They were two Lubavitchers, a Bobover and a Satmerer, a woman about to make Aliya and a backpacker. A group of Jews united by chance in a place far from chassivilisation, now frozen together in time, forever seared into our collective memories as the victims in Chabad House, Mumbai.
I cannot begin to imagine the horror of their last hours. A police doctor who examined the dead remarked that the Israeli corpses evinced signs of having been exceptionally savagely tortured before being executed, to the extent that he could not bring himself to speak of the depravities he had remarked. The terrorists were probably aware that Chabad House did not represent the state of Israel and that, like all Chabad Houses in the world, it would house Jews of all denominations and persuasions. That on any given day it could contain anybody from a peacenik who had travelled to be a human shield in Saddam's Iraq, to a Golani on holiday and from a street musician junkie to a shy Chassidic mashgiach. The instructions they had received, to kill whites and westerners and especially Israelis, was sadly not an expression of blind hatred for Jews, it is likely that they had never met any Jews before. But from a cold strategic point of view the amount of media coverage dead Jews get is completely out of proportion to their number. And in this gruesome war, deaths on TV are a means as well as an end
It is a cruel irony that the main grievance of those who had directed and ordered this butchery -objection to the crusade like export of the miniskirt and fruit flavoured condoms under the guise of democracy- is one they share with the Chassidim. It is in the methods they use to combat it that the Jews and Muslims differ. Indeed, if you talk of a clash of civilisations then the finest warriors of both sides clashed in Chabad House, Mumbai.
Our side's weaponry is well known to me. Like any religious Jew who travels I have basked in Chabad's hospitality and kindness. I admit, to my shame, that like many of my Central European Chassidic friends I used to treat them with a little disdain; their wide fedora hats symbolising for us slightly wacky cousins who sometimes embarrass us a little with their exuberant religiosity. They often acknowledge it good-naturedly. However, after spending some time with them in their cultural oases I have been humbled by the true asceticism of these young families and more by their utter assurance that spreading God's love to lost Jews and making a kiddush Hashem is the real answer to all the problems of the world, from decaying society to Islamic terrorists.
It is a chilling irony that the network of Chabadpoints around the world is perceived by international terrorists as equal to an Israeli embassy. Ironic because I too, as a British Chassid, would probably prefer to be represented in a time of crisis by the apolitical local Chabad chapter than the Israeli embassy. Chabad has turned itself into a well oiled machine. While the other Chassidim, fearful that the permissive society would catch their young, enclosed themselves inside a greasy cocoon and banned anything that might open a window out, Chabad set up their training camps and sent scouts out into enemy territory. Instead of oppressing the strangers and misfits among them, Chabad nurtured the professionals and intellectuals that were joining and set to utilising their strengths. Their exemplary handling of the Mumbai crisis speaks for itself. Their media presence was uniquely professional and reliable. In the midst of the confusion and carnage they were cool and collected and even when the tragic loss of life became apparent, true to their crusade, their spokesman nobly called for an end to hate and extra prayer.
The equally well oiled machine they faced came armed too. With the very latest in high tech weaponry, an extreme indoctrination into the justness of their cause and, allegedly, a large amount of halal cocaine. They set to practicing their murderous craft with a vengeance. The kindest of hearts, the most endearing smile, the most attentive ear even the most helping of hands, stand no chance when up against the cutting edge of fanatical evil. It cannot be easy to torture, kill and mutilate a pregnant woman and a grandmother, scholars and rabbis, kind and gentle people who had dedicated their lives to spreading goodness and love to everyone they met, but they soldiered on the brave warriors of Allah the Merciful, and from their point of view they were victorious.
It is a scary irony that the Judaism that secular Jews in Israel, the USA and Britain hijacked to make it synonymous with the modern permissiveness that the fundamentalist Muslims so detest, is most easily recognised on my community. So it is we, the Chassidim, who not only are exposed to the petty hate on the trains and buses, while the secular Jews politely disregard our discomfort behind their copies of the Guardian, but are now also so handily easy to pick out in the crowd by any sniper or suicidal maniac who happens to be operational.
It is amusingly ironic to me that despite this, and despite having in the past many times slipped out of the garb when it was practical for me, I now wear it with even more pride than ever. I belong to The Army of God, and if it is my fate that one day I die for it, I will do so gladly rather than give in to a force that is evil to its very core. So base that it forces us to side with the USA, Britain and Israel in order to help defeat it.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Who is John Gelt?
I don't think writing a blog can do much more for my cause than this one has. I had joy and some fun and my season in the sun, and with close to half a million hits, an achievement of sorts for the voice of the lone Chassid. I have managed to avoid being lynched and that is a victory of thoughts too.
I have come to the stage where what I have already written more or less covers what I have to say and challenging myself to find a new angle is not satisfying. I could put the points of what could have been the next four blogs in four paragraphs. It makes a far less enjoyable read but what difference does that make?
1) Growing consumerism is changing the face of Chassidus. When a young man can announce in shul that he left Kollel to afford a new kitchen to nary the bat of an eyelid, it is plain that our friend Lucre will eventually convert the bulk of Chassidim into (slim) curly locked MOs. It is the ascetics in kippot srugot, who forgo worldly pleasures for a gemara and stop under sniper fire to daven mincha that will be the Chassidim of tomorrow, even above the brave young Lubavitchers who do such fantastic work, practicing true chassidus with blind faith. Indeed the visit of the Belzer Rebbe to the victims in hospital of the heinous butchery in Merkaz Harav and the heartfelt bemoaning of it by the Satmar Rebbe seem to nod in that direction.
2) If we chassidim, the outsiders, wish to survive and prosper in a world that will polarise into them and us, we should make ourselves useful to society. An interesting idea that should be considered is to broaden the scope of the Hatzola into a Charedi civil emergency reserve for times of disaster. Zaka and Ezra L’marpeh have very successfully promoted the image of caring Chassidim as neutral emergency staff.
3) We are tired and sinking as we wait for moral or practical guidance from the tzaddikate. The Rabbinate is like an oracle. It can answer all your questions except the real one; What should I ask you? If we are to function as a society we must have government. Leaders who know how to lead and Rabbis -clearly briefed on the situation, the options and possible repercussions - they can turn to for guidance. These leaders need to be representative of the actual kehilla and not only those who pay a membership fee!
In the battle of civilisations, despite being ideologically closer to true religious Islam than Christianity, our laxity in promoting our own image to the outside world has allowed the secular and armchair yids to drag us with them into the Christian or humanist camps. We must not allow the non-religious establishment to represent us or to imply that their policy of grovelling and obsequious cameraderie with the establishment is the way of the Book to these people of It.
4) We must learn to admit our shame. Sex molestation is still going on in the community and we all know it. The names of people who prey on little boys must be handed over to the authorities to be dealt with. It is a disease that can sometimes be controlled but often not and it destroys lives! Oh, and Rabbi, please memorise this catchy little truism; Playing with a little yingele’s thingele, if you are not that yingele, is always sexual abuse!
However, this blog is not just my about my thoughts being read by other people. The Shaigetz living inside me has become part of who I am. The authority I gain by knowing how many people will read what I say colours not only the way I write but also the way I think and speak. I have become more assertive at work and have gained much in stature; such is the power of a blog.
I have become much prouder of being a Chassid, especially among goyim, since getting to know the Shaigetz, and much quicker to interact with them. The more I do the more I notice how many others are prepared to be as nice to you as you are to them, despite our inculcated notion that most goyim really don’t like us. (Funny to think they think we don’t like them.)
