Runaway Pride

Some years ago a nice Chassidic young man disappeared hours before he was supposed to get married. The frantic parents were convinced the boy was dead or worse. In our society worse than dead is possible. With surprising verve and flair for a Chassid he turned up, alive and well and in fine fettle, in Barcelona, immortalizing that fair city in Chassidim’s eyes as the city of the escapee.

From the lovely proclamations, that were an outsider’s standard fare before the blogosphere, one could be forgiven for wondering what he was escaping from. In fact that incident highlighted a problem that had been festering for a long time, that of parents abusing the arranged shidduch system to arrange for their children to marry partners, often chosen with the family’s standing in mind rather than the child’s horizontal activities.

I say this with conviction. I myself was introduced to and indeed married a young lady who at the time was decidedly not my first choice but simply the closest I could get to different. The fact that it all worked out rather well and the combination of my bad influence and her good sense and looks have allowed her to blossom into someone I love passionately, respect and admire, are beside the point.

Having a young man run away on the day of his wedding suddenly brought to the wider attention of the community what the younger generation had been thinking for a while already. The times when a father announces to his Tzeitel that she is engaged are over. And just like the few individuals who happen to become rich while remaining proud of being unable to sign their own names are no proof that education is unnecessary, the fact that some matches made in heaven work in bed does not mean we can rely on divine inspiration and Rebbishe blessings alone when choosing mates for our kids.

Any avid follower of the gossip doing the rounds on the Hill in the last year will have gathered that the old style of operating (like the old guard of operatives) simply will not wash. Parents can no longer hope that marrying their daughter off quickly to the first available member will make all their problems disappear. The youth of today have either tasted the forbidden fruit or have heard from others who have. In the Garden of Eden it was a bite from an apple now it is a byte on an Apple but knowledge is knowledge and it cannot be unlearned.

If the Rabbinate had any sense they would be working with us the Shgatzim to limit the damage and try and find some way to acknowledge the new reality. Instead they display more dayanism than dynamism and they spend most of their time blocking any progress and ensuring their own immortality as the last of the Moshicans. Indeed, looking around it seems to me that good sense is more of a hindrance than an asset in that industry.

The sounds from the street have permeated through the shtetl’s walls. The youth of today want a partner who will share not only their beds but also their interests and even more importantly their time. The girls, growingly expected to share the burdens of making a living, want more and more to become a part of their husband’s lives. The men, as they move out from behind the jeweller’s benches and the close confines of that industry and real estate, are more and more being confronted with self-assured and poised women who have opinions and viewpoints. Many are encouraging their spouses to join them in their own little bars alona. Many of those who do not care to join can throw some of the blame for their partner’s infidelities (real or quasi) on their parent’s poor choices if that is any comfort to them.

I can say for sure that unless all this is taken into account during the setting up of shidduchim it is hard to blame the couple themselves and harder still not to blame the powers that be, who so stubbornly refuse to see this.

Aptly Said

Sipurei Tzaddikim they are called; Chassidic Tales. During Melave Malka, Saturday-night, a meal Chassidim believe is almost as holy as a Shabbos one, it is customary to tell inspirational tales of past Chassidic Rebbes. Lore has it that the fires of Hell, extinguished during the shabbos, are only rekindled when the last Jew finishes Melave Malka so it is actually a good deed to make it last as long as possible.

To some Chassidim these stories take on the status of Torah almost, while those like me, of a more questioning nature, prefer to take them with a pinch of salt. It is acceptable to doubt the veracity of the actual stories providing you accept that the Rebbe was capable of doing whatever the story says he did. In the language of Chassidim “You don’t have to believe it is true but you do have to believe it could have been true.”

Reb Avraham Yehoshua Hershel was a great tzaddik. He lived in Poland between 1755 and 1825. For a while he was Rabbi in a small town called Apt and has entered the Chassidic annals as the Apter Rav. This story about him, that I recently heard at a Melave Malka, both inspired and disturbed me.

