Satu Mare, a formerly Hungarian town in today’s Romania, is known in Yiddish as Satmar and considered to be the historic home of the Satmar Hasidim. Now headquartered in Brooklyn and in Kiryas Joel, Satmar is the world’s largest Hasidic movement and accounts for a substantial number of Yiddish speakers in the US, Israel, and elsewhere. While only a portion of Satmar Hasidim have direct ancestral ties to the town of Satu Mare, which today has only a very small Jewish community, all acknowledge the town’s importance in the history of the movement.
Satu Mare, Romania