The place doesn't exactly reek of scandal. For perhaps half the men, the day is spent studying the Torah. Women devote their lives to raising families of six, seven and eight children.
Strollers seem to outnumber automobiles.
But across the Hudson River, in a federal courthouse in White Plains, a grand jury is investigating whether New Square sold its votes in last year's U.S. Senate race. Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the first lady, took 1,400 of New Square's 1,412 votes in November as she went on to defeat Republican Rick Lazio for the seat vacated by Daniel Moynihan's retirement. Two months later, over the objections of prosecutors, President Clinton commuted the sentences of four men from the village who had been convicted of stealing from federal anti-poverty programs. The New Square investigation appears focused on whether a deal was arranged during Hillary Clinton's August campaign visit to the village, where banners were hung in her honor, schoolgirls serenaded her in Yiddish and English, and she met with the community's leader, Rabbi David Twersky. Several Democratic officials who were at the August meeting say they've told FBI investigators that pardons were never mentioned.