A Chassid once came to him for advice. His daughter needed a dowry to get married and he had no money.
“How much money do you need for a dowry, and how much do you already have?” the Rebbe asked
“A thousand Rubles I need.” He replied. “And I have one!”
“Go out my son,” the Rebbe said, “and accept the first deal you are offered.”
The Chassid left his Rebbe to return home. On the way he stopped off at an inn. (Chassidim in those days were allowed to do that. Indeed it seems almost all Chassidic tales happened in inns. My Rosh Yeshiva wanted to have me expelled from the yeshiva for visiting one, but that is a different story.)

This fine Chassid was drinking his beer and at the next table a group of Jewish merchants were drinking theirs. They had had a few and were looking to have some fun at someone else’s expense. Our Reb Chassid seemed a perfect candidate.
“Nu Reb Yid,” one shouted across at him, “What are you dealing?”
“Anything you want.”
“Azoy, anything?” It was obvious that a fish had dropped into their net. “How much money do you have for this ‘anything’?”
“Eh.. One Ruble.”
The merchant burst into drunken laughter.
“One Ruble eh? For one Ruble, my friend, I will sell you my Olam Haba.” (portion in the Kingdom Come)
The hapless Chassid probably realised they were making fun of him. He had his instructions however and if the Rebbe told him to accept the first gescheft that arose then this was it.
“OK I accept.”

The group of merchants must have been in stitches as the paperwork was drawn up and the Chassid became poorer by his one Ruble and richer by one (hardly used) Olam Haba. They were still laughing drunkenly when the wife of the merchant walked in to fetch her mate. Seeing the merriment all round she asked for the reason and was told her husband had just sold his Olam Haba for a Ruble. She was not at all amused.

“I am not going to be married to a man with no Olam Haba. When you come home it had better be with your Olam Haba because without it you ain’t going to be seeing any Olam Hazeh (pleasure in this life) with me.”

This was a powerful argument to any man, even in his state, and it sobered him up immediately. He went sheepishly over to the Chassid and asked him for the document back.
“One thousand Rubles and you can have it back.”
“A thousand Rubles?” he screamed. “Are you mad?!”
The Chassid remained adamant.
“My Rebbe told me to accept the first deal I was offered and I would make a thousand Rubles, I did and I will.”
He did.

The wife was understandably bitter when her husband told her how much he had paid to get his Olam Haba (and Olam Hazeh) back and, being the powerful woman she obviously was, insisted on going back to the pub, to have this out with the man, herself. He simply referred her to his Rebbe and scarpered off home to marry his daughter off. Mrs Merchant was no quitter and she flounced off to the Rebbe to object the massive injustice that had been done.

The Rebbe listened to her argument and answered her thus.
“You are right. It does seem wrong that something bought for a Ruble should be sold back minutes later for a thousand. However if the truth were known it is fairer than you can imagine. For at the moment your husband sold his Olam Haba it was not even worth the Ruble he got for it. But the moment he paid a thousand to get it back it was worth many times that sum.”

Tops and Tales

Motty had his first sexual experience at the age of nine. A boy from a higher class took him on the back of his bike to a secluded spot where he proceeded to “show him the ropes.” By Motty’s account he actually only showed him one rope because, as Motty declares in a delicious mix of metaphors “I refused to play ball.”

This was recounted to me by Motty (not his real name of course) in a mail following a post I wrote a while back. Other members of his class, all currently approaching middle age, confirm that this was by no means an isolated incident. To be perfectly frank, my own experiences would certainly support that. The fact that it happened comes therefore as no surprise to me. What does surprise me is the fact that so many years later he still feels the need to insist that he did not willingly participate.

In the course of writing this piece I spoke to almost a dozen Chassidic men who all claim to have been victims in their very early teens. One had a teacher who forced himself upon him and another had ongoing relationships with some young newlyweds since the age of thirteen. All were initially unwilling to discuss details and all once they started could not tell me enough. I am not prepared to publish all the actual events that occurred. In a small incestuous community like ours it would not take long before victims were identified and that is not my purpose. What I do want to talk about is the worrying lack of awareness within our community.

The first thing that struck me was that most had not seen themselves as victims at all. They spoke of guilt and remorse or else they regarded it as an unfortunate result of childish immaturity. At the time I spoke to them not one was concerned that the perpetrator, mostly adults at the time of their crime, had re-offended or would. Furthermore, while a third of the incidents I heard happened in or around the mikve, only one of the fathers had insisted on having his own sons supervised when going. Not one of them was angry.