Lastly, I think to generate change might be easier than most would suppose. People welcome self-assured authority and true leadership. I am sure eventually someone with the necessary stature will emerge and effect some real and necessary change. But he will be flesh and blood not an ethereal presence. Maybe then someone will ask, “Do you think he was the Shaigetz?” and a (slim) Chassid will reply, “Who is John Gelt?”
I have come to the stage where what I have already written more or less covers what I have to say and challenging myself to find a new angle is not satisfying. I could put the points of what could have been the next four blogs in four paragraphs. It makes a far less enjoyable read but what difference does that make?
1) Growing consumerism is changing the face of Chassidus. When a young man can announce in shul that he left Kollel to afford a new kitchen to nary the bat of an eyelid, it is plain that our friend Lucre will eventually convert the bulk of Chassidim into (slim) curly locked MOs. It is the ascetics in kippot srugot, who forgo worldly pleasures for a gemara and stop under sniper fire to daven mincha that will be the Chassidim of tomorrow, even above the brave young Lubavitchers who do such fantastic work, practicing true chassidus with blind faith. Indeed the visit of the Belzer Rebbe to the victims in hospital of the heinous butchery in Merkaz Harav and the heartfelt bemoaning of it by the Satmar Rebbe seem to nod in that direction.
2) If we chassidim, the outsiders, wish to survive and prosper in a world that will polarise into them and us, we should make ourselves useful to society. An interesting idea that should be considered is to broaden the scope of the Hatzola into a Charedi civil emergency reserve for times of disaster. Zaka and Ezra L’marpeh have very successfully promoted the image of caring Chassidim as neutral emergency staff.
3) We are tired and sinking as we wait for moral or practical guidance from the tzaddikate. The Rabbinate is like an oracle. It can answer all your questions except the real one; What should I ask you? If we are to function as a society we must have government. Leaders who know how to lead and Rabbis -clearly briefed on the situation, the options and possible repercussions - they can turn to for guidance. These leaders need to be representative of the actual kehilla and not only those who pay a membership fee!
In the battle of civilisations, despite being ideologically closer to true religious Islam than Christianity, our laxity in promoting our own image to the outside world has allowed the secular and armchair yids to drag us with them into the Christian or humanist camps. We must not allow the non-religious establishment to represent us or to imply that their policy of grovelling and obsequious cameraderie with the establishment is the way of the Book to these people of It.
4) We must learn to admit our shame. Sex molestation is still going on in the community and we all know it. The names of people who prey on little boys must be handed over to the authorities to be dealt with. It is a disease that can sometimes be controlled but often not and it destroys lives! Oh, and Rabbi, please memorise this catchy little truism; Playing with a little yingele’s thingele, if you are not that yingele, is always sexual abuse!
However, this blog is not just my about my thoughts being read by other people. The Shaigetz living inside me has become part of who I am. The authority I gain by knowing how many people will read what I say colours not only the way I write but also the way I think and speak. I have become more assertive at work and have gained much in stature; such is the power of a blog.
I have become much prouder of being a Chassid, especially among goyim, since getting to know the Shaigetz, and much quicker to interact with them. The more I do the more I notice how many others are prepared to be as nice to you as you are to them, despite our inculcated notion that most goyim really don’t like us. (Funny to think they think we don’t like them.)
Lastly, I think to generate change might be easier than most would suppose. People welcome self-assured authority and true leadership. I am sure eventually someone with the necessary stature will emerge and effect some real and necessary change. But he will be flesh and blood not an ethereal presence. Maybe then someone will ask, “Do you think he was the Shaigetz?” and a (slim) Chassid will reply, “Who is John Gelt?”
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
The World According to Carp
The morning dip in the mikve symbolises the washing away of impurities and a fresh start with a clean slate for the new day and although I have lapsed in the last few years and rarely still indulge, with the season of goodwill and cheer upon us and work on hold I thought what better time than now…
Like most mens mikves it is below ground and has a pretentious, six foot high turnstile gate to stop unwelcome guests from entering. I descend the stairs and the once familiar smell of shampoo, bleach and sweat assaults my nostrils. I take a neatly folded towel from the pile on a chair and push the changing room door open. I am hit by a blast of Vosene scented steam, the noise of running showers and the carefree chatter Chassidim only seem capable of in the mikve. My glasses cloud up immediately and I have to remove them to see where I am.
Astonishingly, nothing seems to have changed in the years since I last visited. The banal sickly green coloured floor to ceiling ceramic wall tiles that must have fallen off a local council building-site lorry, still lend an air of the public lavatory to the place. The rough wooden benches round the communal changing room and the metal hooks for the clothes above them are standard fixtures in every mikve. I used to be rather self conscious about this set up when I compared it to the luxury of the swimming baths where we all get our own cubicle. Seeing it now I realise it is no different to most sport club facilities I have visited. I smile to myself at one more indication we are not as different as we like to suppose.
The condensation was plainly not enough to cover my condescension and I am greeted with a gruff “Vus lachst di?” from a middle-aged heavyweight struggling to reach past his ample girth and pull his stretchy, off-white long-johns over his whiter shade of pale legs. “I am not laughing,” I reply as soon as I have collected myself but he is already busy untangling his trouser legs and ignores me.
I observe that the massive plastic bin for used towels is overflowing, evidence that a growing number of people take their ablutions here. With a dozen or more places like this in Stamford Hill alone, daily purity seems to be an in thing in chassidistan. I look around for a free spot to undress in and park myself next to a man I recognise. He considerately moves his shoes and clears a wider spot on the bench. He too can see I am no regular. As I fold my clothes and prepare my toiletries I listen to the men opposite discussing the new chastity laws.
I gather from their conversation that the Kedassia 9 have found a new way of marking their territory and are insisting that women buy only clothes that have been okayed by a group of checkers. I am encouraged to hear that the black-bearded guy with a very hairy chest and enormous pectorals does not like the idea of the hounds sniffing around his wife’s clothing and told his wife to ‘buy votever de hel she vonts’. Only one of the two others in the conversation thought maybe those exposed flesh seekers mean well, but even he did not sound too convinced.
As I head for the shower room armed only with a flannel and soap, Mr T. is expounding on how tzniusdik (chastely) yet beautifully his lovely wife dresses, to the delight of a young boy listening in with a voyeur’s intensity. The shower room contains five showers in a row, four of them in working order, making this one of the better maintained mikves in town. With the impressive row of shower gels and shampoos on display the old canard about Chassidim using only (kosher) margarine won’t wash anymore.
The hot water flows for about a minute each time you press the shower tap. With a good ten men in the room, each time a shower stops its inhabitant makes way for the next one to enter, in a bizarre sudsy musical showers. Our Chief Rabbi is getting a real washdown – That is a metaphor of course, I don’t mean the popular intellectual who wants to curb multiculturalism and has much to learn about the dignity of deference to traditional Torah values, but our own ineffectual scholarly leader who commands all the dignitaries who do defer, and is against any kinds of cultural awareness.
The issue is the latest fad for investment in Eastern European property. Apparently it has become popular in our circles to buy properties in these emerging economies, and a whole new class of bankrupts have lined the pockets of these emerging capitalists with the last of the savings of many a sorry opportunist. All the soapy limbed oracles are in agreement that for many of the uneducated newly weds we so avidly breed, such deals are their only chance of actually feeding their families.
A man with a face shaped like a ponderous fish with a very big mouth, sinewy thin limbs and a long pink loofah is adamant that the problem is that Chassidim do not want to work. If they did the goyim would employ them. "After all we are cleverer than them and better in every way." "This is reeeely the truth." another one pipes up helpfully. Big mouth waves him dismissively down with his loofah.
“The real truth is we are too clever to work a whole day in an office for a measly paycheck. Ven you vont to live kosher you need real money and dis you don’t make by vorking vid your hands.” At this I notice a few irritated expressions from the other shower users and I realise that this orifice has spoken before.
