[First Person]

My four-year-old son came home from kindergarten a few days ago, singing to himself, “Zeh chalifasi, zeh kaparasi.” “Do you know what that means?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, and in a babble of a four-year-old’s blatherings he noted, “My rebbe said you have to kick the chicken after swinging it above your head.” The poor bird quietly absorbs all your sins and earns a kick in return.

This brought back memories of my teenage years on the eve of Yom Kippur. My father would wake me at four in the morning, after which I would dress hurriedly, rush through the mikvah and the selichos prayers, and then hurry to perform the kapparos ritual before sunrise.

One year, when I was 14, my father woke me to a cold and rainy early morning. I grabbed my umbrella from the coat rack in our hallway, and rushed to begin my Erev Yom Kippur routine. After dunking in the mikva and reciting selichos I planted myself, still half-asleep, in a long line of Hasidim pushing and shoving irritably, waiting for my turn to get a chicken. The sounds of squawking hens and roosters were a bizarre accompaniment to our somber thoughts. The ten days of atonement had us contemplating the past year, examining it for sins and transgressions, thinking thoughts of atonement, forgiveness, and resolutions for better behavior during the upcoming year. God, in his infinite mercy, had given us the opportunity to atone for our sins, to transfer it all unto a fine specimen of poultry, and for that we were immensely grateful.

I was jolted from my thoughts when a squawking rooster was placed in my arms, and before I could properly adjust my hold on it, I was shoved aside by those behind me. I now had a restless chicken in one hand and a prayer book and an umbrella in the other. The rain was coming down hard, but I had to lose the umbrella to perform the ritual. I laid it aside and was almost instantly drenched through all my layers of clothes. No matter, I thought, the discomfort would add to my merits; braving the cold and the rain to perform this cherished ritual will allow a more complete transfer of my sins.

I stepped to the side, swung the chicken over my head, all the while reciting the short prayer: Zeh chalifasi, zeh kaparasi, zeh, temirasi. This is my exchange, this is my atonement, this is my substitute, this rooster will go to its death and I will enter to long and peaceful life. After repeating the process three times I lay the chicken on the ground and gave it a soft kick in the head, all the while concentrating on the thought that all that the chicken now endures should’ve rightfully been done to me.

It was now time to stand in the second line, the one leading to a station where an old man with a long white beard stood with a sharp knife, taking the chicken from the hands of each bearer and slitting its throat. Here too, I concentrated on the thought that I, by all rights, should’ve been in the chicken’s place. It was only God, in his infinite mercy, who allowed the slaughter of a chicken instead of requiring my own throat to be slit.

The shochet’s hands were slow and unsteady. The line moved forward at an agonizingly slow pace. The rain was still pounding, and I struggled to keep the chicken in one hand while keeping my umbrella steady in the other. The pushing and shoving by impatient Hasidim around me didn’t let up. My arms began to feel sore, the chicken was surprisingly heavy, and I struggled to alternate the chicken and the umbrella from one hand to the other. My chicken was mostly quiet, although every few minutes I would hear it make a sound or shift its weight slightly. The closer we got to the head of the line, the quieter it became, until, toward the end it seemed to settle down completely, almost as if it were asleep. I finally got to the head of the line, and the old man took my chicken, allowing me to stretch my arms in relief.

The shochet examined the chicken, and then looked at me astonished. “This chicken is dead,” he said. “Go get another.”

I had to stand in line again for a fresh chicken and repeat the whole ordeal. The rain, giving no letup, felt even more forceful and this time I wasn’t so accepting of the discomfort. This transferring of sins was becoming a major burden. But I had little choice, I had to complete the process correctly, I wouldn’t be fully cleansed of my sins otherwise.

“What took you so long?” my father asked in a harsh and demanding tone when I finally got home.

I told him what happened.

“You baal aveira,” he said, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “Your sins must’ve been too heavy for the first chicken, you practically killed it. You’ll have some real atoning to do this Yom Kippur. You’ll probably need the whole year to atone, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be forgiven.”

He must be right, I thought, and I felt sorry for the chicken that my sins had murdered. I spent that Yom Kippur tormenting myself with guilt, and prayed for forgiveness like never before.

I don’t know whether I was forgiven or not, but for years after I felt sorry for that poor first chicken, dying under the burden of my sins without even making it to the slaughterer’s knife.

(Editing by HR)

[Opinion]

Unlike many of the authors on Unpious, I’m not an ex-Chasid, and in fact didn’t grow up religious at all.  My dad is an Ex though, so I suppose that makes me second-generation.  His gripe was never with the religion itself, just the baloney, and his mantra has always been “don’t judge Judaism by the Jews”, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”, etc. – which sums it up pretty well in my view too.

So although I’m not really religious according to the official rules, I certainly believe in God.  In general, I can see some benefits in Judaism’s mundane rules and rituals. People can be spectacularly talented in the art of making bad decisions for themselves and messing up their own lives and some degree of structure and rules is helpful and necessary for many people.  Another important aspect is that Judaism helps maintain a strong community identity, and — in particular — it helps foster bonding between men.  Ten men for the minyan to meditate and sing songs together every day – try getting ten secular men together for anything other than watching the superbowl once a year.

But much more importantly I see Judaism, on the whole, as a gatekeeper of values, morals, and ethics that is vital as an institution because these are the fundamental elements that make life meaningful and worthwhile, and they can be pretty easily corrupted or neglected or forgotten.  These are what make Judaism relevant and important.  There are reasons why the Jewish world has been so successful throughout history; why the typical American materialistic life is not very satisfying for a lot of people; why it is hard to find community in the secular world despite the fact that people are so desperate to find it and need it in order to be happy and fulfilled. (Leaving one’s religious community is difficult, in part, because it is a community.)

The religion parts aside though, I think there’s also more to the God story.  It seems like many OTD-ers – actually, Jews in general – look at God as an all-or-nothing proposition: either He is this terrible, fearful, angry guy who’s always threatening you, or He doesn’t exist.  But there are other possibilities.  For starters, I don’t think God is really a mean old guy with a beard, and I don’t think He’s always as angry as they say He is.  I doubt He’s really an egotistical sociopath who demands everyone bow to Him and shower Him with praise and compliments.  I also don’t think “He” is a male, with a penis, who thinks that women’s bodies are evil either – just for the record.  In fact, I think it’s the complete opposite.  Maybe that’s all shtick, and the trick here is that God is pretty much unpowerful.  A wimp.  Weak and feeble.  Like the Wizard of Oz.  Perhaps all-knowing, and maybe all-some-other-stuff, but not all-powerful.  At least, not in the way we ordinarily think of as power.  No lightning bolts, no thunder, no wrathful vengeance and smiting.  But, it was made to seem that way because otherwise, who would listen to a wuss like that?  How else can you get people to listen and do things that they should do, but probably wouldn’t otherwise?

Math, surprisingly enough, can help explain.  Game Theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used to study and analyze behavioral dynamics in the social sciences (i.e. economics, politics, sociology, psychology).  One of the basic models in Game Theory is known as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” a hypothetical scenario in which two suspects, arrested by police, are faced with the choice of either cooperating with each other to remain silent and go free, versus defecting against their partner and condemning the other (and possibly himself) to a lengthy jail sentence.  It demonstrates why two people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so, and as such, has bigger ramifications in the real world.  Basically, it posits that the best overall societal outcome – a positive-sum game – occurs when people cooperate with each other and form trusting relationships instead of competing or cheating.  However, this is up against a powerful counter-incentive that if you do cheat, you’ll win big over the schmuck you just screwed.  In a zero-sum game, on the other hand, you have lots of schmucks running around trying to screw each other in order to come out ahead, but everyone more or less ends up losing.

All the emphasis on loving your fellow Jew, then, isn’t just bullshit.  Wimpy God is hoping we will cooperate and trust (i.e. love our fellow Jew), because then life is a lot more pleasant.  Hence, the thunderbolts and lightning and wrathful vengeance – pretty much so that people will be tricked into being good to each other, since otherwise they most likely wouldn’t.  As one example, how would you overcome the human (especially male) tendency towards a might-makes-right ethos, and replace it, or at least counterbalance it, with some semblance of fairness and justice?  Human societies have a tendency towards might-makes-right because even if many oppose it, might wins because it’s mightier.  So God – the force of harmony and goodness in the world, weak as He may be – had to pretend to be a big bad dude in order to get people to listen.  An unpowerful God, who needs our help in order to bring goodness into the world.  Maybe.  It could explain a lot.  When you think about it in terms of a few people, it doesn’t seem that important.  But on a bigger humanity-wide scale and across the span of world history, it becomes more compelling and fascinating, in a grand-scheme-of-things kind of way.

The world is imperfect to say the least, and to think that God doesn’t really have much control over it is scary, but also exhilarating.  The world could be a barbaric and terrible place to live, much more than it already is.  Things like Machiavellianism, apathy, and crass materialism, where people use each other and lie and cheat and don’t trust anyone or give a shit about anything, have the potential to flourish and could even become the normal way of life, as it is now in some parts of the world, where life basically sucks.  This could get taken to ultimate extremes. Apparently, the real underlying thesis of Mein Kampf (according to those who read it — which, admittedly, I haven’t) was Hitler’s desire to establish a world based on the “natural order” of the strong dominating the weak.  His desire to eliminate Jews from the world stemmed from this goal – to rid the world of the very idea of a law-and-ethics-based society that fostered fairness and cared for the less fortunate.  (In his view every Jew, religious or not, carried at least a spark of ethics and morality – the real target of elimination.  The racial ideology was just his way to get the masses to go along with him, to give them something to rally around.)  It may be a crazy mixed-up world, but ideas and ethics and values matter.

So, some of the things that can counter all of this potential badness are things like brotherliness, love, humor, friendship – in other words, all the things that make life fun and interesting and worth living, and which are affirmed, supported, and protected by Judaism.  Unfortunately the cultishness of Hasidism today keeps Jewish spirituality, chesed, community – all the good parts of it – trapped in little bubbles.  Judaism has great things to contribute to the world’s collective mind and being.  But when they are kept locked in a cage with no way to blossom and grow, these same good things start to turn in on themselves and become pathological. Some degree of modesty, for example, helps foster a sense of self-respect and boundaries, but taken to an extreme it becomes an absurd exercise in mass OCD neurosis.

It’s important to remember that Hasidic Judaism was not always what it is now, a mostly corrupt institution where individuals vie for power in a hierarchy built on fear and intimidation, fostering emotional and mental oppression, near-fascistic conformity, and tolerance for all sorts of abuse.  People made it corrupt over time, and relatively recently too.  It was originally a peaceful, joyful rebellion against a hardened and stagnated Judaism that had lost its soul.  Judaism, an incubator and repository for a sense of humanity and ethics in the world, had become corrupt and in danger of losing its vital essence.  The Hasidic movement allowed joy and kindness to take the reins back from cold, harsh, and hierarchical rigidity.  No wonder it gained such a foothold.

Illegitimate power structures created by small-minded people usually end up crumbling at some point.  But it doesn’t seem like a Judaism constructed around upholding and embodying high ethical and moral values and rooted in love and appreciation for God, instead of fear of God, would.  It seems much more compelling that an unpowerful God would prefer (or possibly even depend on) heartfelt sincerity over obsessive observance of halakhic minutiae (and especially over stringent minhagim developed out of strange Polish cultural customs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries).  Rebellion based on bitterness, even if justified, may ultimately be counterproductive.  But rebellion based on love is potentially very powerful.  In fact it’s necessary whenever corruption starts to gain a stranglehold on the core goodness it overshadows, in order to bring some love (and sanity) back.  This is the heart of the original Hasidic movement – Judaism’s original love revolution.

[Book Review]

Around ten years ago I managed to find a way out of the drudgery of kolel study, afternoon teaching jobs, and other such odd occupations typical for a Hasidic man in the early years of married life. I went to work as a computer programmer in Midtown Manhattan, in an office I shared with a modern Orthodox woman named Shoshana. Shoshana was from an American family who moved to a settlement on the West Bank, where she’d lived for several years and from where she formed most of her views on the Jewish religious world. At one point, during a casual conversation, she imparted the following nugget of wisdom, stated in the most nonchalant way: “Well, you know, Charedim are violent people. You know.”