I vividly remember going to my Rosh Yeshiva (principle) when I was around sixteen to discuss with him a problem I was having with someone who was too attentive and who seemed to be always accidentally brushing against my nether regions. It is not an easy discussion to have with anybody. With a perpetually angry white-bearded maniac who considers you a pain in a similar area it is even harder. He masterfully got rid of my embarrassment by suggesting that I should explore within myself what I was doing wrong to encourage such behaviour. The anger at that injustice was probably one of the triggers that made me leave the Yeshiva and the community for a long while.

I have never regained my faith in the learning-class. It is this lack of sensitivity to anything but what says in the Heilige Torah that causes me to question the validity of not only their teaching but even their piety. When Rabbis cover for child molesters, because they don’t want to cause a Chillul Hashem (desecration of God’s name), they are committing the ultimate injustice and the ultimate Chillul Hashem.

In all fairness it has to be said that they do not realise they are useless. In a system where Rabbanim are appointed by other Rabbanim, where there is no test for competence and no lessons in practice, it is hardly surprising that we are blessed with Rabbis who cannot speak in public and cannot stop speaking in private. Rabbis who were appointed for their political affiliation (or lack of one) rather than their prowess in rabbinity and who are far more interested in ensuring our teachers do not get the wrong training than in ensuring our kids do not.

Child molestation is not a problem unique to little boys or our community. The fact it occurs should not be cause for embarrassment; it happens everywhere. We should be hanging our heads in shame however for so adamantly refusing to deal with the perpetrators or the victims.

Shiva in My Bones

I remember a cartoon I once saw of a posh French restaurant. The Maitre d’ was saying to a haughty waiter, on his way to serve a family that had obviously saved-up to come there, “Give them a couple of tries at pronouncing it and then tell them it’s not on today.”

You are not supposed to enjoy a shiva. At least as a visitor you shouldn’t. I don’t remember having sat it myself so I cannot say this for certain but I have a suspicion that some families are only waiting for all us spot-grievers to go, before lolling back to gleefully relive in minute detail each and every uncomfortable moment they watched us endure. I am nothing if not a learner though and, as I have no choice but to attend my share of these flaggellatory-bonding sessions, I have developed a system of watching the other visitors and entertaining myself.

Frum shivas can be excruciatingly funny. Just as most people have a special low and grave voice they use for their doctor, even if they are only discussing a mole on their arm, most people seem to think shivas are the intensive-care unit or the library. As they enter the hall and pass the first shrouded mirror you notice them begin a Pink-Panther-like tiptoe routine. This exaggerated quietness remains on for the duration of the visit and manifests itself in a thousand shifting chairs and cleared throats. In fact a casual passer-by could often be forgiven for thinking he was looking at a doctor’s waiting room.

The guests can be split into two groups: the pushers and the flitters. The pushers scan the room and immediately identify the line of vision of the most important sitters. That is where they will soon be seated, sagely commiserating with the bereaved repeatedly as each painful detail of the deceased’s final hours is expertly extracted and dissected like a nerve during a root canal treatment. In fact the gleam in my dentist’s eye, while sadistic enough, pales into insignificance next to the relish some of these professional shiva visitors have to conceal. Meanwhile the nebbechs (nerds) look for a place on the periphery which they will try to flit into and blend into the surroundings. I have never figured out why the hell these people bother to come if they don’t consider themselves close enough to the bereaved to want to catch their eye.

The halacha suggests that it is the bereaved who have to start the conversation. It will often happen that a mourner is lost in his thoughts, or has a catch in his throat and does not want to talk. We are supposed to respect that. For some busybodies however this is easier said than done. They are the ones who, having bagged that prime seat in centre stage will, after a minute of silence at most, start hunching their backs and sighing meaningfully, all the time staring the bereaved straight in the eye as if daring him not to say something.

Shivas are designed to allow the mourners to grieve in peace and get the pain out of their system. Not everybody is lucky enough to have one. It is very much in the fashion among my parents’ generation to decide their own parents are not strong enough to handle the news that their loved one has died. It is part of this delicious importance when you can tell all your friends not to talk about it too much “because Mummy does not know yet. We don’t think it is good for her.” It is strange that children who have spent the first fifty years arguing that they are big enough to lead their own lives without their parents’ interference, will jump up to take control of their parents’ lives the moment they are no longer strong enough to fend these meddlers off.