The rabbi who had been studiously scrubbing himself departs hastily for the pool, and as that theme is further expounded and blame heaped upon the rabbinate, tzaddikate and sundry, I retire there too. The waters of the mikve itself are warm and murky and I'm grateful for the strong chlorine smell. Two more people are already relaxing in there and had obviously been listening to the speech from the showers. As the Rabbi ritually bobs under the water and comes up each five seconds gasping like a whale, a red bearded head observes that he was right to escape from there before someone asked him what he is doing to remedy the situation.
“Nothing, they do, except find new ways to make our life even more expensive. But it’s no use, nothing will change. Frummer and the Shaigetz have even given up complaining about it.” I leave the mikve into the freezing cold London morning knowing at least one of their problems can be remedied.
Like most mens mikves it is below ground and has a pretentious, six foot high turnstile gate to stop unwelcome guests from entering. I descend the stairs and the once familiar smell of shampoo, bleach and sweat assaults my nostrils. I take a neatly folded towel from the pile on a chair and push the changing room door open. I am hit by a blast of Vosene scented steam, the noise of running showers and the carefree chatter Chassidim only seem capable of in the mikve. My glasses cloud up immediately and I have to remove them to see where I am.
Astonishingly, nothing seems to have changed in the years since I last visited. The banal sickly green coloured floor to ceiling ceramic wall tiles that must have fallen off a local council building-site lorry, still lend an air of the public lavatory to the place. The rough wooden benches round the communal changing room and the metal hooks for the clothes above them are standard fixtures in every mikve. I used to be rather self conscious about this set up when I compared it to the luxury of the swimming baths where we all get our own cubicle. Seeing it now I realise it is no different to most sport club facilities I have visited. I smile to myself at one more indication we are not as different as we like to suppose.
The condensation was plainly not enough to cover my condescension and I am greeted with a gruff “Vus lachst di?” from a middle-aged heavyweight struggling to reach past his ample girth and pull his stretchy, off-white long-johns over his whiter shade of pale legs. “I am not laughing,” I reply as soon as I have collected myself but he is already busy untangling his trouser legs and ignores me.
I observe that the massive plastic bin for used towels is overflowing, evidence that a growing number of people take their ablutions here. With a dozen or more places like this in Stamford Hill alone, daily purity seems to be an in thing in chassidistan. I look around for a free spot to undress in and park myself next to a man I recognise. He considerately moves his shoes and clears a wider spot on the bench. He too can see I am no regular. As I fold my clothes and prepare my toiletries I listen to the men opposite discussing the new chastity laws.
I gather from their conversation that the Kedassia 9 have found a new way of marking their territory and are insisting that women buy only clothes that have been okayed by a group of checkers. I am encouraged to hear that the black-bearded guy with a very hairy chest and enormous pectorals does not like the idea of the hounds sniffing around his wife’s clothing and told his wife to ‘buy votever de hel she vonts’. Only one of the two others in the conversation thought maybe those exposed flesh seekers mean well, but even he did not sound too convinced.
As I head for the shower room armed only with a flannel and soap, Mr T. is expounding on how tzniusdik (chastely) yet beautifully his lovely wife dresses, to the delight of a young boy listening in with a voyeur’s intensity. The shower room contains five showers in a row, four of them in working order, making this one of the better maintained mikves in town. With the impressive row of shower gels and shampoos on display the old canard about Chassidim using only (kosher) margarine won’t wash anymore.
The hot water flows for about a minute each time you press the shower tap. With a good ten men in the room, each time a shower stops its inhabitant makes way for the next one to enter, in a bizarre sudsy musical showers. Our Chief Rabbi is getting a real washdown – That is a metaphor of course, I don’t mean the popular intellectual who wants to curb multiculturalism and has much to learn about the dignity of deference to traditional Torah values, but our own ineffectual scholarly leader who commands all the dignitaries who do defer, and is against any kinds of cultural awareness.
The issue is the latest fad for investment in Eastern European property. Apparently it has become popular in our circles to buy properties in these emerging economies, and a whole new class of bankrupts have lined the pockets of these emerging capitalists with the last of the savings of many a sorry opportunist. All the soapy limbed oracles are in agreement that for many of the uneducated newly weds we so avidly breed, such deals are their only chance of actually feeding their families.
A man with a face shaped like a ponderous fish with a very big mouth, sinewy thin limbs and a long pink loofah is adamant that the problem is that Chassidim do not want to work. If they did the goyim would employ them. "After all we are cleverer than them and better in every way." "This is reeeely the truth." another one pipes up helpfully. Big mouth waves him dismissively down with his loofah.
“The real truth is we are too clever to work a whole day in an office for a measly paycheck. Ven you vont to live kosher you need real money and dis you don’t make by vorking vid your hands.” At this I notice a few irritated expressions from the other shower users and I realise that this orifice has spoken before.
The rabbi who had been studiously scrubbing himself departs hastily for the pool, and as that theme is further expounded and blame heaped upon the rabbinate, tzaddikate and sundry, I retire there too. The waters of the mikve itself are warm and murky and I'm grateful for the strong chlorine smell. Two more people are already relaxing in there and had obviously been listening to the speech from the showers. As the Rabbi ritually bobs under the water and comes up each five seconds gasping like a whale, a red bearded head observes that he was right to escape from there before someone asked him what he is doing to remedy the situation.
“Nothing, they do, except find new ways to make our life even more expensive. But it’s no use, nothing will change. Frummer and the Shaigetz have even given up complaining about it.” I leave the mikve into the freezing cold London morning knowing at least one of their problems can be remedied.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Falling Apples of My Eye
Children, even the best brought-up of all, like mine, have a nasty tendency to grow up. I should not have been surprised therefore when my son announced that he is considering going abroad to study next year. As the perspective merits of different yeshivas were bandied around and I glibly and lightly helped them weigh the merits of the brash but proud Jewishness of the American model against the arrogant but more spiritual intensity of the Jerusalem one, inside my heart sank down into my nether regions.
If there is one question that I have always avoided answering readers of this blog with any clarity it is about how I bring up my children, torn as I am between the intellectual freedom I have chosen and the closed insularity of the community I reside within.
The years I spent in yeshiva in Israel were among the most miserable of my life. Separated from my books, radio and indeed any contact with the outside world, I felt lost and trapped. The study of Talmud, although in fact difficult enough to be a satisfying challenge, was carried out under such duress and with such dogmatic simplicity that I spent every waking moment dreaming of what I would do when I was old enough to assert my independence and live in the way I saw fit.
The lack of physical comforts were easier to bear for one like me, brought up in the poverty inherent to families where learning is the only respected profession. As my father tarried in the evening with his true love in the hallowed halls of learning, we regularly sat alone to our meagre supper and my mother would remind us that to those who valued learning above those prized above rubies, greater rewards await in the kingdom come. That argument sometimes lacked conviction for me and I often swore to myself that my children would have a loving and warm family and as many creature comforts as I could possibly provide.
As soon as I was old enough to shake off the heavy hand of parental and rabbinical authority, I left, and celebrated my new-found freedom with gusto. The liberty to do as I pleased was a revelation, and I revelled in it. Yet the happiness and peace of mind I had envisaged and yearned for eluded me, and following each euphoric high I found myself tumbling into the inevitable and interminable nights of gnawing guilt, doubts, and the sure and certain knowledge that His vengeance would be visited upon me unless I repented and returned to the yiddishkeit I was brought up in.