To which she added: “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.”

Good or bad, the important question was, what would possess a more-or-less mainstream Orthodox Jewish woman to make that claim about her Haredi bretheren? Of course, anecdotes of violence in the Haredi world are not hard to come by, but somehow, none of it added up to Haredim falling under the category of Violent People. It just didn’t jive with how I saw our world. The occasional tire slashing, the beating to a near-death pulp of a would-be-mugger during a chaptzem, or the occasional group of rowdy kids teasing Israeli mounted cops and burning trash in Meah Shearim somehow didn’t add up for me to the same image Shoshana had.

Looking back, I still think calling Haredim “violent people” simplifies a more complex social phenomenon: Haredi disregard for civil laws, a kind of Wild West, if you will, a society that operates with its own sense of justice, righteousness, and the upholding of pious virtues, the rules for which no mere politician or legal bureaucrat has any business meddling with. To call Haredim violent is like calling, say, Mormons bad cooks. (Just for arguments’ sake, of course; I know nothing about actual Mormon culinary skills.) Both might be guilty of the offense, but it is hardly a defining characteristic.

However, even if calling Haredim violent might be somewhat unfair (Jews, after all, are hardly known for their bar-brawl skills), Haredim – and Hasidim in particular – do have a violent streak that is often overlooked. And as David Assaf shows in his book Ne’echaz Basvach, or Caught in the Thicket, that streak is time-honored and deeply rooted. While the focus of Assaf’s book isn’t only Hasidic violence, it stands out – as it does in some of his other works – as a unique feature of Haredi society that is most fascinating because of the parallels between Hasidic attitudes of bygone days and today.

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UNLIKE THE HASIDIC communities of yesteryear, which were spread across hundreds of cities, towns, and villages across Eastern Europe, Hasidic communities today are mostly concentrated in several metropolitan areas, most notably in New York City, several overlapping enclaves in and around Rockland County in the lower Hudson Valley of Upstate New York, and in Jerusalem and B’nei Brak, in Israel. While Hasidim of many sects live side by side in many of these areas, there is one notable – albeit less pronounced – parallel to the institution of the rebbe’s court of Eastern Europe: the organic clustering of groups around specific territories in which they establish a degree of sectarian hegemony.

The old Hasidic ethos of believing in “one God and one rebbe” isn’t nearly as fierce as it once was. Nonetheless, one might still make out a vestigial exclusivity in the way major groups established hegemonies in areas where there were few or no competing claims to “sovereignty.” A cursory listing of post-World War II Hasidic sects shows a distinctive pattern: Satmar in Wiliamsburg and Kiryas Joel, Bobov in Borough Park, Chabad in Crown Heights, Vizhnitz in Monsey and B’nei Brak, Skver in New Square, and Klausenberg in Kiryas Sanz. Even in Jerusalem, having arguably the largest concentration of Hasidic Jews in the world, major sects tend to be concentrated in certain neighborhoods: The Shomrei Emunim offshoots of Toldos Ahraon and Toldos Avraham Yitzchak in Meah Shearim, and Belz in Kiryas Belz. Perhaps the one major exception is Gur, headquartered in Jerusalem but claiming no specific territory other than a delusory hold on all territories.

(While there are, of course, several smaller sects in some of the above areas – most notably: Pupa in Williamsburg; Karlin, Slonim, Boyan, and Rachmestrivka in Jeruslaem; Nadvorna and Modzitz in B’nei Brak – their relative lack of visibility is arguably a result of being overshadowed by the larger groups who pursue growth and influence more aggressively in the same locales. We can easily imagine that a group such as, say, Slonim, or Karlin, would have been far more visible as powers to be reckoned with if they were established in areas without competing sects vying for the same geographical hegemony. Or, for a more concrete example, one can imagine the influence of Pupa in Williamsburg if Satmar never existed; they’d almost certainly be a greater force to be reckoned with. Or, on the flip side, one can imagine what Skver would’ve looked like had it remained in Williamsburg – probably no different from so many other inconspicuous groups with small-time rebbelech and their handfuls of followers.)

It is clear, however, that Hasidim of today aren’t as territorial as they used to be. Yes, a shtreimel or two might be flung across a packed synagogue during a skirmish over succession, or the odd dead body refused burial in a specific cemetery due to the deceased’s ill-chosen factional alliance. But that hardly compares to Hasidic hooliganism of once-upon-a-time, and the zeal with which territories were once “conquered” for a given rebbe.

Territorial exclusivity was pursued far more aggressively in the cities and shtetls of Eastern Europe. Infringement by one group upon another’s territory was recognized as a casus belli, resulting in outbursts of violence and protracted hostilities that look as if taken from the playbook of urban drug runners. Influence over a city or town carried social and economic benefits, which led to the mostly unspoken agreement that a rebbe, once established in a locale, was its supreme and singular spiritual leader, and a new rebbe seeking to establish his court was forced to seek out unclaimed territory.

Against this backdrop of Hasidic geopolitics, systems evolved through which a rebbe claimed a city or town under his official influence. The most institutionalized of such, specifically in the regions of Volhynia and Podolia in the Ukraine, was the magidus.

Before the advent of the Hasidic movement, the magid, or preacher, was a staple of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The office of the magid varied between informal and official, itinerant and stationary. A magid might be a poor man who traveled from town to town exhorting the masses with pious homilies and folksy parables to better their religious observance, relying on informal payments from the masses or the kahal. Cities and towns with inhabitants of means sometimes hired a full-time magid, who was paid from the same coffers that paid for the rabbi, the cantor, and the ritual slaughterer.

With the advent of the Hasidic movement in the late eighteenth century, the earliest candidates for Hasidic leadership were mostly from the ranks of rabbis and magidim. The new office of the Hasidic rebbe, however, was modeled more on that of the magid than that of the rabbi. It was an office tasked with pietistic rather than legalistic guidance, and was suited more for individuals noted for piety, charisma, and oratory skill rather than scholarship.

Many of the early Hasidic rebbes went by the traditional title of magid. With time, the office of the magid, now morphed into the office of the Hasidic rebbe, retained the trappings of its once-itinerant nature by recognizing the influence of a single Hasidic rebbe over a wide swath of towns and villages, a distinction of authority that was unnatural to the office of an ordinary rabbi. Official recognition was granted by means of a magidus briev, a document signed by a town’s notables in which the grantee was named sole arbiter of all communal matters, including the appointment of rabbis, cantors, ritual slaughterers, and the like

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THE UKRAINE, BIRTHPLACE of the Hasidic movement, home to some of the great Hasidic courts of the pre-Bolshevik era, was dominated in the late nineteenth century by the Twerski family, the eight sons of the Magid of Chernobyl, Rabbi Mordechai Twerski, and their descendants. It came about through fortuitous turns of events. The old guard of Hasidic masters of the regions of Vollhynia and Podolia had died out; the great Reb Levi Yitzchok of Berditchov, Reb Zusia of Anipoli, Reb Baruch of Mezhibuzh, the rebbe of Apt (later in Mezhibuzh), and many of the others. They left no great dynasties behind. The “royal” court of Reb Yisroel of Ruzhin, with its lavish mansions, its six-horse gilded carriages, its fashionably dressed women, was uprooted to Austria after Reb Yisroel’s imprisonment following the mysterious death of two informants in the town of Usha, whose bodies were discovered in the heating apparatus of the local Mikva. The dynasty of the rebbes of Savran ended with no notable heir after the death of Reb Moshe Tzvi in 1838.

The flag bearers of proud Hasidism, the innovative thinkers, the scholars, the ones who resisted the inevitable atrophy of the movement’s idealism, were now in Poland and Galicia (and, to some degree, Hungary and Romania). Ukrainian Hasidim, nevertheless, still had Hasidism in their blood, and what they clung to were the populist elements of the movement, which required – if little else – unbounded fealty to the rebbe and his court. The Twerski family moved in and gathered much of the masses to the various offshoots of its Chernobyl dynasty.

The eight sons of Reb Mordechai Twerski spread out across the Ukraine, establishing a near-monopoly over the Hasidic leadership. Only a near-monopoly, though; several small enclaves had Hasidim who still held tenaciously to their non-Chernobyl sects. Of the eight courts of the family Twerski, Reb Duvid’l of Tolnye (1808-1882) led one of the most famous. Quick-witted and charismatic, he attracted a large group of fiercely dedicated followers. Those followers (with Reb Duvid’l’s tacit approval, we must presume) saw it their duty to continually expand their rebbe’s stature by annexing an ever-increasing number of towns, bringing them under Reb Duvid’l’s authority.

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IN THE SUMMER of 1864, Reb Duvid’l set out from his hometown of Tolnye to visit the neighboring cities and towns in the Kiev guberniya. The rebbes of the Chernobyl dynasty, who still went with the old title of magid, routinely visited their followers in keeping with the old traditions of the itinerant magid. But this was to be a grand event. Throngs of Hasidim from the surrounding towns were expected to accompany Reb Duvid’l on his trip. Poor Hasidim even received money from the rebbe’s aides and confidantes to hire wagons.

The first stop was in the town of Bohuslav. The guests were placed with local Hasidim, and the cheer and hullabaloo was accompanied by singing, dancing in the streets, and consumption of liberal quantities of yayin saraf, vodka or mead. Reb Duvid’l remained in Bohuslov for eight days.

The next destination was Kagarlyk, which had the distinction of being a “new” town, one that Reb Duvid’l hadn’t visited before. There was no local rebbe in Kagarlyk at that time and as such, according to the prevailing norms in the region, the town was a good candidate for presenting a non-local rebbe with a magidus briev, placing itself under his sphere of influence. But Kagarlyk had so far maintained its independence. Reb Duvid’l’s followers saw it as free territory, and coveted the city as a conquest for their rebbe.

As it happened, things turned out well in Kagarlyk for Reb Duvid’l and his followers, but not without incident. Reb Duvid’l arrived in Kagarlyk to great fanfare, accompanied by large masses of Hasidim. On Saturday night, after the close of the Sabbath, the town’s leaders were asked to present the rebbe with a magidus briev. The signing ceremony was to be accompanied by the consumption of large quantities of vodka distributed by the rebbe’s attendants.

However, the townspeople weren’t all of equal mind, and some notable residents refused to sign. In response, Reb Duvid’l’s Hasidim organized a mass disturbance that night: they hounded the dissidents, broke into their houses, shattered their windows, and meted out severe beatings. The local rabbi, a mere decisor of Jewish law without the titular distinction of a rebbe, refused to cower, and was driven from the town. The Hasidim then marched through the town singing, “David melech yisrael chai v’kayam.”  One of the rebbe’s followers rode a horse amidst the throngs and shouted, “Kagarlyk is in our hands!” A military band was summoned to accompany the victorious festivities with music and song.

After a week in Kagarlyk, Reb Duvid’l set off with a large entourage to the town of Rzhyschiv. The plan was for a repeat of the events in Kagarlyk, and a call went out to Reb Duvid’l’s followers in the region to descend upon Rzhyschiv to assist with the conquest.

Reb Duvid’l’s Hasidim, swept up by the festive spirit, were overcome with near-drunkenness, which overflowed to the Hasidim still en route to meeting up with Reb Duvid’l and his entourage. A group of Tolner Hasidim, on their way to Rzhyschiv, encountered three Jews from the town of Rozava, which was on Reb Duvid’l’s itinerary. The Rozavar Jews were less than thrilled with the plans of the Tolner Hasidim, and they threatened to inform the civil authorities about the Tolner hooliganism. The Rozavar Jews hadn’t bargained for the Tolner zeal, and their initial show of defiance was met with a swift response. The Tolners accused the Rozavars of being informants, for which they deserve to die. The Rozavar Jews made off with their lives, but not before the Tolners set to beating them, injuring one of them severely.