The tactless buffoon, who fervently assures the bereft husband that soon he will find someone new and forget her, is another pitfall the designers of the shiva experience could not factor in. I remember a shiva for a woman who had died from a haemorrhage after discharging herself from hospital following miscarriage. A woman sitting at her shiva was heard to pipe up, “I hate these balabustes who think they can take the whole world upon themselves.”

It is time we started using our brains to figure out the logic of those things we do. Shiva visits are not supposed to enhance the ego of some of these professional sympathisers, who make it their business to stand out at every popular shiva. Not the time for Rabbanim, whose only contact with their flock is when they block any projects that might improve our collective lot (but was not thought of by them), to prove they are involved by arriving in a flurry of activity and stealing the show from the family who just lost their breadwinner. It is the time when the closest friends of those who have suffered a loss come and share their grief with them, sometimes in silence and sometimes with a well-chosen word. And if both these concepts are alien to you, take my advice and join the flitters or take my example and don’t go.

Good Better Bestial

I remember the menu at my wedding was great. I don’t actually remember the menu; just that it was great, and I bet that is the best compliment you could give some ‘wedding planners’. I get sad when I think back to the times when I got married. When a mother was excited for half a year before her child got married, arguing with the caterer about how much paprika she would put in the goulash. When the Town Hall was decorated with flowers, and professional waiters had the glasses gleaming when the first well-dressed guest arrived. When going to a wedding was a treat and much looked-forward-to evening out.

The Chassidim have had their way with our weddings. We, the epitomes of monogamous faithfulness and the only group I know who truly still believe, as they get married, that it is for better or for worse, have certainly brought the latter to the fore for that night.

The last few weddings I went to have broken my heart. I am a true lover of good food. I hope my maker does not judge me too harshly for having chosen that, most earthly of his creations, to become so enamoured with, but I am hopelessly besotted. In a truly well made dish, where all the notes are balanced and texture and flavour are perfectly married, I see divinity. I see none of the above at the weddings I go to lately.

The young Chassidim, who call themselves caterers, are not themselves to blame. They are not the disease, just a symptom. We have become a society that does not appreciate excellence. As we teach our children it is ‘holy’ to eat fish with our hands, show them it is ‘ehrlich’ to have filthy tzitzis, as we teach them by rote to accept without question we also train them to scorn any knowledge that does not come from a handful of sources. It is possible this stems from a sort of warped asceticism but I do know scruffiness and nonchalance do nothing to enhance spirituality.

To see a grown man picking up a piece of overcooked fish in his fingers, dipping it into some mayonnaise then chrayne, then shoving it into his mouth while his other hand prepares the next, can be pretty sickening to the faint of heart. To learn he thinks he is doing it for God makes it all the worse. When waiters holding tureens full of Osem-flavoured dishwater, see the guests they should be serving, behaving like that, you can understand why they no longer bother to polish the glasses but do polish away your plate as soon as you turn your head.

I suppose at the end of the day it is the parents of a bride I should blame for greeting the guests coming for the dancing of the puffa-train, with a bare trestle table piled high with cardboard boxes containing the leftovers of the wedding reception. And if the caterer has so little breeding that he does not realise this look might be right for an avante-garde vernissage but is completely wrong for a wedding, at least we can comfort ourselves the stuff will be excruciatingly kosher. For me it is indicative of all that is wrong with our mindless upward thrusting. We have lost touch with our humanity and the truly spiritual, and the closer we come to perfecting this neo-betterness the more it becomes clear, to all but those already on four, that what we have really done is to get back in touch with the animal.

Him, Me and I

The Tish is for me an opportunity to surreptitiously observe my fellow Chassidim with their guard down. Designed as a confirmation of the Chassidic dogma that God can be served in the mundane and minutiae of everyday life, the Tish is essentially when a crowd of people stand around and watch their Rebbe eat. The meal, it seems, was deemed to be the one Friday-night activity where the individual was most likely to get so carried away by the earthly sensations that he could forget that he was really doing it for God. Watching the Rebbe glide through the process so effortlessly would no doubt inspire our divine souls to convince our debased bodies to follow suit, so we watch him eat. Times were different then I suppose and we should be grateful for that.

