[Click on image to ENLARGE it. R’ Zalman Leib is seen sitting next to his father ZATZAL.]

ROL: Supporters of Rabbi Zalmen Teitelbaum won a huge victory yesterday in their five-year-long legal brawl with followers of his brother, Aron, for control of Satmar Hasidic synagogues and other assets in Brooklyn.

An appeals court panel in Brooklyn issued two rulings siding with Zalmen’s faction.One affirmed a lower court decision from 2004 that left Zalmen’s side in charge of the Satmar congregation in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn by refusing to intervene in what was deemed an off-limits religious dispute.The other overturned a decision Stewart Rosenwasser made in February as an acting state Supreme Court justice in Orange County, a decision that waded firmly into the religious dispute and declared Aron’s side the winners.

The long-awaited decisions by the Appellate Division of Supreme Court are a stinging defeat for Aron Teitelbaum, who has led the dominant Satmar congregation in Kiryas Joel for a quarter century and was long seen as the heir apparent to the Satmar crown.

Read the New York Times article about this story by clicking HERE.