[...] Anouk Markovits's I AM FORBIDDEN, an English-language debut which takes the reader inside the world of the Satmar, the most insular and fundamentalist of Hasidic sects.Assiduous (just now!) Googling reveals that Markovits is a novelist. No other information is available as we
Showing posts with label Chasidim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chasidim. Show all posts
4/11/11
I Am Forbidden
In this morning's Publishers Lunch, the following "new deal" is included as a tidbit:
go to press quickly hit the Publish button.
12/16/09
ABBA in Borough Park
Social scientists rethink the relationship between Chasidim and modernity.
Sometime in 2001, if you were a Chasidic woman in Borough Park, you would have noticed a teacher's assistant who looked out of place at your daughter's school. You would have been familiar with non-Jews and non-religious Jews from their stores and magazines. But you would never have expected someone not quite right to be in your daughter's classroom. She was nice enough, an intelligent woman with a shearling coat who spoke a good Yiddish. But it was clear what she was not: a haymishe fro, a Chasidic woman. You went to the principal to voice your concerns. Could it be that outside influences had invaded your daughter's school so easily?
The woman was politely asked to work somewhere else, and she did. Once in a while you saw her in the community, though never again at that school. But who was she?
You heard from your friends that she was a Jew from a non-religious home, studying in a university to be some kind of professor. She was Ayala Fader, an anthropologist - and her subject was not an obscure group of hunters near the Amazon, but the Chasidim, and how Chasidic girls are raised to a particular kind of devotion.
* * *
Perhaps you have thought of Chasidim as a pre-modern, separatist sect, with their own strange costumes, quaint language, and deliberately different, even contrarian customs. But - according to a nascent body of work by researchers interested in contemporary Chasidim - you would be wrong. It is not how Chasidim avoid modernity which enables them to survive as a self-defined group, but how they negotiate with, cleverly re-interpret, and, in the final analysis, appropriate modernity as their own.
Fader (an associate professor of anthropology at Fordham University and author of the new book "Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn" (2009: Princeton University Press) asks the same question about the Chasidim that you would: how can they participate only piecemeal in the surrounding world? Not, Fader says, because they are ignorant of its attractions or advantages, but out of religious and philosophical reasons: "they use the sense of their own authenticity, including a nostalgia for a lost, purer past in Eastern Europe, to make this historical moment just one more point in a redemptive narrative." Our superficially new modernity is just a repackaging of the same old Exile.
Many of the details of Fader's research have to do with raising Chasidic children, the "mitzvah girls" of her title. What is the special religious instruction tailored to Chasidic 5-year-olds? There is none: "these 'choices' [of daily life for children] are socialized in [Chasidic] kids through everyday interactions, not religious training." Fader spent hours and hours with her tape recorder, observing just what social interactions make up the Chasidic child: no, you can't draw a purple apple because apples aren't purple - even if the imagination would like to suggest it; no, you can't ask what the Mishnah is because girls don't learn about the Mishnah - even if you might be curious about it. When the proper choices are socialized by thousands of interactions with parents and teachers, they become second nature.
But conscious choices even in an area as rooted in the unconscious as language, also play a role in the self-definition of Chasidim. Sarah Benor, a sociolinguist at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, has written about the strategies used by Jews of different varieties to construct their version of Jewishness. Much as the Jewish English of American liberal Jews is not a distinct language, or dialect, but rather a repertoire of words and phrases consciously chosen for effect, Chasidic Jews flit between Englished Yiddish and Yiddished English to display their status to the outside world and mark their own status within their world.
Social interactions and language - somewhere on the border of conscious and unconscious activity - are important to the self-definition of Chasidim. But what about those elements of culture which people choose because they relieve the monotony? In other words: what about fun?
Asya Vaisman, a research fellow in Jewish studies at the University of Washington, recently defended her doctoral thesis at Harvard on the Yiddish songs and singing of Chasidic women. She tells a story from her research which shows that music, like language, helps define Chasidic separateness despite its porousness: "A Belz woman in London told me that her daughter was 'naughty' once and used songs by ABBA for the melodies in one Hasidic production." The headmistress had never heard ABBA, so she approved the songs. On its surface, the lesson of the story is clear: non-Chasidic culture (like ABBA) can only be allowed in if its provenance is hidden or denied. But the point might be even more subtle: as long as the maxims of cultural restriction are obeyed, the odd outside influence can slip through (and productively used) without undermining the foundations.
Today's researchers into Chasidic culture might thus be coming to a new consensus. Perhaps ten or twenty years ago, Chasidim were seen as a defiantly separatist sect, whose entire raison d'etre is a thoroughgoing opposition to modernity. Now Chasidim are seen (as Fader puts it) as creators of another, parallel modernity which communicates with our own. Only through understanding these dual modernities can we appreciate the importance of the niggun that comes from a secular Yiddish poem; the hairstyle which is "shtoddy" (fashionable) but not too much; the shifting from "Toyre" (with a Yiddish accent) to "Torah" and back again in order to "pass" as more or less modern.
Do Chasidim themselves see modernity as negotiable? R., a Yiddish journalist with a day job in finance, said via e-mail, "There are good and bad sides to modernity like anything else. I think a Chasid can extract the good elements from modernity: (relative) openness to other schools of thought and a readiness to change one's worldview, in the framework of traditional observance."
Katle Kanye is a Chasidic blogger. In contrast to R., he is skeptical about the modernity of Chasidim. "Modernity is fine. It keeps the house warm, you can use it to fly to see the rebbe a few times a year, view a menorah lighting from seven thousand miles away, visit the best doctors. If that's modernity, why not? But the fact that these discoveries didn't come about by themselves but are the fruit of free-thinkers including Darwin, Hume, Mill and other heretics - this the Chasidim don't understand and don't even recognize. When a Chasidic graphic designer sits with Coral or Photoshop and creats beautiful graphics, he might be so holy that he uses the Internet only for earning a livelihood. Then go explain to him that his art began with the painters of naked ladies in the Met, and he'll tell you that's not art, that's lust with a tie on."