I used to think I suffered from a split personality because, in some way, I was able to switch off from being part of the Tish and become an outside observer. I used to refer to it in my head as looking in from inside. It worried me until, in a chat with a fellow shaigetz, I discovered this feeling is not unique to me.

There is a kind of bonding that usually occurs when you are packed into the bleachers at a Tish. It is a feeling very difficult to describe to one who has never felt it. I am told it is similar to the feeling you could have when, say, Spurs play the Gunners and the supporters get really fired up. In fact, I don’t think the feeling can be quite the same because sports is about winning and losing whereas the Tish is just a joining of hearts and minds. Whatever the psychology, I well remember the sensation of losing my individuality and becoming one with the crowd.

Leaning forward to stare rapturously at the Rebbe as he swallowed a morsel of fish. Hardly breathing as he mouthed off his lechaim blessings. Though I was far too far away down the hall to possibly hear a word he was saying, still I leaned forward every week to better hear every holy word not feeling even a tad ridiculous. I sang my heart out lustily and jumped when the Rebbe looked lebbedik, and went all intense and emotional whenever he did too.

Today I no longer get that feeling. Today after slipping into that place I find myself a tourist looking on in fascination. I notice the one behind me who is flying away, completely oblivious to all around him. The one across from me with the shifty concentration is worried about coming home late but cannot drag himself away. The one over on the right is, like me, looking around and taking-in the scene. I might wink to him, either get a wink back or his face will redden and he will shift position and I will know I have found one still in denial.

I can tell the different personalities within this state. The good-hearted ones who want to share what they are feeling. They look around for someone to give a thumbs-up to when there is a great ‘vort’ in the Torah. They want the stranger, there for the first time, to see all the great bits and feel the sweetness. They will move over and help someone new find a good place to see from before beamingly arranging for a scrap of much fingered gefilte-fish to head his way.

Then you have the exclusionists who have a one to one relationship at the Tish. They are always saying shshhhh, because their transmission with the Rebbe is interrupted. They consider all other people at the tish as superfluous anyway so they are certainly not going to find a place for someone who shaves his beard. As far as they are concerned the beardless should don tichelech (snoods) and toddle off to the Vaibershul!

I miss in some way the feeling I used to have of being totally in the warm embrace of something good. But the thinking part of my personality is in charge today, my emotional still at the Tish and I do not think I am willing to allow them to change roles. I believe I understand in a certain way what the problem was in eating from the tree of knowledge. To be a true Chassid, and enjoy the real benefits of a Chassid, you have to suspend free thought and allow him to think for you.

People like me could be dangerous to the force because looking in from inside you see with more clarity. But we can also be used to provide information they could never get otherwise. I believe the Shgatzim and the Chassidim are using each other blatantly. The Chassidim use the shgatzim as a buffer zone between the world outside, with its vital information, and the rose-coloured world inside the bubble where the truth is what the Rebbe says it is and tomorrow Mashich will come - hopefully before the bailiffs. The Shgatzim meanwhile from inside propogate their agenda of education and cultural awareness.
Who will win? I don’t know. But if the Chassidim do we will all die happily and if the Shgatzim do we will all live and worry so I am not sure yet myself which I prefer.

Jewish Guilthall

In February of 1984 the Jewish Welfare Board welcomed HRH Prince Charles and his then wife Diana as guests of honour at their annual fundraising gala-dinner in Guildhall. Diana was at that time pregnant with her second son Prince Henry Charles Albert David, currently better known in our tabloid press as Dirty Harry. I believe Charles, never a big fan of our race, accepted this dubious honour as a sop to the establishment irritated by his refusal to invite the Chief Rabbi to his wedding. I was a young boy at the time and I remember finding it hilariously funny when it was reported in the press that, of the almost two thousand guests attendant at this Jewish Banquet only one wore a kappel; none other than Charles himself.

Diana, for her part, took her sister-in-law-to-be Fergie, a week before her ill-fated wedding, to Annabel’s where they had some champers while disguised as policewomen. The royal family does seem to have a knack for getting it wrong when they dress up and Harry’s nazi costume is not for me any more sinister. The Board of Deputies disagrees. In fact it seems every organisation in the country with Jewish in its title has had something to say.