In the meantime, Reb Duvid’l entered Rzhyschiv and was put up at the house of a local merchant. Whether the Tolners were prepared for it or not, Rzhyschiv already had a local rebbe, Reb Yosef Mendel, a descendant of the saintly Reb Yakov Yosef of Astroho. Reb Yosef Mendel had followers of his own in the town. When Reb Duvid’l’s followers requested a magidus briev from the townspeople they were met with stiff resistance.

A repeat of the events in Kagarlyk followed, in which loyalists to the local rebbe were beaten and their homes vandalized. Several followers of Reb Duvid’l burst into the town’s main synagogue during the Sabbath prayers and threatened to vandalize the synagogue unless the townspeople accepted Reb Duvid’l’s authority. Threats were issued against the lives of dissidents and their families. One of the dissidents was held prisoner at Reb Duvid’l’s lodgings and severely beaten, only released after he pledged his signature.

After eight days in Rzhyschiv Reb Duvid’l left for Rozava, in which much the same transpired: violence and vandalism, forced signings of the magidus briev, celebratory eating and drinking of vodka and mead, and the expulsion of the local rabbi.

The above account was culled from government archives, newspaper reports, and other contemporary sources by Assaf, who presents it in studious but readable detail. But Assaf mentions a more murky detail that appears only in a few of the documents. Apparently, even after all their efforts, Reb Duvid’l left Rzhyschiv without a full victory. The followers of the local Rebbe were determined to fight back, and Reb Duvid’l caught a barrage of stones thrown at his carriage as he left the town. There is also some evidence that Reb Duvid’l himself suffered injuries, although their extent is unclear. Additionally, it appears that a claim was made to the civil authorities about the behavior of Reb Duvid’l and his followers, causing the district governor to proclaim the well-known ‘Tzadikim Decree,’ forbidding all rebbes of the Twerski family to travel outside their immediate towns of residence.

Whatever was gained in Rzhyschiv, therefore, appears to have been tempered by the intransigence of Reb Yosef Mendel’s followers, and Reb Duvid’l is said to have taken off with the bitter taste of a less-than-stellar victory. The ‘Tzadikim Decree’ ended up being a significant point of irritation for the rebbes of Chernobyl, one commemorated in Chernobyl folklore as a symbol of their own victimhood and persecution.

In the above account, Assaf provides a glimpse of the often-stormy world of Hasidic politics that is almost invariably ignored by Hasidic historiographers. Modern-day Hasidim might flinch at the retelling of such uncivilized behavior by their forebears. But while such incidents were likely to have been infrequent, it is equally likely they were flarings of a just-beneath-the-surface jingoism that characterized Hasidic sectarianism from the early days of the movement until today.

A parallel source – with accounts of similar hostilities – illuminating old-time inter-sectarian Hasidic tension is the work “Meine Zichroines,” by Yechezkel Kutik. Kutik describes the hostility between the followers of Reb Noach of Lechevitch after the latter’s death, when some of the group’s followers appointed Reb Moshe of Kubrin as their leader. Tales of violence, informants, counter-informants, and death threats stand out as both shocking and grotesquely familiar.

Yet another conspicuously violent chapter in Hasidic history is directly related to Reb Duvid’l. Assaf gives the above account of Reb Duvid’l and his followers in the context of an entirely different, seemingly unrelated, phenomenon: the deep-seated animosity of mainstream Ukrainian Hasidim towards the followers of Reb Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810), great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov and founder of the Breslov sect. The events in Rzhyschiv, Assaf claims, were a catalyst for changed attitudes in that larger historical feud.

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MOST HASIDIM ARE aware of the Breslov sect’s status as pariah among the various overlapping sects that originated in the Ukraine, the birthplace of the Hasidic movement. But this historical feud has long been something of an enigma.

The hostility was historically the province of the Chernobyl and Savran dynasties among the Hasidic populations of Podolia and Volhynia. Scholars and historians have attempted to pinpoint the feud’s underlying causes. Some postulated ideological opposition to the teachings of Reb Nachman. Others theorized that his teachings may have had a whiff of Sabbateanism, and with paranoia of such running rampant throughout the Jewish world, it was an easy accusation to latch onto. Others suggest specific actions and behaviors on Reb Nachman’s part, such as his unwillingness to submit to the authority of other leaders of his time. But none of these have been found conclusive.

Assaf doesn’t break new ground on this question, and only half-heartedly attempts a discussion of it. He focuses instead on various events that occurred within overlapping timeframes, and provides tantalizing links to explain their sequencing in the context of this feud.

Reb Aryeh Leib of Shpolye (1741-1812), known as the Shpoller Zayde, is said to have instigated the hostilities. Early sources are contradictory on the extent of personal animosity between the Shpoller Zayde and Reb Nachman, and it appears the former had at least a degree of ambivalence towards attacking the latter full on, given his illustrious ancestry. [1]

Whatever his ambivalence, it is clear that the Shpoller Zayde engaged in a serious and protracted vendetta against Reb Nachman, a battle that ultimately led to a conference of Hasidic leaders in Berditchev[2], during which the Shpoller Zayde is said to have called for Reb Nachman’s excommunication. Other Hasidic leaders were baffled at the Shpoller Zayde’s harsh stance, and the conference produced no significant conclusion for the historical record. According to legend, some of the leading Hasidic masters at the time, including Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, Reb Yakov Shimshon of Shpitivka, and Reb Velvel of Zytomir attempted to pacify the Shpoller Zayde’s ire. The Shpoller Zayde, however, insisted on his superior instincts for determining who is a “gutter yid,” a good Jew, the early Hasidic term for a tzaddik.[3]

With the death of the two primary antagonists, Reb Nachman and the Shpoller Zayde, the cause was taken up by Reb Moshe Tzvi of Savran. A new wave of persecutions, more intense than anything they experienced earlier, swept over the relatively small group of Reb Nachman’s followers, reaching its peak in the years 1834-1838. Reb Moshe Tzvi directed his ire towards Reb Nosson Sternhartz of Nemirov (1780-1844), Reb Nachman’s protégé and the primary disseminator of his teachings. Reb Nosson suffered cruel and humiliating torture at the hands of his persecutors, culminating in his imprisonment by government authorities and being driven from the city of Breslov. According to Assaf, the details of this period are known mostly from internal Breslov sources, which tended to exaggerate its impact. Nevertheless, Assaf claims, the tales of beatings, torture, death threats, economic infringement, and intervention of the civil authorities due to informants have the ring of truth.

The one document of historical significance regarding this period is a supposed letter written by Reb Moshe Tzvi of Savran to one of his followers. In it, he exhorts the recipient not to engage Breslovers in marriage, not to hire them as schoolteachers (“his teachings will turn to apostasy in your son’s intestines,”) ritual slaughterers (“his slaughtering is foul”), or prayer leaders (“his prayers are an abomination.”) He concludes, “As a general rule, attempt to destroy their every means of sustenance. It is forbidden to show mercy on he who shows mercy to them.”[4]

With the death of Reb Moshe Tzvi and Reb Nosson, in 1838 and 1845 respectively, the second wave of persecutions ended. It is in these subsequent years that we encounter the new flag-bearers of the anti-Breslov polemic, the rebbes of the Chernobyl dynasty, in particular, the brothers Reb Duvid’l of Tolnye and Reb Itzik’l of Skvira.

.

“BRESLOVER DOGS!”

“Nachmantchikim!”

These were the taunts suffered by Breslov Hasidim during their annual pilgrimage to their deceased rebbe’s grave for the Rosh Hashana holiday. In what must’ve been seen as misfortune upon misfortune, Reb Nachman died not in Breslov, the town after which he and his sect were named, but in Uman, a town that had few or none of his followers and many of his antagonists – Hasidim of Tolna, Skver, Chernobyl, and Sadigura. Worst of all were the Tolners, the town’s majority.

In an eyewitness account published in the Hamelitz newspaper in 1863, the Breslovers suffered degrading torment at the hands of Uman’s Hasidim on an annual basis. While Uman was a sleepy town most of the year, with the arrival of the Breslovers for Rosh Hashanah the town perked up as if the circus came to town. Large crowds of Hasidim would surround the small Breslov synagogue in a rock-throwing frenzy until its windows were shattered and the worshippers took cover in its far corners to protect themselves from the mob’s insanity. By social convention, no townspeople did business with the Breslovers, or rented them lodgings, except on the hush-hush and for large sums of money.

Children ran after Breslovers in the streets, taunting them, throwing rocks at them, and vandalizing their synagogue. The writer tells of a rock thrown at a Breslover, hitting him in the head and causing him to buckle over unconscious. Almost at the same moment, he witnessed a large rock thrown at the ark in the synagogue, causing the doors to splinter to pieces.

However, during the Rosh Hashanah season of 1864, to the bafflement of observers, journalists, and modern historians, the Breslovers were not persecuted. There was no rock throwing, no taunting in the streets, no vandalism, no cries of “Breslover dogs.” A peaceful Rosh Hashanah, for the first time in many years, passed over the town of Uman.

It is here that Assaf presents some of his best historical sleuthing. With convincing, if not overwhelming, evidence, he suggests that the sudden peace in Uman had something to do with Reb Duvid’l’s defeat in Rzhyschiv, which took place only months earlier.

As noted, the aftermath of Rzyschiv was unpleasant for Reb Duvid’l and his followers. The pursuers turned into the pursued, and they got a taste of their own methods. Being at the wrong end of the stick appears to have shocked Reb Duvid’l. According to one account, after leaving Rzyschiv, Reb Duvid’l commented, “These aren’t Breslovers.” Reb Duvid’l’s antagonists in Rzhyschiv weren’t taking the abuse without returning it in good measure. Whether out of newfound compassion or unwillingness to bestow upon the Breslovers the nobility of the persecuted, he appears to have ordered a discontinuance of the abuse.

.

ASIDE FROM THE chapter on Reb Duvid’l Tolner and the Breslovers, Assaf presents several other chapters of crisis and scandal among the Hasidim of Eastern Europe. Most notable are the chapters concerning Reb Moshe, son of the Ba’al Hatanya, the first rebbe of Chabad, who converted to Christianity, and the bizarre events concerning the Seer of Lublin’s fall from a second story window on Simchas Torah of 1814. Assaf strongly suggests that the latter event, widely accepted in Hasidic folklore as a supernatural struggle with the forces of evil, was a suicide attempt – although, it should be said, his evidence is far from conclusive.

What makes Assaf’s book so interesting, though, is the contrast it presents with the traditional accounts of the same events. The work is as much an account of the methods of Hasidic historiography as it is an account of the events themselves. While some of the events are still shrouded in mystery, there is one unmistakable thread running through most of them: the inability of Hasidim to come to terms with events that paint their world in an unflattering light.

.

MOST INTERESTING OF all is the chapter Assaf leaves for last, a striking glimpse into the life of Yitzchak Nachum Twerski, a member of the Chernobyl and Belz dynasties.

Yizchak Nachum was raised in the town of Shpikov at the court of his father, Reb Yisroel, a scion of the Skver dynasty. The young Yitzchak Nachum, however, was deeply unhappy with his position as a member of Hasidic high society, and craved the freedom of the outside world. Alas, he lacked the wherewithal to do anything about it, and his emotional turmoil remained, for the most part, a closely-guarded secret. The secret was kept from all but his closest confidantes until 1910, when Twerski, at the age of 22, wrote a letter to the Yiddish romance novelist Yakov Denison – an assistant to the great Y. L. Peretz – about his situation. In the letter, Twerski unburdens his soul in an anguished but eloquent manifesto on the lives of Hasidim in the backwoods towns and villages in which the winds of modernity and the age of the Jewish Enlightenment had yet to leave its imprint.

“I am a youth of energy and vigor. My thoughts and ambitions are alive and spirited …  [But] bitter and hard fate has subjected me to lifelong decay in the company of old men – in years and opinions, it is all the same – mummified, dark, whose God is not my God, whose views are not my views, and whose thinking, longings, and aspirations are foreign to me. Among them I am to waste my life, to partake in their joys and sorrows, and to be considered as one.”

