Meanings
- A village in Orange County, New York, United States, coterminous with the town of Palm Tree.
The village of Kiryas Joel, coterminous with the town of Palm Tree, is a well-known Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community.
2025 June 6, Lana Bellamy, “Orthodox communities see surge in population”, in Times Union, archived from the original on 03 Jul 20252 more examples
Settled in the mid-1970s by a small contingent of Hasidic families, Kiryas Joel is an American town with few parallels in Jewish history—but many precedents among religious communities in the United States.
2024 March 21, “American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York”, in UC Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies, archived from the original on 01 Apr 2025Oliveira couldn’t seem to decide if the point of his videos was to make a point about welfare — he vacillates between claiming Orthodox Jews are engaged in fraud and acknowledging they legitimately qualify for programs like Medicaid and food stamps that he doesn’t think taxes should pay for, at least when it comes to large Jewish families — or to hold up the Jewish communities in Kiryas Joel and Lakewood as models for white Americans.
2026 February 25, Arno Rosenfeld, “After Minneapolis, a YouTuber comes for Jewish ‘welfare queens’”, in The Forward, archived from the original on 27 Feb 2026
Origin
- Yiddishקרית יואל
- EnglishKiryas Joel
Borrowed from Yiddish קרית יואל (kris yual).
More words from Yiddish
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Kiryas Joel. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Kiryas%20Joel
“Kiryas Joel.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Kiryas%20Joel. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Kiryas Joel,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Kiryas%20Joel.
Source: Kiryas Joel on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.