I do not think a twenty year old prince, basically a student with a lot of money and a life to enjoy, should have to carry the cross for a group of old men in privileged positions who feel obliged to affirm their Jewishness somehow. As I have said before, the Nazis were but one chapter in a long and bloody history, and it is perfectly acceptable to dress up as Pharaoh, Haman or a Greek soldier. True the Nazis were particularly bad and particularly recent which makes dressing up as them count as pretty bad taste but that is about it as far as I’m concerned.

For British Jewry, that relies on perpetual victimhood for their unifying feature, that worries that people’s involvement in the community will drop off as the security situation in Israel improves, the royal gaffe is indeed a BFD. This is the occasion they have all been put here for. As a man they all stood up and affirmed their Jewishness. From the secretary of the Jewish Ealing-North Triathlon Elites to the Honourary vice-president of the Jewish Elementary Rowing and Kayaking School, all proved their commitment to the World Jewish Community by suggesting appropriate punishments for the offending prince. The national gutter press stood up for the memory of the six million and before long, around the world, the pictures were being displayed alongside the equally tragic pictures from Indonesia and Thailand. I do not think I would let my son dress up as Nazi but I doubt I would have thrown a fit if he had, before this story broke.

I know we should feel really proud the leader of the opposition is Jewish, that so many lords and MPs are. In fact however I also know that the BOD does not really represent me at all, any more than the Jewish Welfare Board does or the leader of the opposition. Now, before the whole establishment jumps down my throat, I am not saying OJs do not get their fair share of help from the Jewish Welfare Board. Nor am I claiming that Michael Howard is not Jewish. What I am saying is there is more than one type of Jew in Great Britain. And those with a whole pile of Mitzvas to keep, find they live in world with completely different set of problems than those faced by Jews with a more liberal interpretation of “thou shalt not…”. I don’t know if Mr Howard suffers for being Jewish but even if he does I’ll bet its nothing to do with having the dustmen take away his chametz before 10:27 erev Pesach.

In the JWB’s world education comes free, matzas come from the 'specials' aisle at Sainbury’s and Yomtov comes round twice a year; Yom Kippur and Tu Bishvat. We, on the other hand, have to pay for our own schooling and bake our own matzes, and our fundraising dinners are not held anywhere near the Guildhall. Also unlike them our lives do not come with a sticker that says Holocaust Survivor Inside.

On the other hand, only last week we were hearing complaints that 70% of people in England had not heard of Auschwitz. The younger Prince, God bless him, has done more to correct that among young people than anybody since the black rap group from Staten Island - the Wu Tang Clan. A conspiracy theorist could easily make the case that the Prince in fact was carrying out a publicity stunt designed to correct that. I think the Collective of All Charitable Kehillas of England should put a statue up to him, with their acronym on the plinth.

Silent Nights

Chaim Potok, in The Chosen, describes the child of a Rebbe being brought up in silence.The boy suffers for years as he grows up with the only words exchanged between father and son concerning their learning. A very beautiful and poignant story that is, to best of my knowledge, pure claptrap. I am sorry Mr Potok, if you ever come across this, but I have never met anybody who has ever heard of this method. There is however a certain distance that is normal within the real Chassidic family (and here I mean the real true blue ones) that I suppose is where the idea comes from. You will never see a true Chassid embracing, even his teenage son. You will never see them playing together except maybe chess on nittel.

Nittel is what we call Christmas Eve. The night when it was normal for the villagers of the Shtetl to go for midnight mass and on return to get drunk in the inn, was no time for us to be on the streets. A law was decreed that, on that night, the learning of torah was forbidden. What do good yeshiva boys do on a night when Torah is forbidden? They go to sleep. Problem solved.

The anomaly here has tradition to blame. We, the archconservatives, are not going to allow a mere local church to reorganize ours. In Eastern Europe, where our dynasties were founded, the land lay in the grip of the Orthodox Church. They never recognized the Gregorian calendar and celebrate Christmas on the 6th of January. Chassidim originating in regions under that Church do learn on Christmas Eve bit don’t in January… Except we are not quite sure ourselves whether it is the fifth or the sixth, so some keep one and some the other.

