BrAvE Old WOrLd

In my continuing obsession with the Jews and Jewish culture, I just finished a documentary on the Hasidim (the Orthodox) Jews in Brooklyn. I must confess that I'd drive through Crown Heights and Williamsburg and wonder why these people wanted to live such an antiquated life. Now, even though I still don't agree with their marginalization of women, I do applaud the will it took, for these Rebbes to come to New York after World War II and attempt to rebuild what the Germans had tried to destroy: their culture, their community, as it existed in Eastern Europe before the raging tide of anti- Semitism took hold.

As one man said, for his father, a Holocaust survivor, his happiest day each year is on Hannukkah, when his 72 grandchildren, along with the rest of the family, are gathered together. Each grandchild was named after a lost member of his family: his mother, father, brothers, aunts, uncles. So in a way, he is seeing them alive again- the ultimate kissoff to the Germans, that 60 years later, he has survived and retrieved what had been lost.

I found that soberingly profound. Every child born signals victory.

On the other side of the coin, one expert on Hasidism (I had no idea there were so many sects other than the Satmars and the Lubavitchers- there are also the Gers, the Bobovs, the Belz and others, all named after the towns in Eastern Europe that their Rebbes came from) said that the Rebbes, those leaders, mostly elderly men and Holocaust survivors, in order to achieve the goal of reviving their culture, had to make decisions that would impact the lives of generations to come. For, in their rejection of modernity: popular music, movies, books that did not conform to their way of life, universities, they were essentially ensuring that there would never be Hasidic doctors, lawyers, executives. That would leave most Hasidim to poverty (as evidenced by the sight of so many of them lined up at the Social Security office) or a modest success in business, because they aren't allowed to accept work that requires them to put off their traditional garments or to ignore the Sabbath.

Then there was the one guy whose primary requirement in a wife was money, because all he wanted to do was study. So would I. I'd like to sit and read/ learn all day, every day, and let someone else foot the bill. Shouldn't we all have a life where we're not made to be worker bees, afraid to step out of line, forced to shuffle along to jobs we hate so we can keep a roof over our heads and food on our tables? Isn't that our right and privilege as human beings? How did we ever get to this place where mere contentment is not enough?

I know that there is a line somewhere in the Declaration of Independence about the pursuit of happiness... How did that become fine print?? I think we should be supported, at least once a year, in some sort of sabbatical. Radical, but healthier, I think, than more psycho drugs and the latest self-help book.

I think again of Matt, walking across country, being cleansed with each step, and wonder if that's not the way to go.