Katle Kanye puts his finger on a weakness in Fader's depiction of Chasidic life as more in parallel with than in opposition to modernity. If we strip away everything that makes modernity a unique historical movement (the focus on the individual, the search for newness, the innovation in every sphere of life even to the extent of the abandonment of formerly universal truths), then what are we - or the putatively modern Chasidim - left with besides the name?
Nomi Stolzenberg, a professor of law at USC, is looking closely at these contradictions in the context of Kiryas Joel, New York - a town which has remained a predominantly Chasidic enclave through its inhabitants' creative, even contradictory, use of the principles of liberal democracy. How does a modern, liberal, secular political/legal regime enable Kiryas Joel to survive? It would not be a surprise if Stolzenberg's answer ends up having a lot in common with the findings of Fader, Vaisman, and Benor: Chasidim make use of modernity as they finesse its significance.
Recently I got a phone call from a Chasid, who asked, "Can you tell me what I should read to introduce myself to secular culture?" He was adamant that he did not want to leave his community, but only wanted to know what books to read to get exposure to "other ideas." After learning about Chasidim and modernity, I now want to know: is he seeking to become more modern, more Chasidic, or both?
Sometime in 2001, if you were a Chasidic woman in Borough Park, you would have noticed a teacher's assistant who looked out of place at your daughter's school. You would have been familiar with non-Jews and non-religious Jews from their stores and magazines. But you would never have expected someone not quite right to be in your daughter's classroom. She was nice enough, an intelligent woman with a shearling coat who spoke a good Yiddish. But it was clear what she was not: a haymishe fro, a Chasidic woman. You went to the principal to voice your concerns. Could it be that outside influences had invaded your daughter's school so easily?
The woman was politely asked to work somewhere else, and she did. Once in a while you saw her in the community, though never again at that school. But who was she?
You heard from your friends that she was a Jew from a non-religious home, studying in a university to be some kind of professor. She was Ayala Fader, an anthropologist - and her subject was not an obscure group of hunters near the Amazon, but the Chasidim, and how Chasidic girls are raised to a particular kind of devotion.
* * *
Perhaps you have thought of Chasidim as a pre-modern, separatist sect, with their own strange costumes, quaint language, and deliberately different, even contrarian customs. But - according to a nascent body of work by researchers interested in contemporary Chasidim - you would be wrong. It is not how Chasidim avoid modernity which enables them to survive as a self-defined group, but how they negotiate with, cleverly re-interpret, and, in the final analysis, appropriate modernity as their own.
Fader (an associate professor of anthropology at Fordham University and author of the new book "Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn" (2009: Princeton University Press) asks the same question about the Chasidim that you would: how can they participate only piecemeal in the surrounding world? Not, Fader says, because they are ignorant of its attractions or advantages, but out of religious and philosophical reasons: "they use the sense of their own authenticity, including a nostalgia for a lost, purer past in Eastern Europe, to make this historical moment just one more point in a redemptive narrative." Our superficially new modernity is just a repackaging of the same old Exile.
Many of the details of Fader's research have to do with raising Chasidic children, the "mitzvah girls" of her title. What is the special religious instruction tailored to Chasidic 5-year-olds? There is none: "these 'choices' [of daily life for children] are socialized in [Chasidic] kids through everyday interactions, not religious training." Fader spent hours and hours with her tape recorder, observing just what social interactions make up the Chasidic child: no, you can't draw a purple apple because apples aren't purple - even if the imagination would like to suggest it; no, you can't ask what the Mishnah is because girls don't learn about the Mishnah - even if you might be curious about it. When the proper choices are socialized by thousands of interactions with parents and teachers, they become second nature.
But conscious choices even in an area as rooted in the unconscious as language, also play a role in the self-definition of Chasidim. Sarah Benor, a sociolinguist at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, has written about the strategies used by Jews of different varieties to construct their version of Jewishness. Much as the Jewish English of American liberal Jews is not a distinct language, or dialect, but rather a repertoire of words and phrases consciously chosen for effect, Chasidic Jews flit between Englished Yiddish and Yiddished English to display their status to the outside world and mark their own status within their world.
Social interactions and language - somewhere on the border of conscious and unconscious activity - are important to the self-definition of Chasidim. But what about those elements of culture which people choose because they relieve the monotony? In other words: what about fun?
Asya Vaisman, a research fellow in Jewish studies at the University of Washington, recently defended her doctoral thesis at Harvard on the Yiddish songs and singing of Chasidic women. She tells a story from her research which shows that music, like language, helps define Chasidic separateness despite its porousness: "A Belz woman in London told me that her daughter was 'naughty' once and used songs by ABBA for the melodies in one Hasidic production." The headmistress had never heard ABBA, so she approved the songs. On its surface, the lesson of the story is clear: non-Chasidic culture (like ABBA) can only be allowed in if its provenance is hidden or denied. But the point might be even more subtle: as long as the maxims of cultural restriction are obeyed, the odd outside influence can slip through (and productively used) without undermining the foundations.
Today's researchers into Chasidic culture might thus be coming to a new consensus. Perhaps ten or twenty years ago, Chasidim were seen as a defiantly separatist sect, whose entire raison d'etre is a thoroughgoing opposition to modernity. Now Chasidim are seen (as Fader puts it) as creators of another, parallel modernity which communicates with our own. Only through understanding these dual modernities can we appreciate the importance of the niggun that comes from a secular Yiddish poem; the hairstyle which is "shtoddy" (fashionable) but not too much; the shifting from "Toyre" (with a Yiddish accent) to "Torah" and back again in order to "pass" as more or less modern.