The irony is that, since we have left the Sthtetl and landed in the western world, Nittel has also become the night when the Chassidishe Bucherim, the good boys, rent videos. There are many young men I know who would only ever admit to having seen a video if it was secretly watched on nittel. So the dark forces have their revenge.

Chess and videos diametrically oppose each other as forms of entertainment. One exercises the mind the other numbs it. What they have in common is they do not require any overt dedication. You don’t have to change your clothes or really prepare to play chess. It can almost seem as if you just passed by and stopped. That nonchalance proves you are really a learner at heart. The same goes for watching a video. You sit in a couch with your friends to watch for three hours and then go home. A great guys night out! The one day in the year you don’t have to feel guilty for not learning!

If you ever watch a Chassidic singer you will observe that they are careful not to move too much nor show too much facial expression. I don’t know if it is just shyness or repression or they are afraid lest they be accused of enjoying it too much. There are no real Chassidic entertainers because our overriding sense of propriety makes us watch, bemused, the few fools who actually ever drop their front for a moment. Any guy who dances too enthusiastically at a wedding will be surrounded by a two deep ring of fascinated observers who will forever smile at him indulgently whenever they meet. It is this reserve too that dictates I may pass a plate to my sister or even bandage her finger but I won’t shake her hand, heaven forbid, or even my mother’s.

I admit I have no wish to hug my brothers or sisters anyway. Or my parents for that matter. But I sometimes wonder, if things had been different when we were young, whether I then would have.

Current Affairs

Father L. Lovasic, a catholic priest, is immortalized through his legacy of brightly coloured books for children, selling the catholic message to them by way of simple language and imagery. There was a series of Jewish inspirational stories that also did some pretty impressive work for a time. I vividly remember one called Yossef Moker Shabbos that was published about twenty years ago. A beautifully illustrated ten-paged book with shiny faced, starry-eyed tzaddikim and pot-bellied, ruddy-cheeked villains. Today of course we chassidim have the privilege of some sem-girl who knocks out badly proportioned pictures with no perspective points that are even more kosher. My baby brings home these excruciating images on scribbled-on photocopy paper, to prove his Rebbe has tuned in to the twenty-first century and is big on arts and crafts.

Lovasik is eminently quotable. ‘Only the ignorant and narrow-minded gossip, for they speak of people instead of things.’ After this last week on the Hill that is what should be hanging on the notice boards, before all those badly written admonishments to buy Heimish. One ‘thing’ we should be discussing is how comes we expect God to be so forgiving yet we are so unforgiving ourselves.

We all know that there is a large group of disenfranchised youth that is kicking and screaming for some attention. We gleefully recount the stories of ‘his daughter’ and whathisname’s son. Of meetings in the park and in the parking during the meet. Of divorces that will happen and should happen and must happen and why. We all know exactly what the problem is in everybody’s family and exactly where they went wrong to place them in their current predicament.

The closed community we have, admirable as some of its advantages are, shares a fault with our educational system and chassidic underwear. It only comes in a medium. If you do not fit into the average measurements you are either painfully squeezed somewhere intimate or swimming around helplessly.

Our most efficient organ (or second most) is our rumour mill. Every day someone or other is taken under the loupe and painstakingly dissected. The laidigayers, with their superior knowledge of these things, will be intensely interrogated for all the sordid details of an alleged crime. The Frummers will then gleefully pass the information round, accompanying each titbit with the appropriate shake of the head to indicate it is purely for educational purposes that it is being discussed. The poor individual under discussion will never get the chance to make his or her case because the truth is irrelevant to the moral of the story. Another one bites the dust.

There is no appeal and no retrial. No mitigating circumstances and no temporary insanity. No name has ever been removed from the list of offenders. Because these cautionary tales were never officially told, they can never be retracted. This, in a kehilla called Chassidim, based on a concept designed to allow that simple souls become closer to God.

So when you gossipers gather round the coffee dispensers in shul to tell those who have no internet access that ‘der Shaigetz hot gequoted a gallech’ remember this one from him too, "Only a kind person is able to judge another justly and to make allowances for his weaknesses. A kind eye, while recognizing defects, sees beyond them."