Twerski saves his bitterest salvos for the Belz court, which he describes as the most backward and fanatic of all Hasidic courts. He was soon to be married to the daughter of Reb Yissocher Dov of Belz, a woman to whom he’d been engaged for six years and had yet to lay eyes upon. About his soon-to-be father-in-law Twerski writes: “[He is] strong-willed, hard, demands that all be done according to his wishes, [he is] intimidating and frightening to all around him – a la Stalin. One must fawn and submit fully to his authority, to bend one’s will to his… Even now I sink up to my neck in mud, and I am being dragged to fully drown in mire, in a pool of sewage.”

Aside from the letter’s heart-rending nature, it illuminates the intellectual and psychological underpinnings of at least some segments of the eighteenth and nineteenth century mass abdications of Jewish tradition. A common refrain in modern times – primarily among those clinging to Orthodoxy but also grudgingly admitted to by those who’ve discarded it – attempts to distinguish between the dissidents of today and those of yesteryear; namely, unlike those of today, the dissidents of bygone days were said to be primarily motivated by intellectual drives, by philosophical vigor and ideological fervor. But, as Assaf correctly notes, Twerski’s letter contains little of that. At most, Twerski’s is a screed of aesthetics, a pillorying of old-fashioned values that the writer deems primitive, backward, and not-very-pretty, unworthy of denizens of a more progressive and cultured world. Twerski makes no attempt to critique his inherited lifestyle’s philosophical and ideological merits. He takes no issue with any of the dogmas and doctrines of Judaism. One senses that Twerski would be fully satisfied to remain an observant Jew if he were only allowed to exchange his bekishe and kolpik for a short jacket and a fedora.

In a similar vein, Twerski himself falls into a markedly similar fallacy – if somewhat in reverse. In a section of the letter in which he describes the background to his high birth, Twerski bemoans the be-orphaned state of Hasidic society, a society that once had pride and glory and nobility. The days of the great rebbes of Skver, Tolnye, and Rachmestrivka are gone, he writes, and since then, “the luster of Hasidism has departed and glory has been exiled from its midst. It has begun to atrophy, [its strength] has diminished from day to day, until it has become as it is now, a coin whose image has been rubbed off, a name whose essence has been removed… My father’s fathers did not leave sons like themselves, men of character and intelligence, who might influence and inspire the Hasidic masses with their spirit.”

As we are now fully aware, the romanticizing of early Hasidic masters – a notion that early historians of the Hasidic movement took full part in – has been proven misplaced. While it can be argued that the movement began with a strong current of idealism at its core, it has been shown that even early on – back to the very days of Reb Mordechai of Cernobyl and Reb Yisroel of Ruzhin, the ancestors that Twerski so glorifies – Hasidic leaders were manipulative, power- and money-hungry, and entirely uninhibited in their pursuit of ostentatious wealth.

Assaf’s work has already been criticized within some segments of the contemporary Hasidic world as shoddy scholarship at best, and as libelous at worst. But those accusations remain unsubstantiated. It is the height of irony that the exposure of Hasidic historiography as wildly inaccurate is itself brushed aside with the same inattention to facts and research as that of Hasidic historiography itself. That alone reinforces the notion that shameful events of the past will be carefully obscured and whitewashed, replaced with an alternate version of events – plausible or not. Thankfully, an alternate historiography, rooted in careful methodology, has emerged to counter it, making the perpetuation of the whitewashing all the more difficult in the future.

[Reflections]

His hands are wrapped around me, my breasts up against his chest. He steps, his hips nudging my hips forward and back and suddenly to the side, the crying guitar sends his hands swinging wide, sends me spinning under his arm.

The room is dark and humid. Thin flames flicker on the windowsills, matched by golden reflections on the black windows that hide the city buildings that wall us in. Around us, couples shift and shimmy. Women float on their bare feet, their hips twisting, their hands carving the air. The men are smiling, their shoulders squared, sliding the women in the circle of their arms.

We are dancing.

This is not the ‘yidden’ of my childhood. This is not the ‘moshiach’. No neat steps with blocky feet. No girly turns to joyous psalms, dances in the living room, dances in the wedding halls, dances in circles in circles, careful woman after woman, stepping in mirrored time.

I am dancing.

I want to panic. My brain sends jerky messages of stop! And what the hell and aaaaaah to my hips and thighs.

You don’t know how to do this!

But the music is so soft.

This is so embarrassing!

But his hands are so strong.

In my world, as a child, who had a body? Who even had a self? We weren’t individuals. We were a community, intertwined in all realities.

I wrenched myself free from that mass I was a part of, but then I was alone. And who am I? A single person, with a single will, a single destiny? And what is this body? An unexplored vessel to hold all this unknown.

As a woman, there were plenty of men eager to tell me. This is what this is. This body. Their body, then. These were their curves, their limbs, their joys.

But I never danced. I stumbled. I learned new steps, new choreographies of assimilation. I followed directions.

Then I left. I left it all behind. No more. No more. I can’t always jump when my strings are jerked. I pulled myself free.

Now, I am dancing. I am terrified. I am humiliated. But I am dancing, me, my knees drifting, my thighs swaying, my hips shifting, my arms snaking, my head resting, my body dancing to the blues.

[Report]

Photo by Lloyd Bishop, www.lloydbishop.com

Children laughing, a baby’s muffled cry, the peaceful sounds of a Saturday afternoon, drift through the open window. This is New York – one of the liveliest, most turbulent cities in the world – but here, within the boundaries of the eruv string – the thin line separating indoors from outdoors, the community from the world –  Crown Heights lay deep in its sacred Sabbath slumber.

Malkie Schwartz didn’t join her family in the synagogue today. She stayed home, saying she wasn’t feeling well, and for the last hour she’s been staring intently at the phone, incapable of lifting the receiver. She knows that once she dials, intentionally desecrating the Sabbath for the first time in her life, it’ll be a step from which there was no return: one that will separate her from her religion and her family, severing her past from the possible course of her future.

This step would lead to the making of an organization that will change her life and the lives of hundreds of others. But of course she doesn’t know this at the moment. Right now she merely feels small and alone.

The realization that her family should be home any minute finally drives her to action. She snatches the receiver and dials swiftly. When her cousin answers, it takes her a few seconds to find her voice.

“I can’t live here anymore,” she finally says. “I need your help.”

After completing high school with honors, Malkie, the eldest of nine in a family of Lubavitch Hasidim, was sent to a Jewish seminary in Israel for a year. The seminary year was meant to cement her religious devotion, but instead, the lengthy stay far from her community’s scrutiny made way for serious questions . Did she truly believe the bible was dictated by god? And the 613 mitzvot derived from the torah – were they from a divine source as well? Let’s say for a moment they were written by mere mortals – if so, what’s the point in sacrificing to them her education, career, the possibility to be anything but a mother and wife?

Like most Lubavitch followers, Malkie loved the rebbe and wished to follow his calling: to save souls, to draw  more and more Jews to the torah, thus drawing  the entire world closer to salvation. But the man she once perceived as the messiah had been lying in his grave for years, and the constant effort to get one more Jew to keep one more mitzvah didn’t seem to be improving the world in general. Was it even improving her own life? The more questions she asked, the fewer answers remained.

One thing was clear– at nineteen, she wasn’t ready to get married and have kids. She needed more time, and knew her community wouldn’t allow it. She had to escape.

A few months after her return from Israel, Malkie left her parents’ home, with her cousin’s help, and moved in with her secular grandmother in Manhattan. She enrolled as a law student in Hunter College. Within a few  months she seemed like a normal American college student.

Almost normal. Some questions still remained. How should she dress, if she knew nothing of what clothing say about its wearer? What are the codes of behavior in a class where genders were mixed? What can she talk about with her new acquaintances, what was she expected to do, and what not? If a man spoke to her – did that mean he was hitting on her? If he startled her by resting a hand on her shoulder – should she lower her gaze and hurriedly walk away, or was this a common thing? How does one live in a world where the laws are unwritten?

The transition from ultra religious to secular was filled with confusion, blunders, and tragic misinterpretations, but worst of all was the loneliness.  Even new immigrants from far-away cultures couldn’t fully grasp the shocking totality of the change.

There were others like her, she knew, who may be sitting at Starbucks in jeans and t-shirts, but still incapable of eating without reciting the appropriate blessing first. Others like her, cloaked in buttoned-down shirts and head covers, who were sitting in a darkened room with the curtains drawn and secretly telling their blog all the things they couldn’t tell their loved ones.

Towards the end of the semester she put up a few signs in college and spread the word among her acquaintances that she’s interested in meeting others like her, who broke with religion.

To her amazement , twenty people showed up.

That was the first gathering of what was to become “Footsteps”:  an organization dedicated to support those who sought to enter or explore the world beyond the insular religious environments in which they were raised. In days to come this organization would address a wide spectrum of difficulties and needs, but this giddy first meeting was all about the enormous relief of no longer being alone. For those raised in enveloping and warm societies such as the ultra-orthodox ones, the isolation following the change in lifestyle was a positive curse. They needed each other, the understanding, advice, and conversation of like-minded peers; and for those with no ties whatsoever in the secular world, support was a matter of life or death.

Malkie was raised on the concept that it’s her own responsibility to care for the world, to save souls. She decided to form a Chabad house of a different sort – a home for the ones on the outside.

~ ~ ~

They’re from here, from this city – but from an entirely different world.

Approximately 150,000 Chassidic Jews from different sects currently live in New York. They gather in insular communities, the largest of which are in Borough Park, Monsey, Williamsburg, Kiryat Joel, New Square, and Crown Heights . Each community revolves around its own spiritual leader, the rebbe or Admor (the Hebrew abbreviation for the words  “our master, teacher and rabbi”), a revered position passed down from father to son. The laws of the community are rooted in the torah, rules derived from interpretations of the torah, the creed of wise rabbis throughout the ages and the guidance of their own rebbe.

There is a famous rabbinical saying: “How did the Israelites distinguish themselves from the non-Israelites during their slavery in Egypt? By name, language, and dress”.

The strict code of dress physically differentiates the Hasidim from the rest of the world, making assimilation difficult, if not impossible. The Hasidic community has its own language as well; Yiddish is generally the mother tongue. A separate education system exists in which the boys after sixth grade study only religion. It is also different in its social structure, which is based on strict gender separation and marriages arranged according to status. Family relations and social values are governed not by personal views but by religious obligations. Television and the Internet are completely prohibited; movies, radio and secular newspapers are considered a negative influence better avoided.

The seclusion religious communities impose upon themselves serves as a dual line of protection: it preserves the community’s spiritual purity by shielding it from sinful external influences and temptations, while at the same time perpetuating its own way of life from within.  With no familiarity with the world outside, even if an individual desperately wants to leave, even if he’s willing to fling his soul to the burning pits of hell – where could he go?

In the organization’s offices in Manhattan there is a computer lab, a small meeting room, and a library. Books like “A Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein, “A Hundred Years of Philosophy,” and the Koran lay on the shelves.

Every two weeks a drop-in group gathers in the meeting room. Under a signed confidentiality agreement, with the guidance of a professional counselor, they strive to untangle the complicated questions of their transition.

“What do I know about dating?” one of the young participants may say. “I thought it was going fine but then he leaned in to kiss me and I bolted. I had no idea he was going to do that! Is that accepted? I was too nervous to even look at him afterwards – I think he was upset, or merely disappointed. Didn’t hear from him for a few days now – what does that mean? Did he only want to take advantage of me? Or was he really interested but feels I pushed him away? I’d like to call and explain, but is that customary?”

Or: “My wife will no longer let me see my kids. The rebbe and the entire community stand behind her. What can I do in such a way that won’t bring them more grief than what I’ve already inflicted? Maybe it really is the best thing for them, to let them forget me.”

Or even: “All the friends I grew up with, the friends with whom I studied and prayed and shared meals – they have nothing to do with me now. Except for the meetings here, weeks could pass without me speaking to another soul.”