Do Chasidim themselves see modernity as negotiable? R., a Yiddish journalist with a day job in finance, said via e-mail, "There are good and bad sides to modernity like anything else. I think a Chasid can extract the good elements from modernity: (relative) openness to other schools of thought and a readiness to change one's worldview, in the framework of traditional observance."
Katle Kanye is a Chasidic blogger. In contrast to R., he is skeptical about the modernity of Chasidim. "Modernity is fine. It keeps the house warm, you can use it to fly to see the rebbe a few times a year, view a menorah lighting from seven thousand miles away, visit the best doctors. If that's modernity, why not? But the fact that these discoveries didn't come about by themselves but are the fruit of free-thinkers including Darwin, Hume, Mill and other heretics - this the Chasidim don't understand and don't even recognize. When a Chasidic graphic designer sits with Coral or Photoshop and creats beautiful graphics, he might be so holy that he uses the Internet only for earning a livelihood. Then go explain to him that his art began with the painters of naked ladies in the Met, and he'll tell you that's not art, that's lust with a tie on."
Katle Kanye puts his finger on a weakness in Fader's depiction of Chasidic life as more in parallel with than in opposition to modernity. If we strip away everything that makes modernity a unique historical movement (the focus on the individual, the search for newness, the innovation in every sphere of life even to the extent of the abandonment of formerly universal truths), then what are we - or the putatively modern Chasidim - left with besides the name?
Nomi Stolzenberg, a professor of law at USC, is looking closely at these contradictions in the context of Kiryas Joel, New York - a town which has remained a predominantly Chasidic enclave through its inhabitants' creative, even contradictory, use of the principles of liberal democracy. How does a modern, liberal, secular political/legal regime enable Kiryas Joel to survive? It would not be a surprise if Stolzenberg's answer ends up having a lot in common with the findings of Fader, Vaisman, and Benor: Chasidim make use of modernity as they finesse its significance.
Recently I got a phone call from a Chasid, who asked, "Can you tell me what I should read to introduce myself to secular culture?" He was adamant that he did not want to leave his community, but only wanted to know what books to read to get exposure to "other ideas." After learning about Chasidim and modernity, I now want to know: is he seeking to become more modern, more Chasidic, or both?
12/8/09
How liberal Jews can be as successful as Chasidim
I'm a modern Jew, trying to live in a way both authentically Jewish and culturally liberal. I enjoy ubiquitous technology and freedom of thought. My daughter can be a rabbi, a scholar, an artist, or something else entirely, unfettered by restrictions. But are we modern, liberal Jews still going to be around in a few decades? If my granddaughter will still be a Jew, what kind of Jew will she be?
The Hasids hold up their allegiance to their way of life, and none other, as an answer to these questions. No, I am not an authentic Jew. My Judaism is endangered by modernity. Liberal women are led astray by their freedoms. My granddaughter will be without any particular ethnic identity at all.
As a proportion of the Jewish community, liberal Jews are decreasing and fundamentalist groups (including Hasids) are growing. They spill over into neighboring communities and their towns (like Kiryas Joel in upstate New York) split at the seams. I worry they might be right. Perhaps liberal Jews are doomed to extinction.
Is there a way we can hold on to what we believe in and not be washed away by the surrounding culture? What can the Hasids teach us about being Jews in modernity, and is there anything about their techniques which we liberal Jews can learn from?
I've asked this question of myself time and again, because I am fascinated by Hasidim. I am by turns attracted and repelled by a Jewish group succeeding beyond all expectations despite predictions a few decades ago of their imminent demise, while motivated by ideologies that are in large measure strange and forbidding to me.
I feel a kinship to them for two reasons: one, they are Jews, and like them I am religiously observant (though in a way they don't recognize as observant); and two, I speak Yiddish. Because of this kinship, I have spent time with and developed meaningful friendships -- and some adversarial relationships -- with a number of Hasids, read a considerable amount of their contemporary literature, and devoted quite a bit of thought to the question of what liberal Jews can learn from Hasidim. I have done this while trying (in my Yiddish writing) to defend liberal Jewish ideology to Hasidim.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if liberal Judaism's ideologies and cultural institutions were to enjoy success and relatively ensured longevity, just like the Hasids, while keeping to our own liberal, Jewish values? At times I have thought that we should emulate Hasidic success by copying Hasidic strategies As a strange contemporary Jewish type - the Yiddishist - I have thought that we should, like the Hasids, retreat into an isolated community and talk Yiddish to each other. And I have thought that that might also be a solution to the difficulties of the other Jewish ideologies I identify with. If Conservative Judaism is most successful in scattered enclaves outside of New York (mostly college towns), why not found a Conservative enclave in the middle of nowhere? If we care enough about what we believe in, shouldn't we be willing to retreat behind the walls to keep out what will wash away our way of life?
The reason why this wouldn't work is obvious. We liberal Jews are modern, and we find value in that. Every interaction between Jewish and non-Jewish culture is not a source of anguish but the normal material of our life. It would be weird for us to choose to interact only with Jews, even if they were liberal Jews. That would take away our modernity.
So we can't build walls - or rather, if we are to be consistent with our ideologies, we can't. What should our survival strategy be? We can't set out to win the demographic war, as our lifestyle doesn't lend itself to strategic procreation. Perhaps (as many contemporary Jewish organizations seem to believe) we should make Jewish life as attractive as possible. Let's send young people to Israel, and maybe on the way to their paid vacation they will find meaning in Zionism. Let's try and create entertaining Jewish events which will pull in the disaffected and unaffiliated.
Such a strategy, however, becomes caught up in itself. If we are always reaching out with a Jewish liberal modernity, when do we start reaching in? What is it, after all, we want to preserve?