I do not regret either the break with my past that forced me to examine and justify my lifestyle nor the decision to return and marry within the fold. The first, because I can today honestly say that any hardships I endure for my religion are of my own choosing, the latter, for the blessing of a perfect and loving soulmate and equally perfect children.
I know in my heart however, that although I have managed to subject my independence of spirit and effectively hide much of the rebellion that rules within my mind it is only because I went through all I did that I am able to thus straddle the fence. Those born outside our closed world and who chose to enter it, inevitably find themselves either unable to exercise their own freedom of thought or else unable to enjoy the serenity and utter conviction they so sought, and envy in the mindless sheep around them. It is for this reason that if I wish to offer my children a choice of membership or not they have to fully belong first.
And although I could sow the seeds of rebellion, and I dearly am tempted to with the more naturally rebellious of my offspring, I choose not to. Because revolution is painful and its outcome uncertain and the prospect of pain, and risks, should only be taken on by each individual for their self. Because we are all victims of circumstance, and I cannot force these upon them if I am not to be like my father, forcing my own choices upon my children.
If there is one question that I have always avoided answering readers of this blog with any clarity it is about how I bring up my children, torn as I am between the intellectual freedom I have chosen and the closed insularity of the community I reside within.
The years I spent in yeshiva in Israel were among the most miserable of my life. Separated from my books, radio and indeed any contact with the outside world, I felt lost and trapped. The study of Talmud, although in fact difficult enough to be a satisfying challenge, was carried out under such duress and with such dogmatic simplicity that I spent every waking moment dreaming of what I would do when I was old enough to assert my independence and live in the way I saw fit.
The lack of physical comforts were easier to bear for one like me, brought up in the poverty inherent to families where learning is the only respected profession. As my father tarried in the evening with his true love in the hallowed halls of learning, we regularly sat alone to our meagre supper and my mother would remind us that to those who valued learning above those prized above rubies, greater rewards await in the kingdom come. That argument sometimes lacked conviction for me and I often swore to myself that my children would have a loving and warm family and as many creature comforts as I could possibly provide.
As soon as I was old enough to shake off the heavy hand of parental and rabbinical authority, I left, and celebrated my new-found freedom with gusto. The liberty to do as I pleased was a revelation, and I revelled in it. Yet the happiness and peace of mind I had envisaged and yearned for eluded me, and following each euphoric high I found myself tumbling into the inevitable and interminable nights of gnawing guilt, doubts, and the sure and certain knowledge that His vengeance would be visited upon me unless I repented and returned to the yiddishkeit I was brought up in.
I do not regret either the break with my past that forced me to examine and justify my lifestyle nor the decision to return and marry within the fold. The first, because I can today honestly say that any hardships I endure for my religion are of my own choosing, the latter, for the blessing of a perfect and loving soulmate and equally perfect children.
I know in my heart however, that although I have managed to subject my independence of spirit and effectively hide much of the rebellion that rules within my mind it is only because I went through all I did that I am able to thus straddle the fence. Those born outside our closed world and who chose to enter it, inevitably find themselves either unable to exercise their own freedom of thought or else unable to enjoy the serenity and utter conviction they so sought, and envy in the mindless sheep around them. It is for this reason that if I wish to offer my children a choice of membership or not they have to fully belong first.
And although I could sow the seeds of rebellion, and I dearly am tempted to with the more naturally rebellious of my offspring, I choose not to. Because revolution is painful and its outcome uncertain and the prospect of pain, and risks, should only be taken on by each individual for their self. Because we are all victims of circumstance, and I cannot force these upon them if I am not to be like my father, forcing my own choices upon my children.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Gospel According To Me
Once again Rosh Hashana aproaches. Once again I have to endure the familiar exhortations from the pulpit, for critical self-judgement. So once again I arise from my Shabbos afternoon nap, early, and off to listen to the yearly rant on how I should better myself.
I do not like listening to my Rabbi speak. Having gotten used to listening to speeches with a recognisable structure, a beginning a middle and an end, I find myself irritatedly editing what he is saying in my head, and deleting segments, at the same time as arguing with the points he is making. I wish I had a Rabbi who actually bothered enough to make it interesting for me and my kind.
Boredom begins to set in after a while and I start observing the shabby shul I daven in. Despite its recent makeover, it has the air of a dilapidated refugee camp. The walls are painted in the cheapest shade of brilliant white. The windows, curtainless and finger marked, have an opaque film on the inside, whether to stop people looking in or out I am never quite sure. Beyond them, metal grills protect us from the vandalism and terrorism we have been raised to expect.
The furniture, unlike in the formal churchstyle shuls, is light in colour and weight. The tables are Formica topped, metal framed and past their prime, The almost matching benches, with flip-up seats that can cause a painful pinch if a stray bit of flesh gets caught between them, are uncomfortable and remind me of those the litigants sit on while waiting to be called to the real bench. Up front the ambo faces the wall. Beneath four sorry looking candlesticks, the traditional Shivisi drawing, drawn by a 'local artist', and designed to inspire loftiness into him leading the prayer, has some of the naivete of Haitian art when observed from afar. Close up it is hideous! Another example of how, in our desire for insularity, we have deluded ourselves into ridiculous grandeur.
Happily, the room has nothing else that could be termed decoration, unless you count the various plaques at a million strategic spots commemorating all those acts of (often forced) kindness that made everything possible. Nothing that is, except for all the kinky, plastic covered velvetwork cloths on the bima (dais) and Amud (lectern). The plastic, of course only there to protect the exquisite needlework embroidery that commemorates yet another donation. The lighting, from bare flourescent tubes, is harsh and bright and a faint whiff of sweat and garlic bears testimony to the heavy, customary shabbos meal and many an afternoon nap.
The speech has come to the part where we all must remember to take a good look at how we behave. I wonder whether he does? I mean, I know he does look at how we behave. But does he look at how he does? Does he ever wonder if he might not be driving his big bus, with darkened windows and no stops, straight towards an abyss? Does he ever wonder whether his credentials as a Torah scholar qualify him to lead a generation of kids often dealing with challenges he cannot even fathom? Does he ever wonder whether he is preaching a gospel that cannot be for everyone?
Then again, do I? I too stand on on pulpit and rant but have I changed anything for the better? The obvious difference is that I have only a pulpit whereas the Rabbinic one stands for so much more. They claim to have the right to rule our lives, so they should have to prove they are doing it, well. If most people are happy and well adjusted. If the community is providing for itself, fiscally and emotionally, if the prospects are good and the future is looking rosy, then they obviously know what they are doing and we can all sleep tight. If not it might be time to look for a new bus driver in the new year.
Wishing all my fair readers a Shana Tova!
I do not like listening to my Rabbi speak. Having gotten used to listening to speeches with a recognisable structure, a beginning a middle and an end, I find myself irritatedly editing what he is saying in my head, and deleting segments, at the same time as arguing with the points he is making. I wish I had a Rabbi who actually bothered enough to make it interesting for me and my kind.
Boredom begins to set in after a while and I start observing the shabby shul I daven in. Despite its recent makeover, it has the air of a dilapidated refugee camp. The walls are painted in the cheapest shade of brilliant white. The windows, curtainless and finger marked, have an opaque film on the inside, whether to stop people looking in or out I am never quite sure. Beyond them, metal grills protect us from the vandalism and terrorism we have been raised to expect.
The furniture, unlike in the formal churchstyle shuls, is light in colour and weight. The tables are Formica topped, metal framed and past their prime, The almost matching benches, with flip-up seats that can cause a painful pinch if a stray bit of flesh gets caught between them, are uncomfortable and remind me of those the litigants sit on while waiting to be called to the real bench. Up front the ambo faces the wall. Beneath four sorry looking candlesticks, the traditional Shivisi drawing, drawn by a 'local artist', and designed to inspire loftiness into him leading the prayer, has some of the naivete of Haitian art when observed from afar. Close up it is hideous! Another example of how, in our desire for insularity, we have deluded ourselves into ridiculous grandeur.