With the advice of the more experienced participants and the gentle guidance of professionals like Michael Jenkins, a clinical social worker and the director of programs in Footsteps, the group strives to provide answers.

“The needs vary,” Jenkins explains. “We have those who just started questioning their core beliefs – their understanding of the world and their place in it, their role in the immediate environment, and in the larger scheme.  All these questions can be dealt with as one large issue – but then come the more practical questions.  If I no longer believe, should I be open about it? How open, to whom, when, and most importantly – what would be the consequences, and can I handle them? When a person is open, it threatens his relationships with family, not to mention the wider community. He’s bound to lose some support. This can range from: ‘Leave, don’t come back, we never want to see you again’ to ‘We’d like to stay in touch, just don’t shave your beard or payess,’ or ‘Can you just respect the Sabbath?’ People at Footsteps usually have a strong motivation to maintain ties with their families. But how does one go about it, when one gives up the faith and the ideological values upon which the family unit was built and moves into a world his family neither recognizes nor respects?”

~ ~ ~

“Chasidic societies, of course, do not have the legal autonomy to order people out of their homes and neighborhoods. But they can and do enforce expected norms by means of school admissions, shidduchim, shul membership, and other forms of social orchestration… the comforts of one’s social circle and environment can’t be underestimated as considerable factors in the one’s overall life-contentedness.

“And then there’s married life. Chasidic couples are generally not paired for their compatible personalities or mutual attractiveness. Young families are established with the very specific goal of carrying on the traditions of Orthodox Judaism in general and the Chasidic lifestyle in particular. Instead of wishing a pair of glowing newlyweds that they happily maintain their passionate love for each other, they are warmly congratulated on the chance to raise doros yesharim umevorachim, generations of upstanding and blessed offspring who follow in the hallowed footsteps of their ancestors.

“The unspoken agreement is that the family be established according to rules, customs, and norms of the community, and is to continue to abide by them for a lifetime. It is a contractual relationship, if only an implied one, in which both parties understand that deviating from these norms could be a deal-breaker.

“Married men and women of the Chasidic world who develop dissenting views therefore face a real crisis. Their dissenting views are dangerous to their status quo, and with the typical age of marriage being between eighteen and twenty, by the time one has a chance to develop a more expansive worldview, their status quo might very well include multiple children settled securely in reputable schools with comfortable social dynamics. The upheaval that can result from revealing dissenting views – especially if those views are carried into practice, such as disregard for the laws of Shabbos and kashrus – are enough to scare away even the bravest of souls from open dissent.”

The previous paragraphs are quotes from the “Hasidic Rebel” blog, an online journal that became a cultural reference point for ex-Hasidim.

For more than seven years Sholom Deen, an ex-Hasid and a father of five, has been writing an online journal documenting his struggles within ultra-Orthodox society and faith. For most of those seven years he was writing covertly while still living in the strict community of New Square, outwardly performing all the rites and customs of a religiously devout orthodox Jew.

“Most of my life I truly was a devout believer – I loved Judaism and the Orthodox way of life. I loved the moments of ecstatic belief, which were frequent in my life and incorporated in the life of the community. I had my questions, but was careful not to dwell on them: Hasidism teaches the value of ‘Emuna Pshuta,’ simple faith, which translates to ‘Don’t think – feel.’ It is avoda shebalaev, serving God from the heart. ‘And you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your resources.’ I did.

As was customary, at the age of eighteen Sholom was presented with a marriage arrangement suited to his social and academic status.

“It was an unpleasant process. I met with my future wife for fifteen minutes, we agreed, and closed the deal with an engagement at the rebbe’s. It was rough. We had little in common, and I knew beyond a doubt that I didn’t want to do this – I also knew that it was the right thing to do, it’s what my faith and traditions required of me. The next time I saw her, half a year later, was at the wedding.

“Obviously, I knew nothing about sex or female anatomy. All I knew was what the ‘groom instructor’ told me: ‘Get into her bed, lie on top of her, give her a kiss… the rest will happen by itself.’  Horrified, I held on to him: ‘Can you give me some more details? It still doesn’t sound right!’”

By the age of 20 Sholom had fathered a child. A computer enthusiast since childhood, he taught himself programming and found a job in a religiously-owned company in Manhattan. Slowly he began indulging more personal interests, reading more secular literature – history, science, Biblical archeology, history of the Middle East – “And suddenly it all fell apart. The truisms on which our faith is built, they’re impossible – the whole thing just unraveled.”

“What did it feel like? Imagine you’ve been living for years with someone you’re madly and passionately in love with, and one morning you wake to find the room empty.  ‘She just stepped out for a minute,’ you think, yet days pass and the room remains empty. You think ‘She left me!’  but after a while you realize that nothing had changed: it’s the same room as always, and it’s always been empty. Your loved one was an illusion, an imaginary friend meant to counter your loneliness. You aren’t even angry for being abandoned, because there no one to be angry at. There’s just this horrible sense of loss, confusion, and inner turmoil: how could I get so attached to something so obviously groundless – and if I’m already so attached, why couldn’t I hold onto the illusion?”

“You think too much. It’s not good for you,” was his wife’s response.  She had two kids to care for, the third on his way. For his family’s sake Sholom carried on with life as usual – but as mentioned, the community has ways to deal with those who dissent. The daily rituals, without faith to give them meaning, became a cumbersome charade. Sholom found an outlet for his conflicting feelings in the blog he began writing in 2003, and soon the blog gathered company: an ever-growing community of anonymous figures began responding to his entries, adding their own stories of doubt and conflict.

In New-Square, Sholom recounts, if a woman walked towards a man on the sidewalk, he crossed to the other side of the street. In time, his double life within this particularly strict community grew unbearable. Sholom tried to rekindle the belief in his heart, or at least create some personal philosophy that would ease the inner conflict, but in the end he realized that he was grieving over his unfulfilled life.

“Over time I grew closer to my wife, and I loved my kids more than anything. It was the hardest decision I ever made – but I knew that if I stayed, I’d always see my life as a tragedy. I didn’t want to be a tragedy.”

In 2007, Sholom divorced his wife and moved out of the community. His immense relief was coupled with an overwhelming loneliness.

“After the divorce I enrolled in college, but couldn’t relate to the other students. They were simply from a different world. My old friends were now part of a different world as well, we could no longer really communicate. The loneliness became a major issue, one that I was ill-prepared for. Now, I’ve known Malkie since 2003. I knew Footsteps existed and that  it assisted  with basic assimilation issues. I’m in my thirties, I have a job, an apartment, I can read and write fluently, and to be honest, I don’t need anyone to hold my hand. But when I finally came to Footsteps I was pleasantly surprised: they were the young and clueless, yes, but I also met people whom I could relate to, who became my first friends since the move. With time I established my own social circle, but during that first year, with the collapse of my former life, Footsteps cushioned the fall.”

Though the organization doesn’t accept minors as members, many participants are 18-21 years old. For some of these youngsters Footsteps is indeed something of a foster parent.

According to Jenkins: “Until today they only lived in their parents’ homes. Suddenly they have to care for themselves, acquire skills so they can find a job to pay rent. And they have to do it all fast, in a world they aren’t familiar with. It’s hard. Some have to get into college with the average level of secular education of a fourth grader. Some of those who left but didn’t find their way to Footsteps, never made it. They just… fall.”

“That sounds like a pretty extreme scenario,” I remark. “A  situation where a person loses all his support at once, and is thrown into an unfamiliar world with no tools.”

“Not at all,” Jenkins answers, with a hint of surprise.  “It’s the most common case.”

~ ~ ~

Elazar turned to Footsteps after a month of sleeping in his car and eating leftovers from restaurants. After his wife divorced him and the word spread that the reason for this was heresy, his landlord evicted him from his apartment. He was fired from his job in a kosher liquor store, and it was clear he would not be hired again within the community. He worked for a friend and lived in his basement for a while, but was kicked out after he was spotted eating a non-kosher meal at Starbucks. “I can’t risk my family,” the friend said by way of apology. Elazar understood: dissenters were always unwelcome guests, but hosting the rebel son of a Hasidic rebbe was an even greater danger.

Elazar  (or “Luzer” as he’s unfortunately dubbed in Yiddish) is one of twelve children in the family Twersky.  Twersky is a highly respected family name descending from the grand rabbi Nachum Twersky, a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov himself and founder of the Chernobyl dynasty. Luzer’s father is the rebbe, the spiritual and ancestral leader of the Faltitchan community, and related to the Belz dynasty. “As I child I was always the black sheep. I was too curious and I asked all the wrong questions. For example, I wanted to know: Is God in the bathroom? I was told that God was everywhere, but I was also told that he was holy, and that the bathroom was an unholy place.”

“What was the answer?”

“I never got an answer. It was considered a cheeky question.”

When he was fifteen Elazar was sent to an ultra-religious boarding school in London. The strict discipline did the trick – believer or not, to get through the day without being beaten, Elazar had to study. He did this well, and quickly won recognition as a gifted student.

Upon returning to New York at the age of 18 Elazar was set up, as appropriate for the son of a Rebbe and a student of his caliber, with a pious girl from a pious family.

Now in a house of his own, free at last from his parents’ and teachers’ supervision, Elazar began to explore the world around him. Since a rebbe’s son need not worry about money, Elazar was free to roam the city, conducting long conversations with passerby, hanging out in libraries and cinemas as well as bars, clubs, and strip joints.  At the age of twenty, through a theological argument with an atheist stripper, Luzer learned of the theory of evolution.

“Her certainty shook me… I couldn’t dismiss her arguments, or get them out of my head.”

He began studying the subject to disprove these arguments. “I was taught that goyim were crazy, since they believed the universe was billions of years old, while all facts point to it being merely 5,000 years old. I discovered that we were the crazy ones, and that we don’t know what the word ‘fact’ means.”

Elazar shrugged off religion “with a mixture of horror and relief. Horror – everything I knew about life was wrong, there’s nobody to watch over me, no one to pray to. Relief, since finally I was free.”

Even with his newfound and zealously outspoken atheism, Elazar is occasionally seized by the feeling that “God is standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder, quietly judging me as I deny his existence.”

The first time Luzer turned to Footsteps he was still married and living within the community. Footsteps refused him membership. “A lot of people in the organization are covert, still living in the communities with their families. They have a lot to lose. I suppose that with the name Twersky they thought I was a spy.”

The second time he turned to Footsteps he was in ragged jeans, with no job or lodging and visibly worse for wear. They immediately recognized the gravity of the situation. “They set me up with a free apartment in the East Village for six months, and supported me until I got my feet back on the ground. Beyond the immediate lifeline, Michael and the drop-in group were a vital source of information and support…  I no longer lean on them financially, but they’re still the only ones who can appreciate where I come from and what I’m going through.”

Elazar Twersky makes a living today as an actor and writer. His beard and payess, once a proud  symbol of a religious affinity, are kept today for different reasons: “I play mainly Jewish parts, and I’m hoping to become a cultural adviser for films and plays focusing  on Jewish communities. As an insider I can make sure they get the details right. The beard and payess are my professional mark of authenticity.”

Beyond the emergency support and the drop-in groups, Footsteps provides guidance on parenting, clinical psychiatric care for those who seek it, personal one-on-one guidance with Footsteps veterans, and an onsite computer lab offering GED training programs. An internship program is being developed. The offices also hold classes in science, technology, computer skills, resume writing, job interview guidance, as well as sexual education.

Since its founding in December of 2003 until today, Footsteps assisted approximately 600 individuals. For some it was a friendly shoulder to lean on; for others, a lifesaver.

Six hundred. For some believers, these are six hundred sons and daughters now lost to them, ripped from the living organism of the Jewish world. Their children who moved to outer space. There are voices that call: “They could have been saved! If they turned somewhere other than Footsteps, like a rabbi or a religious youth counselor, maybe we would have found a way to keep them with us, and with time this would have blown over. We wouldn’t have to see the empty chair at the Sabbath table.”