This is the most important lesson the Hasidim can teach us, even if we are unwilling or unable to build walls. Their way of life is successful, picturesque, rich, and in many ways meaningful, but its approach is one we cannot take. It is not for the obvious reasons that we are not Hasidic, and their ideology is not ours - that goes without saying. It is because of what their success teaches us about how movements can work: in spite of, not because of worries about survival.
I feel a kinship to them for two reasons: one, they are Jews, and like them I am religiously observant (though in a way they don't recognize as observant); and two, I speak Yiddish. Because of this kinship, I have spent time with and developed meaningful friendships -- and some adversarial relationships -- with a number of Hasids, read a considerable amount of their contemporary literature, and devoted quite a bit of thought to the question of what liberal Jews can learn from Hasidim. I have done this while trying (in my Yiddish writing) to defend liberal Jewish ideology to Hasidim.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if liberal Judaism's ideologies and cultural institutions were to enjoy success and relatively ensured longevity, just like the Hasids, while keeping to our own liberal, Jewish values? At times I have thought that we should emulate Hasidic success by copying Hasidic strategies As a strange contemporary Jewish type - the Yiddishist - I have thought that we should, like the Hasids, retreat into an isolated community and talk Yiddish to each other. And I have thought that that might also be a solution to the difficulties of the other Jewish ideologies I identify with. If Conservative Judaism is most successful in scattered enclaves outside of New York (mostly college towns), why not found a Conservative enclave in the middle of nowhere? If we care enough about what we believe in, shouldn't we be willing to retreat behind the walls to keep out what will wash away our way of life?
The reason why this wouldn't work is obvious. We liberal Jews are modern, and we find value in that. Every interaction between Jewish and non-Jewish culture is not a source of anguish but the normal material of our life. It would be weird for us to choose to interact only with Jews, even if they were liberal Jews. That would take away our modernity.
So we can't build walls - or rather, if we are to be consistent with our ideologies, we can't. What should our survival strategy be? We can't set out to win the demographic war, as our lifestyle doesn't lend itself to strategic procreation. Perhaps (as many contemporary Jewish organizations seem to believe) we should make Jewish life as attractive as possible. Let's send young people to Israel, and maybe on the way to their paid vacation they will find meaning in Zionism. Let's try and create entertaining Jewish events which will pull in the disaffected and unaffiliated.
Such a strategy, however, becomes caught up in itself. If we are always reaching out with a Jewish liberal modernity, when do we start reaching in? What is it, after all, we want to preserve?
This is the most important lesson the Hasidim can teach us, even if we are unwilling or unable to build walls. Their way of life is successful, picturesque, rich, and in many ways meaningful, but its approach is one we cannot take. It is not for the obvious reasons that we are not Hasidic, and their ideology is not ours - that goes without saying. It is because of what their success teaches us about how movements can work: in spite of, not because of worries about survival.
What does this mean? Take two examples of successful, relatively recent (in historical terms) Jewish ideologies. Zionism was not predicated on the notion fhat the Jewish population of Eastern Europe would be nearly exterminated in the Holocaust. To be sure, many Zionist thinkers predicted that Diaspora Jewry was untenable, but as a general matter this claim has proven to be unfounded (the American Jewish community is in no danger of extinction). The success of Zionism has to do with the success of the ideology: Jews constructing a modern Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Whatever its flaws, that country does exist, thanks to Zionism. The ideology has succeeded. Even if Jewish communities around the world thrived, and Israel were comparatively small and insignificant in terms of Jewish life, its success would still be significant.
Similarly, Hasidism as a culture is not merely a means to an end of survival. Hasidim have large families and live lives of chosen isolation because they believe strongly that their observance of strict Jewish law is the only way to God's approval. If, through some demographic or historical quirk, this caused them suffering or disappearance, they would still feel this way. Their ideology - by their lights - would still be a success.
So I come to the conclusion that my worries aren't wrong, necessarily (maybe modern, liberal Jews are bound to decrease in numbers), just misplaced. If we believe that contact with non-Jews and a wide variety of ideas is beneficial to us, if we think that a spectrum of Jewish practice and culture is valuable, and if we own up to these ideologies with confidence, we can be free of the relentless demographic drumbeat which our own worries and the worries of our institutional demographers pummel us with. We can be confident, modern, liberal Jews, in other words, and succeed by doing what we believe in, whether or not our communities and adherents grow by leaps and bounds. We can be as successful as the Hasidim even if we can never be fruitful and multiply, or be as picturesquely isolated, as they are.
5/11/09
Chasidic Yiddish blogger Katle Kanye on the swine flu
Original here. Translation mine.
The truth is that we Chasidim haven't been so impressed by the swine flu from the beginning. Yes, it's gotten to South America, Europe, and even Israel. But that sort of thing usually doesn't interest a Chasid too much, and a "God have mercy"or a "it shouldn't happen to us!" can take care of it. So folks in New York have gotten it too? I assume you're familiar with the verse "and all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings"! And which cheder pupil doesn't know about the plague of blood when the Egyptians bought water from the Jews - so what's the difference here? ...They said about AIDS that it would eat up the whole world, but like the lice in Egypt it stopped at the Chasidic zip codes. Just like the miracle of the shemittah farmers who clearly see their blessings compared to their neighbors, all the maladies I visited upon Egypt are not seen or found among those who are meticulous in their observance of commandments both major and minor. So much the more so in this case because we don't eat the flesh of pigs - their hoof is cloven but the cud they do not chew - and we're in the month of Iyar, which stands for I, God, am your healer.