Happily, the room has nothing else that could be termed decoration, unless you count the various plaques at a million strategic spots commemorating all those acts of (often forced) kindness that made everything possible. Nothing that is, except for all the kinky, plastic covered velvetwork cloths on the bima (dais) and Amud (lectern). The plastic, of course only there to protect the exquisite needlework embroidery that commemorates yet another donation. The lighting, from bare flourescent tubes, is harsh and bright and a faint whiff of sweat and garlic bears testimony to the heavy, customary shabbos meal and many an afternoon nap.
The speech has come to the part where we all must remember to take a good look at how we behave. I wonder whether he does? I mean, I know he does look at how we behave. But does he look at how he does? Does he ever wonder if he might not be driving his big bus, with darkened windows and no stops, straight towards an abyss? Does he ever wonder whether his credentials as a Torah scholar qualify him to lead a generation of kids often dealing with challenges he cannot even fathom? Does he ever wonder whether he is preaching a gospel that cannot be for everyone?
Then again, do I? I too stand on on pulpit and rant but have I changed anything for the better? The obvious difference is that I have only a pulpit whereas the Rabbinic one stands for so much more. They claim to have the right to rule our lives, so they should have to prove they are doing it, well. If most people are happy and well adjusted. If the community is providing for itself, fiscally and emotionally, if the prospects are good and the future is looking rosy, then they obviously know what they are doing and we can all sleep tight. If not it might be time to look for a new bus driver in the new year.
Wishing all my fair readers a Shana Tova!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Studied Indifference
I haven't written anything on the blog for a few weeks and it is high time I did. I take an evening off to sit on a deckchair over the sea and decide what to say. As always, I have a list of the subjects that have caught my attention and could possibly be used. I scan it to see if anything has developed more body since being cryptically jotted down in my little notebook.
An article in the Jewish Chronicle recently, suggests that within a few years the majority of Jews in Britain will be Ultra Orthodox. Proof, yet again, that the most important and vibrant part of the Jewish community in the UK is systematically ignored by the bodies who claim to represent Judaism and Jews. Even more so by the government agencies who ought to be registering our needs and concerns, if only to avoid clashes down the line with a group of highly intelligent and motivated malcontents railing against a society they believe hates them.
People in the community I talk to about this don't seem to grasp my argument, that more people from within should be opening channels of communication with the UK leadership. We need our voice to be heard, and needs considered, unhampered by the opposing (if no less legitimate) desires and concerns of the culturally-Jewish network who see us as embarrassing, antiquated relics of the shtetl they are trying to escape from.
I have been accused of unfairly 'having it in' for the Board of Deputies, and it is true that our own Union of Orthodox Hebrews is often no more interested in being represented by them, than they are in doing it. The Jewry that dominated the United Synagogue, and is led by the honourable Chief Rabbi, has as its goal, to become an accepted and integral part of British society. They do their utmost to emphasise that 'normalcy'. We, consider ourselves a sub-culture and...
No good. I have been through all this before.
The tide is in and the beach is deserted. Down on the waterfront two young Chassidim in their flowing yellow tztitzis and city shoes are strolling along the shore and skimming stones across the water. Seeing them reminds me I had the germ of something profound to say about the new generation of proud peyos wearers. Nu? I was thinking about it yesterday over the barbecue? Oh yes, I suddenly remember. That young man I saw yesterday.
He was in a deckchair on the promenade, happily oiling his hairy torso. Then, he put on his Ray-Bans (why are the shgatzim and laidigayers so brand obsessive?) and carefully recurled his long peyos before reaching down under his chair, taking out a Woman's Own magazine and settling down to read. I was, funnily enough, quite proud that what I had predicted was coming to pass. That the Peyos and coat are becoming a uniform, worn as self-identification rather than necessarily for religious conviction, much like the Muslim headscarf.
Incidentally, the goyim I speak to have never been able to understand what I mean when I say that our youth does not perceive our distinctive attire as a cultural or religious statement. We are taught it is a religious requirement. There is no doubt in most chassisim's minds that they (we all, actually) will eventually be punished for violating the dress code.
That the poor young man has not yet developed beyond reading his wife's vapid lifestyle magazines, is the fault of the parents who never prepared him for life beyond yeshiva... bla bla bla.
...I had a nice sentence that came to me during the davening on shabbes;
“Bright young minds, honed to perfection on complicated logic and convoluted reasoning are shlepping boxes in supermarkets, driving school buses, or skirting that shady area between dealing in properties and dealing on properties.”
...Nice, but I have said this all before.
I could talk about the new Rap song that the kids are gleefully telling each other is 'pinkt vi Fifty Cents' . It comes off an album called Rap In Yiddish which is basically cover versions of popular pop songs to yiddish words. It has been banned by the Rabbis in Israel and so is selling like hot cakes in the underground there. It puts me in mind me of the book reviewer who wrote “This book is both original and good, but what is good is not original and what is original is not good.
You need to admire the balls of any bloke brave enough to sing a yiddish cover of Maddonna's La Isla Bonita. Unfortunately, that is about all one can admire him for. From an album called Rap In Yiddish I was hoping for some anger and derision. A little bit of attitude at least. Instead this is a shoddy collection of boring pastiches and self-righteous lyrics, clumsily latched onto popular elecronic karoake tracks with some 'yiddish verds' to make it haimish.
I have an idea. Maybe i could combine the music and the peyos? Emphasise how my reaction to each is the opposite of what one might expect. Start with the peyos story;
Once such a blatant display would irritate me, today I view it as a sign of progress. The radical Chassidic ethos of worldly disconnect and 'All work and we'll pray', slowly and inexorably being replaced by a proud, pragmatic and sustainable Torah im Derech Eretz approach. The rap, which I would be expected to embrace as a symbol of revolution, I see instead as yet another example of chassidic mediocrity hailed as a heroic just for being banned.
Possible titles? Banned Band and the Way of the Land - Hairspray and Rap – Empty Vassals
I could use some of the Chronicle piece to flesh out the peyos part and there is a link someone posted in the last post to an article about OJ's in London and their work ethic...
I still need to find some interesting high note to end on...
On second thoughts, I'm lazy, and there is nothing here really worth saying, so lets just leave it it at that. I'm off for a cold beer.
An article in the Jewish Chronicle recently, suggests that within a few years the majority of Jews in Britain will be Ultra Orthodox. Proof, yet again, that the most important and vibrant part of the Jewish community in the UK is systematically ignored by the bodies who claim to represent Judaism and Jews. Even more so by the government agencies who ought to be registering our needs and concerns, if only to avoid clashes down the line with a group of highly intelligent and motivated malcontents railing against a society they believe hates them.
People in the community I talk to about this don't seem to grasp my argument, that more people from within should be opening channels of communication with the UK leadership. We need our voice to be heard, and needs considered, unhampered by the opposing (if no less legitimate) desires and concerns of the culturally-Jewish network who see us as embarrassing, antiquated relics of the shtetl they are trying to escape from.
I have been accused of unfairly 'having it in' for the Board of Deputies, and it is true that our own Union of Orthodox Hebrews is often no more interested in being represented by them, than they are in doing it. The Jewry that dominated the United Synagogue, and is led by the honourable Chief Rabbi, has as its goal, to become an accepted and integral part of British society. They do their utmost to emphasise that 'normalcy'. We, consider ourselves a sub-culture and...
No good. I have been through all this before.
