When the FBI Arrests the Main Figure in Your Story Three Hours After You Publish

Last Thursday around 5 A.M., the Forward posted my story about how the Satmar Hasidim had finally won their long war to take over a village in upstate New York.

At 8 A.M., hostilities resumed.

I went up to Bloomingburg on a Tuesday in late November. It was cold and rainy and miserable outside, but it was a respite from writing infinite stories about Donald Tump, so I was happy to go.

Bloomingburg is about an hour and a half north of Manhattan. I'd been up there once before, back in 2014, for a story about how locals were getting together to fight an Orthodox developer's plans to build a Satmar shtetl in their quiet village.

This time, on the opponents' side, the story was more or less the same. They were still angry, still lost in the byzantine details of their grievances, and still effectively helpless to stop what was happening to them.

On the developer's side, however, it was a whole new town. More Satmar families were moving in every day. A Satmar school was nearly ready to open, officials friendly to the developer controlled the local government, and someone had started a little Yiddish supermarket circular called the Bloomingburg Platform. The Satmar had won. So that's what I wrote, and that's what we put on the cover of the newspaper.

We called the story, "How the Satmar Won the Battle of Bloomingburg."

The Forward print edition goes to press on Wednesday night. My story ran in the paper Wednesday, and then went live online first thing the next morning. At 8 A.M. on Thursday, I started getting messages over WhatsApp from Hasidic sources relaying rumors that the FBI had arrested someone connected to Bloomingburg.

These days, early morning WhatsApp messages about FBI activity in the Orthodox community aren't so rare. There were FBI raids in Williamsburg and Rockland County earlier this year, and still-unexplained raids in Kiryas Joel in Orange County. That's not to mention the ongoing de Blasio scandal, which has all sorts of Orthodox angles. So, as I often do, I put in some calls to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney, and I waited to see if they panned out.

Sometime after 9, I started hearing that Shalom Lamm was among the men nabbed. I didn't believe it. Lamm was the main developer in Bloomingburg; the lead protagonist in the entire saga. He isn't just a real estate man — he's Modern Orthodox royalty; the son of Rabbi Norman Lamm, who led Yeshiva University for decades. The notion that he had been arrested seemed ridiculous, and I said so.

Around 10, a spokesman for Lamm's lawyer called to confirm that Lamm was in custody.

The indictment, which was unsealed around 11, was pretty stunning. I did my best to summarize it here: BREAKING: Shalom Lamm Charged in Bloomingburg Cash-For-Votes Scam

Later in the day, I tried to contextualize the arrests in this piece: What Does Developer's Arrest Mean for the Future of Hasidic Bloomingburg?

And the next day, I called opponents of Lamm's development to ask what they planned to do, and wrote about it here: Fresh War Over Hasidic Bloomingburg Looms

The indictment outlined an alleged plot to register ineligible voters to participate in village elections. I'd heard of the allegations, and I even mentioned them in passing in my original story. Opponents had told me that they were hoping for the FBI to take some action. It had sounded to me like the long-shot desperation of people avoiding reality.

Turns out, sometimes the long shot comes in. 

Best,

Josh