The catastrophe is though that - whether it's really true or they're just saying it - two yeshiva students from Mir got it. Oh my teachers and rabbis, death has risen to our windows, come to our palaces and the Angel of Death is attracted to white shirts and black hats too. Now it's a tragedy. I know the experts say that it's easier to get infected on the train than it is from a Chasid's achoo on the other side of the Mediterranean, but what do the experts know? They say the world's getting warm but the kutchme sellers aren't yelling for a bailout. When Chasidic young men get it it's a whole other story. It's our concern now, so we need to get in touch with the Chasidic doctors and move mountains.
Nevertheless, as they say, in all labor there is profit, or as the goyim say, every cloud has a silver lining. A truly God-fearing Jew feels a spiritual satisfaction, a feeling that we're not left out, we're on the guest list too. Leave it to the Jews: if there's something to pick up in the world you can bet that we won't be left behind. We might look different but there's nothing we don't have. We'll get there. We won't just get there, we'll make the whole business our own by giving it a name. Make a mishebeirach, change pig to Mexico, and confuse the devil just like we do on the eve of Rosh Hashanah... from a swine's flu you can make a silk purse, or a shtreimel.
1/28/09
"Women like women's things": Chasidic Women's Magazines
The name mentioned most often in the November issue was not Obama but Hashem. This is Binah, "the weekly magazine for the Jewish woman."
Read my article in Nextbook. There's even one reader comment already, about a zillion percent more than I usually get here (what's 1 divided by 0?)! Sure, the comment doesn't make much sense (something to do with the "liberal-arts outlook," whatever that is supposed to mean), but that's the price of free speech.
6/2/08
Chasidim complain about Maimonides?
Last week's issue of Zeitshrift, a Yiddish magazine from Monsey, has this cover headline in red and black:
The Truth About Maimonides Medical CenterInside is a 15 (!)-page article about the hospital, its detractors, and its defenders.
Community leaders and dozens of former patients complain to Zeitshrift about negative treatment in the Borough Park hospital - Some leaders say that other hospitals aren't any better - What can we do to improve the situation?
4/3/08
Titsher!
Katle Kanye brings shalekh-mones (Purim gifts) to a neighborhood English teacher (a titsher is an instructor for secular subjects among Yiddish-speaking Chasidim). Translation mine.
We rang the doorbell and the door was opened by a Jew of about sixty, short, with a pointy beard, in a white shirt without a tallit katan, and with a black yarmulke - but made of cloth. In other words a yekke-ish Jew. I mean, we're talking about titshers and except for a convert or a newly religious person it's really rare to see a Chasidic titsher. My nephew, as a matter of fact, has a Chasidic titsher, born and bred into holiness, who teaches the kids English - in Yiddish. If they can teach Hebrew in Yiddish, why not English? As to what they call him: Titsher Felberblum. Since he's a rebbe in the mornings what to call him is a momentous question. If they called him Rebbe Felberblum that would mean that a rebbe is teaching English to the children, something which shouldn't be seen or found. If they call him Mister Felberblum that would mean they're calling a melamed Mister - but then the people would cry out at this dishonor they stabbed our Rabbi, they knocked down our Rabbi! So then what did they do? Just calling him titsher would be fine for goyim or goyish Jews. But you can't refer to as titsher a Chasid with a gartel and shoes and long socks, someone who calls his fellow an evil name has no part in the World to Come. A compromise was hit upon: Titsher Felberblum. This incorporates both his Jewish name and his profession of secular studies. Thus the Torah doesn't God forbid come to be shamed, and the morning melamed's glory remains in its place.
12/25/06
The Great Charedi Smoke-Out
Cheers to Toldos Aharon!
I read here (via Yiddish Wikipedia) that the present rebbe of the Toldos Aharon sect issued two new edicts (takones) on Chanukah of this year - the traditional season for such things among this group of Chasidim. (I think the present rebbe is Rabbi Duvid Kahn, but Chasidic schismatics make my head spin.)
One takone has to do with not eating salad on Shabbos (I won't go into the reasons here). But the other is wonderful: it requires that adherents give up smoking for one day a week other than Shabbos (when religious Jews can't smoke anyway owing to prohibitions against burning). Maybe a few years from now smoking can be edict-ed out of existence in this group altogether!
Cheers to Toldos Aharon!
I read here (via Yiddish Wikipedia) that the present rebbe of the Toldos Aharon sect issued two new edicts (takones) on Chanukah of this year - the traditional season for such things among this group of Chasidim. (I think the present rebbe is Rabbi Duvid Kahn, but Chasidic schismatics make my head spin.)
One takone has to do with not eating salad on Shabbos (I won't go into the reasons here). But the other is wonderful: it requires that adherents give up smoking for one day a week other than Shabbos (when religious Jews can't smoke anyway owing to prohibitions against burning). Maybe a few years from now smoking can be edict-ed out of existence in this group altogether!
6/6/04
Yemenites out of Monsey: smuggling, rescue, or both?
I don't begin to understand the recent news story about the cloak-and-dagger doings of the Jewish Agency for Israel (aka the Sokhnut), which, according to the Agency, smuggled out of Monsey part of a family of Yemenite Jews, supposedly taken there by Satmar Chassidim against their will. (Not by force, but rather, claims the Sokhnut, by false promises and deception.)
I don't doubt that such kidnappings occur, but I also wonder how many Yemen families, or parts thereof, find satisfactory lives among the Satmar. Which of these outcomes is more common? What happened in this case?
You won't find even an attempt at an answer in the articles I read. Haaretz, as well as some other newspapers, basically reprint the press release of the Jewish Agency. (Whoops - that last link is to an article in the Jerusalem Post, but it reads like a press release from the Sokhnut, and it's reprinted on the Jewish Agency's Web site.)
The article in the [Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam] Journal News is quite a bit better in some respects. For example, at least the headline ("Agency claims it rescued family") acknowledges that some facts might need to be clarified, and the newspaper goes to the trouble to interview some Satmar sources. There's also the following interesting tidbit: "A Israeli Consulate official in New York would neither confirm nor deny the report, but said smuggling is definitely not something Israel is not involved in under any circumstances."