The tide is in and the beach is deserted. Down on the waterfront two young Chassidim in their flowing yellow tztitzis and city shoes are strolling along the shore and skimming stones across the water. Seeing them reminds me I had the germ of something profound to say about the new generation of proud peyos wearers. Nu? I was thinking about it yesterday over the barbecue? Oh yes, I suddenly remember. That young man I saw yesterday.
He was in a deckchair on the promenade, happily oiling his hairy torso. Then, he put on his Ray-Bans (why are the shgatzim and laidigayers so brand obsessive?) and carefully recurled his long peyos before reaching down under his chair, taking out a Woman's Own magazine and settling down to read. I was, funnily enough, quite proud that what I had predicted was coming to pass. That the Peyos and coat are becoming a uniform, worn as self-identification rather than necessarily for religious conviction, much like the Muslim headscarf.
Incidentally, the goyim I speak to have never been able to understand what I mean when I say that our youth does not perceive our distinctive attire as a cultural or religious statement. We are taught it is a religious requirement. There is no doubt in most chassisim's minds that they (we all, actually) will eventually be punished for violating the dress code.
That the poor young man has not yet developed beyond reading his wife's vapid lifestyle magazines, is the fault of the parents who never prepared him for life beyond yeshiva... bla bla bla.
...I had a nice sentence that came to me during the davening on shabbes;
“Bright young minds, honed to perfection on complicated logic and convoluted reasoning are shlepping boxes in supermarkets, driving school buses, or skirting that shady area between dealing in properties and dealing on properties.”
...Nice, but I have said this all before.
I could talk about the new Rap song that the kids are gleefully telling each other is 'pinkt vi Fifty Cents' . It comes off an album called Rap In Yiddish which is basically cover versions of popular pop songs to yiddish words. It has been banned by the Rabbis in Israel and so is selling like hot cakes in the underground there. It puts me in mind me of the book reviewer who wrote “This book is both original and good, but what is good is not original and what is original is not good.
You need to admire the balls of any bloke brave enough to sing a yiddish cover of Maddonna's La Isla Bonita. Unfortunately, that is about all one can admire him for. From an album called Rap In Yiddish I was hoping for some anger and derision. A little bit of attitude at least. Instead this is a shoddy collection of boring pastiches and self-righteous lyrics, clumsily latched onto popular elecronic karoake tracks with some 'yiddish verds' to make it haimish.
I have an idea. Maybe i could combine the music and the peyos? Emphasise how my reaction to each is the opposite of what one might expect. Start with the peyos story;
Once such a blatant display would irritate me, today I view it as a sign of progress. The radical Chassidic ethos of worldly disconnect and 'All work and we'll pray', slowly and inexorably being replaced by a proud, pragmatic and sustainable Torah im Derech Eretz approach. The rap, which I would be expected to embrace as a symbol of revolution, I see instead as yet another example of chassidic mediocrity hailed as a heroic just for being banned.
Possible titles? Banned Band and the Way of the Land - Hairspray and Rap – Empty Vassals
I could use some of the Chronicle piece to flesh out the peyos part and there is a link someone posted in the last post to an article about OJ's in London and their work ethic...
I still need to find some interesting high note to end on...
On second thoughts, I'm lazy, and there is nothing here really worth saying, so lets just leave it it at that. I'm off for a cold beer.
Monday, July 16, 2007
The Yellow Brick Road
Car pooling might be gaining ground for the wider community, but for Chassidim, giving lifts is so widespread that I have seen people angry for being passed by drivers they barely know, who did not offer a ride. Rabbis and Tzaddikim (holymen) rarely drive cars in our community, nor can they afford their own driver. Thus it came about that, as a twelve year old boy returning home from a funeral in Enfield, I found myself crammed in the back of a Volvo with half the local rabbinate.
Being men who do not waste time, business was being discussed. A call had come through from Hackney council’s planning department seeking clarification for the Jewish God’s preference for yellow clay. It transpired that an application had been handed in for a private, Jewish girl’s school building, in yellow brick. The council had turned the application down because the rest of the street was entirely in red brick. The application was re-submitted with the explanation that it had to be yellow, for religious reasons.
To broad smiles and indulgent grunts, we then learned that a well known and heeled family had agreed to donate the building. This was not the first school they had built for the community, and the other was in yellow brick. Humbly wishing to maximise the bang for their cash, the benefactors insisted on matching facades. I don’t remember exactly what they discussed further but the structure stands there today, in all its jaundiced glory.
Ben Locker is a writer and blogger living in Stamford Hill. He, more recently, attended a meeting of the Hackney Planning Watch in Stamford Hill library. In discussion was the proposal by the council, due to the high concentration in Stamford hill of Orthodox Jews with large families, to allow certain home-extensions that would probably not pass muster in surrounding areas. He reports that many of the local residents are angered by the perception that the Chassidim are being given preferential treatment.
Some have more personal grievances, like the fact that the light to their property is being blocked by an enormous loft conversion or an 18 foot long kitchen extension that towers over their garden fence. To be fair, these are legitimate complaints and it is obviously up to the council to make the final decision, taking the interests of all parties and the wider community into account.
In his blog he writes: ‘… I was astonished by the argument one [orthodox] person put forward that Stamford Hill has a miniscule crime rate, thanks to the Orthodox Jewish community: even going so far as to say,“when did you last hear of someone mugged by an Orthodox Jew?”
I, sadly, am less astonished. I have been hearing that justification, in its various forms, since I was twelve. Our superior children do not take drugs, wear ripped jeans or sport nose piercings, therefore we should be allowed to …[fill in the blank].
The late Gerrer rebbe once advised one of his newly proselytised disciples to adopt the knickerbocker style of short trousers with long socks. The youngster expressed his doubts about his father allowing it and mentioned the biblical commandment to honour his parents. The Rebbe dismissed the argument, saying, “It is a Mitzva to honour him, not to give him what he thinks he wants.”
A Democratic society has no problem when those with a different set of priorities express their opinions. The shtetl mentality, that teaches being noticed is bad, is wrong. Not because we have inherent rightness on our side, as some of our fundamentalists will have us believe, but because diversity is enshrined in British law. Thus if a brand new home in which to propagate God’s word to the fairer sex is more important to you than the colour coordination of the street it stands upon, you may say so unabashedly. Why, if your house's style and its aesthetic value are less important to you than the number of rooms and its real value, you have the right to express that opinion - even to lobby to have the council approve your monstrous extensions. But it is deceitful, mean and immoral to deny the same right to those that disagree with you. Yes, even if that means you will be overruled.
Unless you are the late Gerrer Rebbe talking to a bochur, it is not enough to know you are fundamentally right, you also need to have the right to impose your will by whatever means necessary. For the rest of us, rights and rightness form a very slippery slope; if only because the Mullahs are of the same opinion and mindset and far more determined.
May I wish all my readers a good holiday and may I take the liberty of reminding all, as we sally forth for our annual exposure to the outside world, that the hardships we choose to suffer for our beliefs must not be passed on to those whose lot it is to cross our path.
Being men who do not waste time, business was being discussed. A call had come through from Hackney council’s planning department seeking clarification for the Jewish God’s preference for yellow clay. It transpired that an application had been handed in for a private, Jewish girl’s school building, in yellow brick. The council had turned the application down because the rest of the street was entirely in red brick. The application was re-submitted with the explanation that it had to be yellow, for religious reasons.
To broad smiles and indulgent grunts, we then learned that a well known and heeled family had agreed to donate the building. This was not the first school they had built for the community, and the other was in yellow brick. Humbly wishing to maximise the bang for their cash, the benefactors insisted on matching facades. I don’t remember exactly what they discussed further but the structure stands there today, in all its jaundiced glory.
