food stamps gets used up before the end of the month. He’s paying too much for transportation to his job, and he had had an unexpected expense that forced him into debt.”
William E. Rapfogel, chief executive of the Metropolitan Jewish Council on Poverty, said, “Sure, there are probably people taking advantage and people in the underground economy getting benefits they’re not entitled to, but there are also a lot of poor people.”
Mr. Szegedin, the village administrator, said critics tended to forget that state taxpayers were generally spared because thousands of village children are enrolled in religious schools. Nearby, the Monroe-Woodbury school district, with roughly the same school-age population, spends about $150 million annually, about one-third of which comes from the state. (Albany provides about $5 million of Kiryas Joel’s $16 million public school budget.)
“You also have no drug-treatment programs, no juvenile delinquency program, we’re not clogging the court system with criminal cases, you’re not running programs for AIDS or teen pregnancy,” he said. “I haven’t run the numbers, but I think it’s a wash.”