The most important point, and maybe the most accurate take on the situation, is buried in the middle of the article:
Asrim Issak, president of the Yemenite Jewish Federation of New York, said yesterday that the Satmars respect the Yemenite Jews' devout Judaism and ancient traditions. But, he said, the Satmars don't want the Yemenites immigrating to Israel. He said Satmar schools that accept Yemenite children force them to speak Yiddish and take up Satmar religious customs.
"I am critical of the Satmars and anyone else that bring Jews out of Yemen without a plan to help them," Issak said. "They take them out of Yemen and throw them into the streets without housing, education and jobs."
The question is this: what is meant by that phrase "the Satmars [sic] don't want the Yemenites immigrating to Israel"? Were the children's passports taken from them - i.e., were they kidnapped? No one seems to bring any facts to answer the question. As was asked on the Volokh Conspiracy a couple of days ago, why weren't the police called in by the Sokhnut?
Before I start making fun of the obvious errors, I should again emphasize that this is the best article that I've read on the story. It emphasizes the important fact that the Yemenites are being exploited in a mini-Kulturkampf. What really happened, and what the Yemenites agreed to, is still unclear - but we're closer to knowing now.
Here are the idiotic parts of the article. We hear from Michael Landsberg, who runs the Jewish Agency's Aliyah Delegation in North America. "Landsberg's family died in the Holocaust," says the reporter. A fascinating and relevant fact, to be sure! Certainly there are no Holocaust victims among the Satmar ancestors. Neither were the Yemenite families persecuted in the not-so-distant past . . .
Here's another wall-pounder:
"The Satmar promised to take them to a 'golden land,' but when they got here they found themselves in more of a Yiddish-speaking shtetl," Landsberg said, using the Yiddish word for small, insular town. "I am serving my people."
"Shtetl" means "small, insular town"? I guess "suburb" must mean "confining, lawn-lined site of Cheever short stories." I suppose also that the speaking of Yiddish (mirabile dictu!) is prima-facie evidence that the Yemenites were being exploited.
Yet another one:
Many of the Yemenite Jews have maintained their ultra-Orthodox traditions going back 2,500 years.
I wouldn't have used the word "ultra-Orthodox", especially in an article featuring both the Yemenites and the Satmar Chasidim.
Update: The Forward has an article this week. Things are still murky, with each side accusing the other of kidnapping. Given, however, that the Yemenite family was moved to an immigrant-absorption center, it seems unlikely that they merely wanted to visit an ailing mother. The real question is now getting clearer: if the Yemenites were in fact kidnapped, why didn't they or the Jewish Agency say anything to the police? Perhaps the Sokhnut kept things under wraps, for fear that the murkiness of the story might create difficulties for their mission.
The JTA has a good article, in which Samuel Heilman expounds on the obvious mini-Kulturkampf that's behind the story.
I don't begin to understand the recent news story about the cloak-and-dagger doings of the Jewish Agency for Israel (aka the Sokhnut), which, according to the Agency, smuggled out of Monsey part of a family of Yemenite Jews, supposedly taken there by Satmar Chassidim against their will. (Not by force, but rather, claims the Sokhnut, by false promises and deception.)
I don't doubt that such kidnappings occur, but I also wonder how many Yemen families, or parts thereof, find satisfactory lives among the Satmar. Which of these outcomes is more common? What happened in this case?
You won't find even an attempt at an answer in the articles I read. Haaretz, as well as some other newspapers, basically reprint the press release of the Jewish Agency. (Whoops - that last link is to an article in the Jerusalem Post, but it reads like a press release from the Sokhnut, and it's reprinted on the Jewish Agency's Web site.)
The article in the [Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam] Journal News is quite a bit better in some respects. For example, at least the headline ("Agency claims it rescued family") acknowledges that some facts might need to be clarified, and the newspaper goes to the trouble to interview some Satmar sources. There's also the following interesting tidbit: "A Israeli Consulate official in New York would neither confirm nor deny the report, but said smuggling is definitely not something Israel is not involved in under any circumstances."
The most important point, and maybe the most accurate take on the situation, is buried in the middle of the article:
Asrim Issak, president of the Yemenite Jewish Federation of New York, said yesterday that the Satmars respect the Yemenite Jews' devout Judaism and ancient traditions. But, he said, the Satmars don't want the Yemenites immigrating to Israel. He said Satmar schools that accept Yemenite children force them to speak Yiddish and take up Satmar religious customs.
"I am critical of the Satmars and anyone else that bring Jews out of Yemen without a plan to help them," Issak said. "They take them out of Yemen and throw them into the streets without housing, education and jobs."
The question is this: what is meant by that phrase "the Satmars [sic] don't want the Yemenites immigrating to Israel"? Were the children's passports taken from them - i.e., were they kidnapped? No one seems to bring any facts to answer the question. As was asked on the Volokh Conspiracy a couple of days ago, why weren't the police called in by the Sokhnut?
Before I start making fun of the obvious errors, I should again emphasize that this is the best article that I've read on the story. It emphasizes the important fact that the Yemenites are being exploited in a mini-Kulturkampf. What really happened, and what the Yemenites agreed to, is still unclear - but we're closer to knowing now.
Here are the idiotic parts of the article. We hear from Michael Landsberg, who runs the Jewish Agency's Aliyah Delegation in North America. "Landsberg's family died in the Holocaust," says the reporter. A fascinating and relevant fact, to be sure! Certainly there are no Holocaust victims among the Satmar ancestors. Neither were the Yemenite families persecuted in the not-so-distant past . . .
Here's another wall-pounder:
"The Satmar promised to take them to a 'golden land,' but when they got here they found themselves in more of a Yiddish-speaking shtetl," Landsberg said, using the Yiddish word for small, insular town. "I am serving my people."