Ben Locker is a writer and blogger living in Stamford Hill. He, more recently, attended a meeting of the Hackney Planning Watch in Stamford Hill library. In discussion was the proposal by the council, due to the high concentration in Stamford hill of Orthodox Jews with large families, to allow certain home-extensions that would probably not pass muster in surrounding areas. He reports that many of the local residents are angered by the perception that the Chassidim are being given preferential treatment.
Some have more personal grievances, like the fact that the light to their property is being blocked by an enormous loft conversion or an 18 foot long kitchen extension that towers over their garden fence. To be fair, these are legitimate complaints and it is obviously up to the council to make the final decision, taking the interests of all parties and the wider community into account.
In his blog he writes: ‘… I was astonished by the argument one [orthodox] person put forward that Stamford Hill has a miniscule crime rate, thanks to the Orthodox Jewish community: even going so far as to say,“when did you last hear of someone mugged by an Orthodox Jew?”
I, sadly, am less astonished. I have been hearing that justification, in its various forms, since I was twelve. Our superior children do not take drugs, wear ripped jeans or sport nose piercings, therefore we should be allowed to …[fill in the blank].
The late Gerrer rebbe once advised one of his newly proselytised disciples to adopt the knickerbocker style of short trousers with long socks. The youngster expressed his doubts about his father allowing it and mentioned the biblical commandment to honour his parents. The Rebbe dismissed the argument, saying, “It is a Mitzva to honour him, not to give him what he thinks he wants.”
A Democratic society has no problem when those with a different set of priorities express their opinions. The shtetl mentality, that teaches being noticed is bad, is wrong. Not because we have inherent rightness on our side, as some of our fundamentalists will have us believe, but because diversity is enshrined in British law. Thus if a brand new home in which to propagate God’s word to the fairer sex is more important to you than the colour coordination of the street it stands upon, you may say so unabashedly. Why, if your house's style and its aesthetic value are less important to you than the number of rooms and its real value, you have the right to express that opinion - even to lobby to have the council approve your monstrous extensions. But it is deceitful, mean and immoral to deny the same right to those that disagree with you. Yes, even if that means you will be overruled.
Unless you are the late Gerrer Rebbe talking to a bochur, it is not enough to know you are fundamentally right, you also need to have the right to impose your will by whatever means necessary. For the rest of us, rights and rightness form a very slippery slope; if only because the Mullahs are of the same opinion and mindset and far more determined.
May I wish all my readers a good holiday and may I take the liberty of reminding all, as we sally forth for our annual exposure to the outside world, that the hardships we choose to suffer for our beliefs must not be passed on to those whose lot it is to cross our path.
Friday, June 01, 2007
British Jew Bugs
Although I do not have any official figures, it is common knowledge that the divorce rate in the Chassidic community is relatively low but rising slowly as individuals living in this country are exposed to more and more of the local colour and culture. A young Chassidic woman today is quite comfortable complaining to her Rav that her man does not give her enough attention or spend quality time with her and the family.
Twenty years ago she would have been laughed out of the Rabbi’s office. With an admonition on the way out, to stop reading the goyish literature that is introducing such notions, to one whose proudest achievement should be a row of smiling babies and crusty, golden-brown Challas every Friday.
Today she is more likely to be directed to one of the semi-official counsellors who will have had some rudimentary training in a sort of marriage guidance counselling, with an emphasis on avoiding divorce at all cost. I must admit to usually being quite dismissive of these do-gooders, generally proofs of the adage that a little learning is a dangerous thing, precisely because I don’t believe relationship counsellors should have their own agenda.
The overwhelming, pious drive to avoid divorce at all cost, sometimes leads to counsellors actively assisting the stronger partner in cowing the weaker one. It is easy to fall into the trap of putting pressure on the party most likely to bend, rather than the one who has the most changing to do.
In a fair society the stronger protect the weak. To sacrifice the weak for the smooth running of the machine, is too horrible a notion to entertain, although we all know it happens.
Of course our Universities and College Union, the UCU, voted overwhelmingly in favour of seeking “a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli institutions”. They represent the students, the loony left, the ones who are going to right the world's wrongs – with, of course, special focus on those perpetrated by societies or groups perceived to be more consistently successful than their own.
What really bugs me is the muted reaction by everybody else. Is it just because we don’t blow up trains that nobody cares very much that blatant anti-Semitism has become the hallmark of the British left? Is it just because nobody is scared of us that nobody minds that British academia has been turned into a hostile environment for anyone Jewish? Not for being Jewish, of course. But, because as Jews, they represent the State of Israel.
In an ironic twist of fate the wandering people now carry a state as their cross as they traverse Europe.
I am a British Jew and I am not prepared to carry the torch for anyone. But neither am I prepared to use a different yardstick for my people than for anybody else. I therefore never ask brown people for their views on Africa, slant-eyed ones about Tiananmen Square or short, fat, white ones with loud shirts their position on the war in Iraq. I likewise do not wish to express my views on the occupation except to declare, that if I were to feel under siege, unwelcome and unwanted in the UK, I could hardly be blamed if I recalled the justifications for fighting occupation, I heard on the BBC.
Twenty years ago she would have been laughed out of the Rabbi’s office. With an admonition on the way out, to stop reading the goyish literature that is introducing such notions, to one whose proudest achievement should be a row of smiling babies and crusty, golden-brown Challas every Friday.
Today she is more likely to be directed to one of the semi-official counsellors who will have had some rudimentary training in a sort of marriage guidance counselling, with an emphasis on avoiding divorce at all cost. I must admit to usually being quite dismissive of these do-gooders, generally proofs of the adage that a little learning is a dangerous thing, precisely because I don’t believe relationship counsellors should have their own agenda.
The overwhelming, pious drive to avoid divorce at all cost, sometimes leads to counsellors actively assisting the stronger partner in cowing the weaker one. It is easy to fall into the trap of putting pressure on the party most likely to bend, rather than the one who has the most changing to do.
In a fair society the stronger protect the weak. To sacrifice the weak for the smooth running of the machine, is too horrible a notion to entertain, although we all know it happens.
Of course our Universities and College Union, the UCU, voted overwhelmingly in favour of seeking “a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli institutions”. They represent the students, the loony left, the ones who are going to right the world's wrongs – with, of course, special focus on those perpetrated by societies or groups perceived to be more consistently successful than their own.
What really bugs me is the muted reaction by everybody else. Is it just because we don’t blow up trains that nobody cares very much that blatant anti-Semitism has become the hallmark of the British left? Is it just because nobody is scared of us that nobody minds that British academia has been turned into a hostile environment for anyone Jewish? Not for being Jewish, of course. But, because as Jews, they represent the State of Israel.
In an ironic twist of fate the wandering people now carry a state as their cross as they traverse Europe.
I am a British Jew and I am not prepared to carry the torch for anyone. But neither am I prepared to use a different yardstick for my people than for anybody else. I therefore never ask brown people for their views on Africa, slant-eyed ones about Tiananmen Square or short, fat, white ones with loud shirts their position on the war in Iraq. I likewise do not wish to express my views on the occupation except to declare, that if I were to feel under siege, unwelcome and unwanted in the UK, I could hardly be blamed if I recalled the justifications for fighting occupation, I heard on the BBC.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Mendy in Ich
Just before Yomtov I got my hands onto a DVD of a film called Mendy; the story of the eponymous Chassidic orphan who is caught messing with a girl in the community and is thrown out. He moves in with a friend, Yanky, who had left years before and is now a tattooed, occasional tefillin wearing, whoring, drug pusher. The film follows Mendy through the first few weeks of his life with Yanky and his attractive, black, Brazilian roommate, and watches him painfully adjust to a world where morals and ethics must be decided for one’s self and where solutions as well as love can be just as hard to find as within the gefilte-fish cradle.