“There are those who see us as a kind of devil, force-feeding their children shrimp on a Friday night,” Michael Jenkins jokes. “But when a person clearly makes up his mind to leave, and the family can neither dissuade him nor assist him, I believe at that point they are happy we exist.”

~ ~ ~

[1]The conflict became evident in a 2009 radio show in which religious host Zeev Brenner interviewed Malkie and Michael Jenkins. From the very first question, it is clear the sides are anything but friends.

Zeev:  “I understand that so far you helped 500 Jews leave their religious communities.”

Malkie:  “Well, we helped 500 people that came to us for various reasons. It would be inaccurate to say we helped specifically to leave…” Malkie goes on to list a few of Footsteps’ services.

Zeev:  “If they come to you just to improve their GEDs , that’s not a problem, it’s an important service…”

Michael intervenes:  “They come to us to question, in a nonjudgmental environment, among other peers who are also questioning. We don’t tell them to become unreligious… we give them a place where they can ask themselves how they want to choose.”

A phone call from a listener reveals that in an event held by Footsteps non-kosher food was served alongside strictly kosher portions. But why should you serve non kosher, a shocked Zeev asks, when there’s such variety and quality of kosher food these days? Even secular Jewish organizations such as the JCC or UJA agree to maintain a general standard of kosher. Don’t you think you’re sending the wrong message? If you’re trying to help them stay in the religion, what’s the problem to keep kosher?”

Malkie, her voice tense yet determined, attempts to explain once more: we aren’t trying to make them stay, we aren’t trying to make them leave, we’re letting them choose – and we try to help in whatever choice they make.

More angry listeners call in. Why should treyf be an option? What moral right does Malkie, herself an apostate, have to influence their children’s decisions? Why is she even allowed to speak on a religious channel? The debate escalates; it’s getting hard for Malkie to complete a sentence.

“I’m about to say one thing to our listeners,” Michael’s tone is soft but arresting. “You have the right to choose. If you have questions, if you need help, we’re at (212) 253-0890.”

A Hebrew version of this article appeared in Yedioth Ahronoth America. Click here to download a PDF.

[Reflections]

The room is quiet. I bubble in an answer on my sheet from the booklet of the SAT Reasoning Test. The test administrator stands next to the chalkboard, a young woman in her twenties. She checks the time and writes “25” on the board, the time left to complete this section. Before the test she read the rules from a sheet of paper on her desk. Her voice is like a recording, monotonous and cold, no cheating or disturbing, the usual.

With our number two pencils, we fill in the bubble for the correct answer. If x equals 2y, bubble. What is Maya Angelou referring to, bubble. If twenty men work at Acme how many women do, bubble. Here I am in the bubble bath of questions getting ready for the party, college. What are the different viewpoints of the two writers, bubble. If it needs a period, bubble. Of the five bubbles per question only one is correct. There is no middle ground, not just in the math section, even in critical reading. Is it a theory or fact, bubble. The test administrator writes “18” on the board.

If I want to get to college there is one thing I need to do, bubble.

The tests are usually administered on weekends in public school classrooms. It is my first time in a public school classroom, you know, one in which they teach this stuff. The walls are bare, typical for a government building. The plumbing is visible to anyone who can afford a moment to look up while taking the test. There is a board and bookshelves and windows. Windows unlike the ones we had in yeshiva, frosted and locked. These windows are huge, see-through and open.

It’s through these windows that I hear the song rising from a car zipping by. I think I’m gonna ah, ah, ah, ahhh.

The boy behind me, about my age and clearly bored by the questions that require him to focus, picks up on the song and starts humming it. Disturbia, eh eh ahh. Irritated, I try to tune him out. I looked to the woman giving the test expecting her to say something, but evidently she didn’t hear anything. I keep looking at her hoping she’d notice. She looks to be in her mid-twenties, with straight black shoulder-length hair and greenish blue eyes. Her skin tone is light, but not pale, her posture is strong and tall, the kind that sends the message, “I have it under control.” She wears a green shirt that hangs loosely on her chest and jeans like scaffolds molding her thighs. How did I not notice her?

Am I going crazy? I think to myself. I’m taking the test, not just any test, the SAT! There will be plenty of girls in college, what am I doing? The boy is still humming Disturbia, and I start thinking about the song.

No more gas, in the rig, can’t even get it started
Nothing heard, nothing said, can’t even speak about it
All my life, on my head, don’t wanna think about it
Feels like I’m going insane, yeah

Yes, I’m going insane. I have never taken a real test before. In yeshiva, a test was a discussion; all you needed was familiarity with the subject and the ability to play with words. For every question there were at least five correct answers. What mattered during the test was the test giver, manage to impress him and you’re good. I remember when I went to my future rosh yeshiva for the intake exam. I botched up one question; seeing the murky waters I waded into, I quickly quoted a gemara that said something similar but unrelated. Impressed with my knowledge, a smile appeared on his face and we continued our discussion. With the SATs there is no one to impress. A machine will review my answers and assign me a score.

How am I to give a yes or no answer, when there is no such thing in the yeshiva world? The questions are so foreign. In yeshiva you had to choose which “depends” you want to go with. Can you bequeath your assets to an unborn child? Depends. (What’s the state of a fetus? What’s the process of inheritance? What is inheritance when the owner is still alive?) Can you sell yet-to-be-acquired truma? Depends. (What is truma? What is truma before you aliquot it? Does your final action prove your initial intent?) Can you trust the confession of one who forged a contract? Depends. (What is the value of a contract? Is it a convention or an agreement? Are a person’s words trusted until proven otherwise, or not?) For every question you have at least five depends, each of them correct. Not five bubbles, four wrong and one right. My depends-wired brain was being fried in a pot of bubbles.

It’s a thief in the night to come and grab you
It can creep up inside and consume you
A disease of the mind it can control you
It’s too close for comfort

But, after all, this is what I wanted. I wanted to attend college so I left yeshiva. I wanted an education, and for that I needed to do some bubbling. In yeshiva everything was up in the air, everything depended on everything said prior to that, forever perpetuated in inconclusive discussions. If you struggle with a question and then come up with an answer, your answer may or may not survive, but the question will carry on. It will be asked again and again regardless of how many answers you come up with. It’s the discussion that is important, not the conclusion.

Yet I wanted more. I wanted the feeling of continuity in my intellectual musings, not mental fixation. I wanted my thoughts to be part of the accumulation of knowledge, part of the ascent towards full awareness. And here I had it, in the five bubbles in front of me, each bubble was the end result of a conclusive discussion, each bubble a springboard for further inquiry. In front of me was the promised land of definitive thought, a city of blinding lights.

Put on your break lights, you’re in the city of wonder
Ain’t gon’ play nice, watch out you might just go under
Better think twice, your train of thought will be altered
So if you must falter be wise

Your mind’s in disturbia, it’s like the darkness is light
Disturbia, am I scaring you tonight?
Disturbia, ain’t used to what you like
Disturbia, disturbia

Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” claims that the nature of the scientific discourse is through paradigm shifts. With each revolutionary idea there is a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift is when the accepted questions and methods change. After each paradigm shift there is a period of fine-tuning, during which the ideas introduced during the shift will be modified and perfected until a new paradigm emerges, one that can resolve questions the previous one couldn’t.

I wanted to be part of a paradigm shift, not a periodic paradigm. What I wanted was the freedom of questioning solidified by past scholarship. In a sense, I wanted both worlds. I wanted the elusiveness of a Yeshiva discussion bedded on the concreteness of modern academia. I thought I could have that in the paradigm shift. In the popular science book it all seemed that way, open-ended questions followed by strings of possible answers. Yet, I failed to realize that shifts in paradigms play but a small role in the conventional schooling of minds. A paradigm shift can’t be hunted or pinned down, you can’t force a paradigm to change. A paradigm changes when bubbles burst, when answers don’t satisfy.

In yeshiva, the discussion was at the mercy of the discusser, discourse emerging from one’s willingness to do so. In this classroom, discourse happens when there is recognition of failure within the excepted system. If I want ideas with concrete backgrounds, I have to hand it over to the ideas to run the show. I have to let the idea decide if it’s time for a paradigm shift or not. Until that time I need to continue bubbling.

The test administrator writes “6” on the board. Six more minutes.

Faded pictures on the wall, it’s like they talking to me
Disconnecting on calls, the phone don’t even ring
I gotta get out or figure this shit out
It’s too close for comfort, oh

It’s a thief in the night to come and grab you
It can creep up inside you and consume you
A disease of the mind it can control you
I feel like a monster, oh

The boy behind me is still humming. During the break I heard him talk to some friends about test-taking strategies. “Didn’t Mr. X talk about these kind of questions?” “Hadn’t Ms. Y mentioned that technique?” The people around me are all doing the usual tricks, skip to the easiest question, eliminate wrong answers, etcetera. It was then that I realized that both the yeshiva world and the secular world have copped out of the question-and-answer mindset.

To honestly pursue the vicissitudes of intellectual discussion requires a duality of mind. The ability to be fluent in the language of doubt where possibilities are endless, and the capacity to recognize certainty with all the surprises it brings along. The languages of doubt and certainty are diametrically opposed. Doubt rests on the slippery mind, where the past guides with a nebulous arrow pointing vaguely in a general direction, an unknown end happily encountering previous thoughts. Certainty and conclusion are rigid and reverential, a recognized end can renounce all of the past, call for a revision of all that has previously been said. With certainty, one is confined to the idea and its framework.

Both my yeshiva and this classroom have copped out of this challenge. The yeshiva chose the vernacular of questions endowing their students with the ability to endlessly run around ideas never facing the inflexible, never modifying that which is disproved. This classroom sees the universe of questions and answers as a system of rules to be played with, it places students outside the storm, to observe rather than to take part, to absorb concrete knowledge that has already been determined, not to take part in creating such knowledge. Around me are people neither questioning nor answering, they probe a machine that is to assign them a number that will tell someone how good they are at playing the rules of the game called academia. The nomadic mind pursuing the solace of certitude has no place in either.

Release me from this curse I’m in
Trying to maintain but I’m struggling
If you can’t go-o-o
I think I’m gonna ah, ah, ah, ah

The woman at the board indicates that the test is over and asks us to lay down our pencils. Around me, people stretch their limbs and smile to their friends. The test is over, gone is the anxiety of preparation, of studying and memorizing. In a couple of weeks we will each receive a letter containing a number that will follow us around. You are your score. I along with 160,000 students in New York take the SATs. Of those students, 21,000, like me, hope to pursue their doctoral degrees, of which 4,000, like me, plan to study biological sciences.

The test administrator starts collecting the booklets, passing the open windows that make her hair surrender to the soft breeze entering the room. When she gets to my desk I hand her my booklet of bubbles and my booklet of questions and answers. The questions and answers will be reused for the next kid who takes the SATs, while the booklet of filled-in bubbles is unique to me, it will tell my story of how well I played the test game and the admissions counselor will know me.

As I hand her my booklets I smile to her and she smiles back. I don’t know what I tried to achieve with that smile, but I did it anyway. “Thanks, I say, and leave.

The streets appear as they do on a usual Sunday morning. People stroll in nearby parks as trucks pass by lazily. Delis serve coffee and street vendors set up shop. People are out and about playing with and by the rules of everyday life. As I head home I replay the test and all that happened. The bubbles, the yeshiva memories, the test administrator, the boy humming behind me, the classroom.

They say a test is to tell you how well you know your stuff, and before I even recieve my score I know. I know that a mind is a tough thing to change. If I want to be a part of this world I will need to do some rewiring. I will need to learn how to play the game of systems and rules, where you always break one to win the other.

Several weeks later I receive the envelope in the mail. My combined score is 1840, which places me in the 85th percentile nationwide. I apply to my college of choice and enroll later that year. On the street one day I think I see the girl who administered the test, but I’m not sure. I don’t see the boy who sat behind me again, but the voice of him singing comes back to me as I hear the same song a hundred times over, sung by high school students on the streets, blasting from car speakers, or with its rhythm beating my ears at a nightclub.

