USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW — A new book by Professor Nomi Stolzenberg and co-author David N. Myers, a professor of history at UCLA, illustrates paradoxes of American law via an in-depth portrait of an upstate New York town of Hasidic Jews that rejects the values of mainstream America while utilizing secular American law and politics to exist as a separate community. American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (2022, Princeton University Press) examines how the enclave, settled in the 1970s, exists as a separatist society on American soil – particularly relevant at a time when separatism and recession are openly discussed as solutions to political polarization. “Once we [stop] pretending there’s a distinction between public and private action, a fundamental normative question emerges: do we want to continue to maintain laws in a way that facilitates separatism?” says Stolzenberg. “How far will we let this go, for [a community] to live according to their own law and exempt from laws of state?”