"Shtetl" means "small, insular town"? I guess "suburb" must mean "confining, lawn-lined site of Cheever short stories." I suppose also that the speaking of Yiddish (mirabile dictu!) is prima-facie evidence that the Yemenites were being exploited.
Yet another one:
Many of the Yemenite Jews have maintained their ultra-Orthodox traditions going back 2,500 years.
I wouldn't have used the word "ultra-Orthodox", especially in an article featuring both the Yemenites and the Satmar Chasidim.
Update: The Forward has an article this week. Things are still murky, with each side accusing the other of kidnapping. Given, however, that the Yemenite family was moved to an immigrant-absorption center, it seems unlikely that they merely wanted to visit an ailing mother. The real question is now getting clearer: if the Yemenites were in fact kidnapped, why didn't they or the Jewish Agency say anything to the police? Perhaps the Sokhnut kept things under wraps, for fear that the murkiness of the story might create difficulties for their mission.
The JTA has a good article, in which Samuel Heilman expounds on the obvious mini-Kulturkampf that's behind the story.
5/12/04
Check it out
Joseph Berger writes in the Times about the newly re-opened Seward Park branch of the New York Public Library. In the next few months, the entire staff (and mascot) of Twenty-Fourth Street Books will be moving down Grand Street way, so I was happy to see the piece. The elegy for the Jewish Lower East Side makes its requisite appearance:
But [the librarian] also pointed to another bookcase that captured an era's passing. The library's Yiddish and Hebrew collection was reduced to three forlorn shelves, and almost all the books were still there.
Now, I agree that the audience for these books certainly isn't all that large, and must be overwhelmed many times over by the Chinese-reading public. But "an era's passing"? There must be a number of readers of Hebrew and Yiddish still around on the Lower East Side, which is home to a sizeable Jewish community.
I think two factors explain this paragraph. One is that the "disappearing Jews of the Lower East Side" is a cliche, and the coverage of Jewish culture by non-Jewish media (and by Jewish media too, as far as that goes) is generally a montage of cliches. Yiddish is dead, too, dontcha know? Orthodoxy (or Israel) is the repository of "true Judaism." Etcetera, etceterorum.
Second, I bet there are people (yeshive-bokhrim, Charedim, old folks, academics, us weirdos, and the like) who do read these books. I wonder, though, if New York's Hebrew and Yiddish readers use the NYPL's extensive collections in these languages. The Library's 2003 report, though interesting, lacks specific information on non-English use. Most Yiddish speakers I talk to aren't even aware that the NYPL has books in Yiddish.
In other library news, some government officials in Kiryas Joel want to quit paying taxes to support the Monroe Free Library (the closest public library to KJ). These officials say the KJ residents don't use the Monroe library, so why support it? But the director of the Monroe library says no, there are Chasidim there all the time. When I looked into this story a bit deeper (for an upcoming Forverts piece), it turned out that this controversy, as with everything else Satmer, is a Zalman Leib/Aron dispute [an old link, but informative]. One group says Let's start our own library that isn't so goyish! And the other says: No! Starting our own library would mean we have to own goyish books!
(I am not misrepresenting the argument here. Trust me.) Of course, the Chasidim must be finding something to read in the Monroe Free Library, no?
I'll translate the Forverts piece if someone asks me to.
Joseph Berger writes in the Times about the newly re-opened Seward Park branch of the New York Public Library. In the next few months, the entire staff (and mascot) of Twenty-Fourth Street Books will be moving down Grand Street way, so I was happy to see the piece. The elegy for the Jewish Lower East Side makes its requisite appearance:
But [the librarian] also pointed to another bookcase that captured an era's passing. The library's Yiddish and Hebrew collection was reduced to three forlorn shelves, and almost all the books were still there.
Now, I agree that the audience for these books certainly isn't all that large, and must be overwhelmed many times over by the Chinese-reading public. But "an era's passing"? There must be a number of readers of Hebrew and Yiddish still around on the Lower East Side, which is home to a sizeable Jewish community.
I think two factors explain this paragraph. One is that the "disappearing Jews of the Lower East Side" is a cliche, and the coverage of Jewish culture by non-Jewish media (and by Jewish media too, as far as that goes) is generally a montage of cliches. Yiddish is dead, too, dontcha know? Orthodoxy (or Israel) is the repository of "true Judaism." Etcetera, etceterorum.
Second, I bet there are people (yeshive-bokhrim, Charedim, old folks, academics, us weirdos, and the like) who do read these books. I wonder, though, if New York's Hebrew and Yiddish readers use the NYPL's extensive collections in these languages. The Library's 2003 report, though interesting, lacks specific information on non-English use. Most Yiddish speakers I talk to aren't even aware that the NYPL has books in Yiddish.
In other library news, some government officials in Kiryas Joel want to quit paying taxes to support the Monroe Free Library (the closest public library to KJ). These officials say the KJ residents don't use the Monroe library, so why support it? But the director of the Monroe library says no, there are Chasidim there all the time. When I looked into this story a bit deeper (for an upcoming Forverts piece), it turned out that this controversy, as with everything else Satmer, is a Zalman Leib/Aron dispute [an old link, but informative]. One group says Let's start our own library that isn't so goyish! And the other says: No! Starting our own library would mean we have to own goyish books!
(I am not misrepresenting the argument here. Trust me.) Of course, the Chasidim must be finding something to read in the Monroe Free Library, no?
I'll translate the Forverts piece if someone asks me to.
1/6/04
Why don't you live with your own kind?
What follows is inspired by a post of Naomi Chana's.
On Sunday I attended a Chasidic protest in Williamsburg as research for a story that Steven I. Weiss (of Protocols) and I are working on. More on that later. From a sociological and psychological point of view, though, the visit provided yet another opportunity to marvel at how one can have a great deal in common with a group yet feel completely out of place among them.