I go on to take a placement test several months later, which is to determine my required classes. A slew of additional tests will follow until in four years I will take the big test that will let me graduate. After that, I will take a few other tests until I move on. Then I will write my own test. I will gather all the depends in front of me, each depends will be based on the knowledge of facts I’ve accumulated over years of test taking. After blowing and bursting every bubble I hope to come to the final answer, an idea that will humble me into surrender. All the discussions will be behind and ahead of that moment. At that moment I will create an answer, and for that moment it will be like what I envisioned when I read Kuhn. At that moment kids across the world will be bubbling in on their test sheets the bubble I blew out of all my speculations. At that moment, my mind, the same one that contemplated the frosted windows of the yeshiva and the chalkboard in the classroom, will be happy. At that moment I, who discussed Talmudic subjects with roshei yeshiva and bubbled in answers on test sheets, will be satisfied. And for that moment it will all have been worth it.

[At Gunpoint]

Itchie has a dolly.
He calls her Dolly.
Itchie loves his Dolly.
He plays with her all the time. He also has a friend.
His friend is the little Jew with the backpack.
Dolly also has a friend.
Her friend is the little man in the boat.
When Dolly is tired Itchie puts her to bed.
When Dolly cries Itchie holds her close.
When Itchie is sad Dolly makes him feel better.
When Itchie is pissed the fuck off Dolly calms him down.
Itchie and Dolly go everywhere together.
They go to eat together.
They watch movies together. They sleep together.
Sometimes they fight.
But they always make up. They are the bestest friends.
Sometimes Itchie pulls Dolly’s hair and wakes her up in the middle of the night to play.
Dolly does not like this.
She cries and tells Itchie to fuck off.
Itchie then feels bad and kisses Dolly until she feels better.
Sometimes Dolly will scratch Itchie’s back.
Itchie likes that.

Itchie and Dolly and the little Jew with the backpack and the little man in the boat all go fishing together.
A lot.
They really like fishing together.
Itchie is very tall.
Dolly is not so tall.
Itchie is very big.
Dolly is a lot smaller.
Itchie has homicidal tendencies.
Dolly has suicidal tendencies.
They wonder why they haven’t killed each other yet.
Doctors say, their combined insanity is a medical marvel.
Itchie says fuck the doctors. Dolly says, yeah, fuck them.
They carpool to therapy.
If anyone hurts Dolly, Itchie will make them eat their own liver.
If anyone hurts Itchie, Dolly will shoot them with Itchie’s gun.
It’s a big gun.

One day Itchie lost his Dolly.
He looked and looked but he couldn’t find her.
Itchie was very sad.
He went to play with other dollies.
But the other dollies weren’t fun.
One dolly was mean and made itchie sad.
So Itchie told her to go fuck herself.
One dolly wanted Itchie to pay for some bullshit the li’l slutty dolly should’ve paid for herself.
So itchie was sad.
He found more guns.
And did some more shooting.

Itchie found a bike.
It was a big bike.
Itchie kept the bike.
The bike goes very fast.
It makes a lot of vroom vroom noise.
One day Itchie was vrooming on the big bike and he found a new dolly.
But the the new dolly liked to think of a magical man in the sky.
Itchie also once liked the magical man in the sky.
But the magical man in the sky wasn’t nice to Itchie, and Itchie said fuck him.
So Itchie said goodbye to the new dolly and set her down gently.
Itchie decided that all the dollies were fucked up and weren’t worth the trouble.

One day Itchie was very sad.
His friend made a big mistake and ate too much candy and had to go to the hospital.
He bled from his eyes ears and nose and then he went away on a long trip.
Itchie’s friend didn’t come back, and the friend’s mommy and daddy made a party.
His friend’s dolly asked Itchie to bring a little puppy in his car.
Itchie said ok.
But Itchie said the puppy has to shut the fuck up and sit in the back.
But the puppy was bad.
It jumped in the front and wouldn’t shut up.
Itchie wanted to smash its li’l furry head.
But he didn’t.
The next day the puppy came to Itchie’s house.
The puppy cleaned Itchie’s house.
Itchie was happy.
Then the puppy scratched itchies back.
Itchie was in fucking heaven.
Itchie wanted to keep the puppy.
But Itchie was scared the puppy would run away.
But the puppy came back.
Every day.
And when Itchie went on a trip the puppy was sad.
The puppy yipped and whined until Itchie came back.
One day Itchie realized that his puppy loves him very much.
And he loved his puppy.
He buys his puppy treats.
The puppy licks Itchie’s face.
Itchie likes it.
A lot.
Then the puppy scratches Itchie’s back.

Itchie has a puppy.
He calls her Puppy.
Itchie loves his Puppy.
He plays with her all the time. He also has a friend.
His friend is the little Jew with the backpack.
Puppy also has a friend.
Her friend is the little man in the boat.
When Puppy is tired Itchie puts her to bed.
When Puppy cries Itchie holds her close.
When Itchie is sad Puppy makes him feel better.
When Itchie is pissed the fuck off Puppy calms him down.
Itchie and Puppy go everywhere together.
They go eat together.
They watch movies together. They sleep together.
Sometimes they fight.
But they always make up.
They are the bestest friends.
Sometimes Itchie pulls Puppys hair and wakes her up in the middle of the night to play.
Puppy does not like this.
She cries and tells Itchie to fuck off.
Itchie then feels bad and kisses Puppy until she feels better.
Sometimes Puppy will scratch Itchies back.
Itchie likes it.
Then Itchie and Puppy and the little Jew with the backpack and the little man in the boat all go fishing together.
A lot.
They really like fishing together.
Itchie is very tall.
Puppy is very small.
Itchie is very big.
Puppy is tiny.
Itchie has homicidal tendencies.
Puppy has shopping problems and likes people too much.
Itchie hates people.
Itchie says people should fuck off or be shot.
Puppy says people are good and nice
They wonder why they haven’t killed each other yet.
Doctors say, their combined insanity is a medical marvel.
Itchie says fuck the doctors. Puppy says, yeah, fuck them.
They carpool to therapy.
If anyone hurts Puppy, Itchie will shove a shotgun up their ass and fuck them with buckshot.
If anyone hurts Itchie, Puppy will leave her peaceful ways and shoot them with Itchie’s gun.
It’s a big gun.
Itchie hopes she won’t fall over trying to hold it.

[Reflections]

I had four children when I managed to leap off the train mid-journey to Doomsville. Sweet innocent children that I love dearly, but I had to leave them. It was too dangerous for them to jump with me. I have not gone too far though. I spend most of my time looking for ways to send them messages, telling them to leap when they have a chance to do so. I don’t know if they will ever have the courage.

In the meantime, my conscience is torn and my life is in shambles. Life in the station is almost not worth living; the conditions are inhumane. I am like a rotten smelly pest to most of the passengers who go on in either direction, I am different from all of them, I am the homeless person that has no destination.

I see trains leaving daily in the opposite direction, and I wish I was on one of them, on the way to make a new life for myself. But here I am, stuck in this foul smelling train station with strange passerby staring at me scornfully. Only occasionally do I see a glance of pity in the eyes of a passerby, eyes quickly averted. Some of the passerby I know from when I was still on the train, travelers who only stopped to rest, but will continue on soon in the same direction. Some look at me with disgust, occasionally one of them will spit in my direction. Others who take off in the opposite direction sometimes ask me to join. But I decide to stay.

Then there are my newfound friends, others like me stuck in the station not knowing where to go. We stick together at all times; all we have in life is each other. When one of us finally is courageous enough to hop onto a train and move on, we sadly applaud him and wish him well. We say, one day we’ll follow you and meet up again in a better place, dear friend. Silently, we mourn his loss and go on with our pointless lives. Very soon, he becomes a distant memory.

Often, these days, I would have my feet on the steps of a train moving out of the station, the whistle blowing, the conductor impatiently shouting, “All aboard.” Each time, as soon as it starts to move, I hear the voices of my children screaming, Daddy, don’t leave us! We need you! And the memory of their cries moves me and I hop off before the train speeds up, landing hard on the edge of the platform. I still see their train in the distance, far off, a fast moving speck, its red taillights barely visible. I still see the gloomy faces they had when I jumped, the foot-stomping of my oldest one, the tears of my middle child, the frightened look on the one before the youngest, too young to fully grasp the situation, but old enough to realize something unpleasant was about to happen, something that will affect her life forever.

The scene that replays is like a horror flick, ruthless with its grotesque images, but yet you can’t take your eyes off it. I wish I didn’t have to leave them behind; I wish they could have jumped with me. We would have been together, moving towards a new life, and I wouldn’t be stuck in this godforsaken train station. All that seems like a dream, I hope one day it will come true, I hope one day they will find their way back towards my station, we will hug, and I will kiss them for all the times that I wasn’t able to, and we’ll start a new life together. In the meantime, I will remain at the station, endure all this pain, and keep sending them messages in whichever way I can, that I am here waiting, and I cannot move on, out of my yearning to be with them once again.

But I am sick of the living conditions here in the station, and getting sicker every day. I am afraid that soon I will die of cold and starvation. And my children might leap one day, but I will no longer be here to greet them. If that happens, I hope they will remember my struggles and carry on the fight in my memory. And possibly, one day, the sun will shine, warming us all with its blinding rays, and we will forever be together.

[Reflections]

It used to be, you could trace my crazy years with your finger, from the melted skin on my right wrist across to the map of scars and burns and scrapes that dotted my left arm, my belly, my thighs, down to the curved line that stretched over my left calf, like a pink wing trying to break free out my leg.

Now, if you put your finger on me, I would punch you and call the cops.

There wouldn’t be much left to trace anyhow, if you could touch me.

Life passes and one day you stop and look down, and your skin is whole. The scars have faded.

During the crazy years I collected those scars like trophies. They were my proof that I was alive. That I was going through what I was going through, even if there wasn’t a person in the world who knew about it, or cared. Those marks on my flesh were my boo-boos that promised a mommy’s kiss, even as mommy shouted that I was possessed by a dybbuk and slammed down the phone on me.

My body collected its last scar last summer. We were at the beach. The sun was hot and the waves danced wildly. Matthew went in to the cold water. I waited, meditating on our towel, the sweat dripping into the creases between my folded thigh and calf.

“Come in already, please, please come swim with me,” Matthew begged, breaking into my deep breathing. The sun had already burnt his nose red and his eyes sparkled, beads of water trembling on his eyelashes. I followed him, picking my feet around the towels.

Inside, there was a violence in the water that scared me. I jumped waves with Matthew and watched him slice into the ocean, slippery as a dolphin. But the water rushed fast and crashed hard and I started pushing to the shore.

“I’m heading back,” I called to Matthew.

I had made it to the edge of the crumbling sand when a wave came. I heard it, I saw it, glancing back, as it raced behind me, chasing me. The blue crest rolled up high, higher than me, higher than that.

I tried to run. As I lifted my feet the wave fell on my head, knocking me over, throwing me flat on my belly, scraping my body down the sand as it sucked back to the deep, dragging me behind.

I got to my feet, crying, ocean running from my nose, I scrambled on shaking legs for our towel. An arc of blood dripped down my stomach, over the old pink scars from years ago.

That was my last wound. At the beach. The fucking beach.

Who the hell am I anymore? A woman who gets her scars on summer vacation?

It’s been four years since the crazy times faded and my smooth skin tells me I am normal. You would think I was a regular goy. I look like everybody else.

I want to take a meat cleaver to this lying flesh, remind myself and the world where I come from and what I’ve been through, but the crazy times have evaporated and I am not capable of such things anymore.

[Humor]

Yoshke sat in the swivel chair in his office, and stared at his computer screen. He was thinking about this week’s hotline recording, and he did his best thinking while looking at his screensaver. Five shiny golden brown challahs and two slices of gefilte fish floated across the screen in random patterns for a few seconds. Then the screen began to fill with more challahs and more fish of all sorts: large braided egg challahs, unbraided water challahs with large crusty slits across the top, small bilkelech, along with slices of carp, white fish, salmon, and for an added touch, a few bowls of chrain. The gefilte slices each had a perfect orange carrot slice on top. The carrot was the graphic artist’s idea, but the chrain was Yoshke’s.