The film is surprisingly authentic. It is let down, for me, only by the appallingly poorly articulated Yiddish, which half the film is spoken in. For me it would have been far more genuine, not to mention comfortable to watch, had it been played entirely in English, with the classic yiddishisms left in. To me, a native speaker, the stilted Yiddish was a major irritation although those relying on the subtitling might see in it a charm of its own.
With at least one Satmar dropout on the credits the film is sometimes refreshingly and hauntingly real. When Shabbes arrives a group of ex-orthos, some bare-headed and holding cigarettes and others still wearing the traditional garb, pool together the kugel, gefilte fish and cholent they received from their families - ever hopeful of their return – then join hands to lustily welcome the Shabbes Queen, in song, to their mixed and half drunk gathering. So eerily authentic that it brought a lump to my throat.
I cannot recommend this charming film to the religiously faint of heart. There is occasional nudity and Yanky puts his tefillin on his shikse while making love to her as he whispers the brocho (blessing) into her ear, in a shockingly provocative scene that left even me unsure if I could continue to watch. I sincerely hope they were props and not the real thing! Still, I do believe that the film does tell the story rather well from the point of view of the tortured soul who leaves, and anybody who has dealings with youngsters who have left, or might, can learn much from seeing it.
For me it awakened memories that had been pushed back into the far recesses of my skeleton cabinet. In the years since I took a conscious decision to return to the fold and traded in my rebellion and individuality for a Solzhenitsyn style compromise, I have slowly grown accustomed to the comfort and security that being a paid up member affords. This film jolted me back to the time when I would have given anything ‘just to be accepted for what I am’.
Now, sitting in shul on Yomtov, I look around me at what I traded that in for. I observe the man across the table, his eyes tightly shut in concentration, his roughly woven, yellowing tallis pulled tightly round his torso and head. In his loud raspy voice the, essentially upbeat, Hallel texts he moans sound more like an audition for King Lear.
The teenager next to him is also chanting lustily, anticipating the Chazzan (cantor) in a reedy solo. Unmarried, he cannot cover his face with the Tallis so he self-consciously looks around every few minutes to see if anyone is watching him. Every so often, when his neighbour’s cacophony becomes too loud, he stops his lone performance to glare balefully at the shrouded figure’s formless back and then resolutely returns to his singular devotion. I wonder to myself whether he considers the fact that they are both ostensibly talking to the same being and if so why he thinks his own libretto is more worthy than his neighbour’s? Maybe he is really just having his personal cantorial rehearsal interrupted by the git, and the issue is more about personal space than religious fervour?
The congregation is settling down now, each having finished gurgling, whispering, singing, shouting, moaning, snarling or, like me, grudgingly and mechanically reciting the passage of Hallel. Next the Chazzan will try to wow us with his pretentious operatic variation on the traditional holiday melody. My mind drifts nostalgically back to a time years ago when I too could sway in delicious ecstasy to these primeval texts even as Supertramp’s Breakfast in America blared in the background of the squat we were hanging out in.
Although my reasons for choosing a lifestyle markedly different from the one I was brought up in, are ideological, they were not the ones that made me leave nor what brought me back, on my own terms, a couple of years later. Unlike Mendy and Yanky it was not lust and sex that drove me into the arms of the Shgatzim; only too happy to hurt my family by encouraging me. Consciously, it was my love of music and, subliminally I now believe, the search for unconditional love that were stronger than the threat of eternal damnation.
In the Shaigetz milieu I experienced genuine love. Not necessarily of a physical kind but the love that arises out of the bond between people sharing pain, adversity and the hope for a better future. A future I could not then envisage as it now is but which I would not today trade in for the happy-go-lucky existence the others in our group still alive today determinedly cling to. But I was privileged and lucky. Not everybody is, as the film Mendy eloquently shows.
The film is surprisingly authentic. It is let down, for me, only by the appallingly poorly articulated Yiddish, which half the film is spoken in. For me it would have been far more genuine, not to mention comfortable to watch, had it been played entirely in English, with the classic yiddishisms left in. To me, a native speaker, the stilted Yiddish was a major irritation although those relying on the subtitling might see in it a charm of its own.
With at least one Satmar dropout on the credits the film is sometimes refreshingly and hauntingly real. When Shabbes arrives a group of ex-orthos, some bare-headed and holding cigarettes and others still wearing the traditional garb, pool together the kugel, gefilte fish and cholent they received from their families - ever hopeful of their return – then join hands to lustily welcome the Shabbes Queen, in song, to their mixed and half drunk gathering. So eerily authentic that it brought a lump to my throat.
I cannot recommend this charming film to the religiously faint of heart. There is occasional nudity and Yanky puts his tefillin on his shikse while making love to her as he whispers the brocho (blessing) into her ear, in a shockingly provocative scene that left even me unsure if I could continue to watch. I sincerely hope they were props and not the real thing! Still, I do believe that the film does tell the story rather well from the point of view of the tortured soul who leaves, and anybody who has dealings with youngsters who have left, or might, can learn much from seeing it.
For me it awakened memories that had been pushed back into the far recesses of my skeleton cabinet. In the years since I took a conscious decision to return to the fold and traded in my rebellion and individuality for a Solzhenitsyn style compromise, I have slowly grown accustomed to the comfort and security that being a paid up member affords. This film jolted me back to the time when I would have given anything ‘just to be accepted for what I am’.
Now, sitting in shul on Yomtov, I look around me at what I traded that in for. I observe the man across the table, his eyes tightly shut in concentration, his roughly woven, yellowing tallis pulled tightly round his torso and head. In his loud raspy voice the, essentially upbeat, Hallel texts he moans sound more like an audition for King Lear.
The teenager next to him is also chanting lustily, anticipating the Chazzan (cantor) in a reedy solo. Unmarried, he cannot cover his face with the Tallis so he self-consciously looks around every few minutes to see if anyone is watching him. Every so often, when his neighbour’s cacophony becomes too loud, he stops his lone performance to glare balefully at the shrouded figure’s formless back and then resolutely returns to his singular devotion. I wonder to myself whether he considers the fact that they are both ostensibly talking to the same being and if so why he thinks his own libretto is more worthy than his neighbour’s? Maybe he is really just having his personal cantorial rehearsal interrupted by the git, and the issue is more about personal space than religious fervour?
The congregation is settling down now, each having finished gurgling, whispering, singing, shouting, moaning, snarling or, like me, grudgingly and mechanically reciting the passage of Hallel. Next the Chazzan will try to wow us with his pretentious operatic variation on the traditional holiday melody. My mind drifts nostalgically back to a time years ago when I too could sway in delicious ecstasy to these primeval texts even as Supertramp’s Breakfast in America blared in the background of the squat we were hanging out in.
Although my reasons for choosing a lifestyle markedly different from the one I was brought up in, are ideological, they were not the ones that made me leave nor what brought me back, on my own terms, a couple of years later. Unlike Mendy and Yanky it was not lust and sex that drove me into the arms of the Shgatzim; only too happy to hurt my family by encouraging me. Consciously, it was my love of music and, subliminally I now believe, the search for unconditional love that were stronger than the threat of eternal damnation.
In the Shaigetz milieu I experienced genuine love. Not necessarily of a physical kind but the love that arises out of the bond between people sharing pain, adversity and the hope for a better future. A future I could not then envisage as it now is but which I would not today trade in for the happy-go-lucky existence the others in our group still alive today determinedly cling to. But I was privileged and lucky. Not everybody is, as the film Mendy eloquently shows.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)