No, this is not going to be an omphalocentric meditation on Identity, the Mystery that is Me. But I am going to talk about one of my preoccupations: the creation of an ideology that takes advantage of contradictory ideas without being beholden to the entirety of their sources.
Let me be more specific. I would like more Jews to appreciate the Yiddish language, and I would like to help strengthen and expand our almost nonexistent (but what an "almost"!) community of secular-minded Yiddish speakers. "Secular" is meant not as an exclusion of religion (I am observant myself), but as a denial of fundamentalism.
Since I am a Yiddishist, I am fascinated by the particular brand of the language characteristic of American Chasidim, both in its colloquial and literary registers. As Joshua Fishman has pointed out time and again in his articles in the Yiddish Forward and elsewhere, secular Yiddishists have one large thing to learn from the Chasidim: that speaking a language in the home-family-neighborhood nexus, not theater, newspapers, or literature, is what makes a spoken language intergenerationally transmissible.
So why don't I move to Borough Park or Williamsburg, where spoken Yiddish is a lot more secure than in downtown Manhattan? An acquaintance of mine, an intelligent ultra-Orthodox woman, asked me more or less this question after a talk I gave a few months ago at a conference in Baltimore of the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. In response, I said, "I'm not a Chasid. I am not against Chasidim; I appreciate their use of Yiddish. But my religious observance and philosophical approach to Judaism is quite different, and I think it worth my while to try and build a liberally Jewish, philosophically cogent, Yiddish-speaking community where I live."
In other words, I am devoting time and frustration to a near-impossible contradiction in terms. I am a traditional Jew in an egalitarian Conservative congregation speaking Yiddish with my family. Such traditional Judaism, in my personal context, raises another contradiction. I am observant of the Sabbath and holidays and kashrut, and I study Torah regularly, albeit with a critical eye. Regular readers of this blog already know that I frequently despair about the Conservative movement's many flaws. Why then -- some of you might ask -- do you not flee to the Orthodox movement, or even take advantage of the Reform movement's increasing observance?
Such questions could be asked of many contradictions I live with. How can I support Israel while realizing more and more that American Jews need to find other, extra-Zionist preoccupations that invigorate their own community? How can I study epidemiology while retaining a healthy skepticism about the risk-free messianism peddled by so many advocacy groups?
To create an ideology, and then to try and convince others of its usefulness, one needs a modicum of stability. One cannot constantly migrate from group to group, even on the basis of deep-rooted frustration, until one is sure that the most fruitful frustrations are not to be found in one's current home. If I am dissatisfied by the multiple contradictions I negotiate, I am also inspired by what is possible precisely because of these contradictions. If I were completely satisfied by my community, something would be terribly wrong.
What follows is inspired by a post of Naomi Chana's.
On Sunday I attended a Chasidic protest in Williamsburg as research for a story that Steven I. Weiss (of Protocols) and I are working on. More on that later. From a sociological and psychological point of view, though, the visit provided yet another opportunity to marvel at how one can have a great deal in common with a group yet feel completely out of place among them.
No, this is not going to be an omphalocentric meditation on Identity, the Mystery that is Me. But I am going to talk about one of my preoccupations: the creation of an ideology that takes advantage of contradictory ideas without being beholden to the entirety of their sources.
Let me be more specific. I would like more Jews to appreciate the Yiddish language, and I would like to help strengthen and expand our almost nonexistent (but what an "almost"!) community of secular-minded Yiddish speakers. "Secular" is meant not as an exclusion of religion (I am observant myself), but as a denial of fundamentalism.
Since I am a Yiddishist, I am fascinated by the particular brand of the language characteristic of American Chasidim, both in its colloquial and literary registers. As Joshua Fishman has pointed out time and again in his articles in the Yiddish Forward and elsewhere, secular Yiddishists have one large thing to learn from the Chasidim: that speaking a language in the home-family-neighborhood nexus, not theater, newspapers, or literature, is what makes a spoken language intergenerationally transmissible.
So why don't I move to Borough Park or Williamsburg, where spoken Yiddish is a lot more secure than in downtown Manhattan? An acquaintance of mine, an intelligent ultra-Orthodox woman, asked me more or less this question after a talk I gave a few months ago at a conference in Baltimore of the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. In response, I said, "I'm not a Chasid. I am not against Chasidim; I appreciate their use of Yiddish. But my religious observance and philosophical approach to Judaism is quite different, and I think it worth my while to try and build a liberally Jewish, philosophically cogent, Yiddish-speaking community where I live."
In other words, I am devoting time and frustration to a near-impossible contradiction in terms. I am a traditional Jew in an egalitarian Conservative congregation speaking Yiddish with my family. Such traditional Judaism, in my personal context, raises another contradiction. I am observant of the Sabbath and holidays and kashrut, and I study Torah regularly, albeit with a critical eye. Regular readers of this blog already know that I frequently despair about the Conservative movement's many flaws. Why then -- some of you might ask -- do you not flee to the Orthodox movement, or even take advantage of the Reform movement's increasing observance?
Such questions could be asked of many contradictions I live with. How can I support Israel while realizing more and more that American Jews need to find other, extra-Zionist preoccupations that invigorate their own community? How can I study epidemiology while retaining a healthy skepticism about the risk-free messianism peddled by so many advocacy groups?
To create an ideology, and then to try and convince others of its usefulness, one needs a modicum of stability. One cannot constantly migrate from group to group, even on the basis of deep-rooted frustration, until one is sure that the most fruitful frustrations are not to be found in one's current home. If I am dissatisfied by the multiple contradictions I negotiate, I am also inspired by what is possible precisely because of these contradictions. If I were completely satisfied by my community, something would be terribly wrong.
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