He loved watching his screen saver, it commemorated his most brilliant feat yet, when he had only five challahs and two packages of Flaum’s smoked fish at last year’s demonstration against the Aroinim, and the demonstrators were about to pelt him with eggs, because they mostly came for the food, and he didn’t have enough. He had to call his brother Yanky who worked at Flaum’s, whom he still wasn’t speaking to, at least not with words, since the days when they both worked for their father as carpenters (as they had liked to call themselves, although all they did was install kitchen cabinets). But he was desperate, and within minutes Yanky was there with a van full of challahs and gefilte fish. Since they weren’t speaking, they mimed.

“You’ll owe me one, you mamzer,” Yanky had mimed.

“Yeah, yeah, hock a chainik,” Yoshke mimed back. “You don’t know what means a vierdjin birt, you beheime.” For vierdjin birt Yoshke locked his fingers over his crotch. For beheime, he put up his index fingers to indicate horns.

Shimon walked in and snapped him out of the pleasant brotherly reverie.

“Hey, Petrishkeh,” Yoshke said. It was an old nickname that stuck somehow. No one could remember how or why. Some said it was Greek for something. Although Shimon thought it was a vegetable. Maybe a Greek vegetable.

“You came just at de right time,” Yoshke said, moving his mouse to dismiss the screensaver. “Tonight is bedikas chumetz and I still need to buy anoder box of Pupa-Tzelem matzohs. So I need your input on dis quick.” An audio editing program was open on the screen, with sharp up-and-down green lines on a black background representing the latest recording. “Give a listen,” Yoshke said. He pressed the green “Play” button. The speakers on both sides of the monitor gave a single crackle of static before Yoshke’s voice came through.

“Be’ezras hashem yisburech. Dis is de shiur for parshas Tzav, Erev Peisech, tuf shien aiyen. For last week’s shiur press zero, pound, then 11219, pound, and then 3122, pound. To hear de shiur in Yiddish, press—“

“Nu, do fast forward, I don’t need de hakdumehs,” Shimon said, grabbing a copy of Der Yid laying on the floor. Or was the floor laying under Der Yid? Shimon wasn’t sure. Philosophical questions gave him a headache, which was why he liked Yoshke, who said simple things, like, “Both Aron and Zalmen Leib are hypocrites. Woe unto them.” Shimon sat down in a folding chair and laid the paper on the desk, his knee bobbing up and down as he flipped through the pages to find “In Oilem Hapolitika,” then turned to Moishe Yida Deutch’s editorial column.

Yoshke paused the audio. “Why you reading dat now?” he yelled. “Petrishka, you of little faith, I need you to listen!”

“I’m listening, I’m listening!” Shimon yelled back, quite obviously listening only with his nose. He sniffed. He thought he smelled chicken soup and ayer lukshen from the apartment downstairs.

“Shoin, I’m making it a little furder. Just hear it out, ok?”

Shimon yawned as he scanned the page he was reading. “Nu,” he said and tried to remember if it was Thursday yet, so he could get a slice of gala with a plate of chulent from Grill on Lee.

Yoshke pressed the green button again.

“Dis week, b’emes, I wanted to talk about someting else. But I want first to say someting dat I tought earlier dat it’s very important to hear. And it’s very deep, umik umik mini yam, it’s a gevalidge important ting to hear, and you should listen carefully. I want to say dis:

“Gebentched are dose who are aniyim in spirit, becuz dey really, b’emes, have malchus shumayim.

“Gebentched  are dose who mourn, all dose who sit shiva, or are in de yuhr saying kaddish, becuz dey will have a real nechume.

“Gebentched are de meek, de eidele yidden, for dey will have de whole earth as deir yerisheh—”

“Wha—What—What’s this?” Shimon looked up from the newspaper. “You sound like moishe rabaynie by Har Grizim and Har Eivul, or something.” Shimon looked at Yoshke through squinted eyes, which he did whenever he looked at something with disdain, or when he thought someone was hogging the kishke at the kiddush shabbos morning.

“What, it’s not good?” Yoshke asked, looking hurt as he clicked the Pause button. “I heard it from Reb Yoichanan der Mikveh Yid.”

“So say you heard it from Reb Yoichanan. Nu, let’s hear de rest already.” Shimon flipped through the paper to find the ads for this year’s Chol Hamoed extravaganzas.

Avremel, Shimon’s brother, walked through the door just then. “What’s going on here?” he asked, biting into a blintze that he held in his hand, or, more precisely, contemplating how much blintze he had earlier and how suddenly the blintze was so much smaller, which led to all kinds of existential questions.

Avremel was a “bum,” who recently started going by the name Andrew. He wore white polo shirts during the week, trimmed his beard, and liked to go clubbing on motzeh shabbos. But Yoshke liked him nonetheless, called him a tayere neshume, one who will help spread his word. Shimon and Avremel once worked together at a fish store, until Yoshke discovered them and said something about making them “fishers of men,” and recruited them for his work. Although truth be told, they simply hated their old boss, who made them work fourteen hour days, and Shimon and Avremel were just looking for new jobs, preferably in cash, so they wouldn’t have to give up their Food Stamps. But mainly they were lured by the promise of easy Internet access, and the fact that Yoshke himself loved to watch YouTube videos.

Yoshke, in the meantime, began to wax nostalgic about Reb Yoichanan der Mikveh Yid, which was the brothers’ cue to tune him out and hum one of Lipa’s latest hits. “You guys don’t remember him,” Yoshke said, “Our generation wasn’t zoicheh to have such a tzaddik. In de end, dey had his head on a plate, so to speak, and it wasn’t even a good plate, just some cheap plastic, dat you buy at Costco, six packs of 200 count, $7.99.” Yoshke did some quick math with his fingers. “Sorry, $9.99. But was dat ah tayere yid, I tell you. You should’ve seen him wit dat chalat’l de color of camel’s hair, and dat layderne pasik he used for a gartel. He was de first who taught me how to do shai tevilos.” Yoshke’s eyes had a glassy look. “And you know what he lived on? Locusts! Yes, haysheriken! Oven roasted, and smothered in wild honey. S’is delishus, he used to say.”

Avremel tapped his foot in syncopated beats as Shimon quietly hummed Lipa’s song of “Yotzmech batchi” from his “Hallel” album.

“But enough about Reb Yoichanan,” Yoshke said, absent-mindedly rising and swaying his hips to the tune and snapping his fingers. When he spoke again it was to the tune of Lipa’s rendition of Wimoweh. “Back to de shiur for dis week’s hotline. It’s really amkus mikol omkim.” And he was just going to sing, “Abi m’laybt, abi m’laybt,” when Shimon grabbed his shoulder and sat him down again on the swivel chair. “Ouch,” said Yoshke, and slipped his hand under his bony butt to massage where it hurt. “Woe unto you,” he added.

“De shiur, for de hotline, Yoshke,” Shimon said. “For chrissakes,” he muttered. “Let’s hear de rest already.”

Yoshke pressed the green button again, and ran his hand through his beautiful long brown locks.

“Raboisai,” the speakers announced, “I want to tell you a real emesdigeh thing. De best thing, is not to resist a rushe. If a rushe gives you a potch on one cheek, turn de oder cheek also. Let him give you another potch. Petch, you should know, raboisai, is good for de neshume.”

Shimon and Avremel looked up at Yoshke, startled out of reading the “Hashuvas Aveideh” classifieds, which had them wondering whether they could claim the wad of “a gressere s’chim gelt” that someone found on Hooper between Lee and Marcy.

“Also,” the voice from the speakers continued, “if somebody wants to sue you and take your coat, or your bekishe, or your three-piece-suit, give him your shtreimel too.”

“Yoshke, Miriam, and Yossi Batchi!” Shimon and Avremel cried in unison. “That’s not a Jewish thing! Turn the other cheek?”

Shimon looked at Avremel and Avremel looked at Shimon.

“You ever heard such a thing?” Avremel asked Shimon.

“Never!” Shimon said stamping his foot on a locust that was just about to hop across the room.

The door opened again. It was Yidel, the least favorite of Yoshke’s twelve talmidim. “I heard that,” Yidel said and gave Yoshke a kiss on the cheek. Yoshke smiled at him, then stuck out his tongue when Yidel looked away. He pressed the green button on the screen again.

“Moirai v’raboisai, enough wit de empty prayers. A yid needs to know how to daven vie a yid. Dis is a real deep vort from Chazal, and if you gonna daven, don’t daven like a goy. When a goy davens, he says a lot of words, but dey mean noting. Don’t be like de goyim, because hashem yisburech knows what you need before you even ask him.

“Dere’s a tefilla, dat I found in an old siddur from one of de rishoinim, dat all of you should know. It’s a gevalidge tefilla, short, and mit aza zieskeit, mamesh noiam haneshumes. It goes like dis:

“Uvieni shebashumayim,
Hallowed be dy name,
Your malchus should come,
De rutzoin hashem yisburech should be done,
In oilem hazeh as in oilem habu,
Give us our parnusseh,
And be moichel our choives,
As we have been moichel the choives of others,
And you should not bring us, loi liedei nisoyoin, v’loi liedei bizoyoin,
And rescue us from de yaitzer horeh.”

Yidel looked at Yoshke, then at Shimon and Avremel, then back at Yoshke.

“One of you here will betray me,” said Yoshke. “I just know it. A bandeh mamzayrem is what you are. I am here to spread de truth. How all de rabbis are lying hypocrites, and none of dem want to listen to me. Dis hotline is all I’ve got, and I think dis is de last one. It will be special. I need a catchy name for it.”

“The Final Sermon,” said Shimon.

“The Sermon of the Last Seuda,” said Avremel.

“Sermon on the Rooftop,” said Yidel, who snuck out the door just as Yoshke was preparing to give him a dirty look.

“That is catchy, though,” said Yoshke. “Sermon on the Rooftop.”

“But we’re not on a rooftop,” Shimon said.

“Woe unto you, ye of little faith,” Yoshke said to him. “Always hung up on technicalities.”

Shimon turned red.

“Just kidding,” Yoshke said to him, and laughed that hearty deep-throated laugh that made his kutchma fall off his head.

The recording went up on the hotline that evening. It spread like wildfire. Kol Mevaser even ran an excerpt.

The next day, early morning on Erev Paysech, Yoshke was summoned by Hisachdus Harabunim.

“Woe unto you, dayunim, rabunim, hypocrites!” Yoshke cried.

“Don’t get so hysterical,” the safra d’dayna said.

“Woe unto you, too,” Yoshke glared at the safra d’dayna.

“And let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” Yoshke added for emphasis. But none of them had stones anyway, they had eggs and potatos from the kimche d’pischa office, but mostly they had eggs, since they were gevashene, and even the Williamsburg paupers declined to take them. The eggs cracked in their hands before they could throw them, and Yoshke stood there alternately laughing at them and yelling, “Hypocrites!” Only one egg, from some small-time ruv from Borough Park who gave hechsheirim easily, hit him smack in the middle of his forehead. And as the egg yolk dripped down over and between his eyes, Yoshke cackled with laughter. He laughed so hard till he cried, and with his hand on his jaw, cried, “Stop, stop! This is too funny, it hurts! Keili, hehe, Keili, hehehe, luhmu azavtuni, hehehehehe!” And he added for emphasis, “Hahahahaha!”

In the end it was indeed Yidel. It had to do with a real estate deal. Yidel needed another thirty grand for a down payment, the closing was the next day, a “major deal,” he told his wife. For thirty grand he told the rabunim everything, and they promised to let his children stay in the moisdos.

The “Sermon on the Rooftop,” as it came to be known, was all over YouTube within days, with the challah and gefilte fish screensaver as the video. Lipa and Michoel Schnitzler called it “inspiring.” Even Lady Gaga got in on the fad, and wore challah and gefilte fish on her head at all her public appearances thereafter.