New Square is an all-Hasidic village in the town of Ramapo, Rockland County, New York, United States. It is located north of Hillcrest, east of Viola, south of New Hempstead, and west of New City. As of the 2020 United States census, it had a population of 9,679. Its inhabitants are predominantly members of the Skverer Hasidic movement who seek to maintain a Hasidic lifestyle disconnected from the secular world. It is the poorest town in New York, and the eighth poorest in the United States. It also has the highest poverty rate, at 64.4%.
A 2008 election poster in front of a store in New Square, entirely in Yiddish. The candidate names are written in Yiddish.
Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism, is a religious movement within Judaism that arose as a spiritual revival movement in Poland and contemporary Western Ukraine, during the 18th century, and spread rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most of those affiliated with the movement, known as hassidim, reside in Israel and in the United States.
A tish of the Boyan Hasidic dynasty in Jerusalem, holiday of Sukkot, 2009
Rebuilt synagogue of the Baal Shem Tov.
Rebbe Yisroel Hopsztajn, a great promulgator of Hasidism in Poland, blessing acolytes c. 1800. Hasidism gave the elite Tzadik a social mystical role.
The Kaliver Rebbe, Holocaust survivor, inspiring his court on the festival of Sukkot