// essays //
Winter 2006
Hasidim on the Fringe
Shoshana Olidort
In a small, rundown synagogue in midtown Manhattan on a recent Thursday evening, an old, clean-shaven man hums a Hasidic melody as he plans his next chess move, a woman wearing ripped jeans tells Yiddish jokes, and a man in Hasidic garb argues against the State of Israel's right to exist. The social gathering is "the most organic grassroots center of the Jewish renaissance," according to one regular of Chulent, so called for the traditional Sabbath stew of beef, beans, and potatoes that's served up here each Thursday.
The hodgepodge stew is also an apt symbol of the eclectic crowd the weekly event attracts: the side-lock-sporting yeshiva boy, the Williamsburg artist looking for God, and the Italian non-Jew who just likes the chulent. They come because by all accounts, Chulent is one-of-a-kind, offering a social scene that brings together Jews from diverse backgrounds for late discussions about anything from Talmud to politics, with an abundant supply of free food and alcohol to boot. And because it's an underground event that doesn't answer to any establishment, Chulent often attracts the curious journalist interested in exploring the ultra-Orthodox underworld.
Dave, a yeshiva boy currently enrolled at Touro College, came here hunting down a free joint. But if rumors of weed brought him here the first time, what keeps him coming back are the people, the ideas, and the "crazy intellectuals." Chulent, Dave says, is the "unorthodox orthodox," encouraging the individual to reexamine Judaism through a critical lens.
Chulent started fifteen years ago as an after-business schmooze at the offices of its founder, Isaac Schonfeld, a thirty-something bachelor from Boro Park. The event began with a small circle of friends, mostly Hasidic men, many of them divorced, going through divorces, or single past the age of twenty-five—all aberrations in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic world, where men and women are typically married by their late teens or early twenties and where divorce carries with it a social stigma more in sync with the early twentieth century than our own decade. These men "found themselves at the periphery of society because their religious convictions were being challenged internally," says Schonfeld. Together they created a "mini-society" with Chulent serving as their "ir miklat," or "city of refuge" (a reference to the biblical cities of refuge to which a accidental killer was sent to escape a potential avenger). Though Schonfeld initially hoped to keep the crowd somewhat exclusive, he never made a secret of Chulent. News of it spread, mostly by word-of-mouth, and Chulent soon gained popularity among a fringe group of ultra-Orthodox men, some women, and eventually a larger, more diverse group of Jews.
Schonfeld's garb—a long beard, kippah, white shirt, and black pants—point to all things Hasidic. He considers himself "pretty much completely observant . . . in all ways, shapes and forms," but says his "weltanschung [world view] might not be 100% Orthodox." This becomes apparent in what Schonfeld considers the "high-minded aspect" of his vision for Chulent—providing an opportunity for people to expand their "horizons on a human and intellectual level" and to think critically rather than subscribe to dogma. For the traditionalist, such thinking opens up a can of worms. When a fellow Hasid tried to engage him in a discussion about dybbuk—the spirit of a dead person said to inhabit the bodies of living human beings—Schonfeld said he didn't believe in the existence of the dybbuk. His friend called him a heretic.
While Orthodoxy places an emphasis on action rather than thought—so that from the standpoint of halakhah(Jewish law), it is deed, not belief, that counts—living with doubt poses unique challenges. Giving expression to uncertainties exposes the individual to stigmas that can have a ripple effect with far-reaching implications. In communities that depend on arranged marriages, a sullied reputation can ruin one's chances at getting a good match, or even getting a match at all. Fear, then, is one of the reasons that Orthodox people with unorthodox ideas don't typically wear their internal conflicts on their sleeves.
Here, appearances are often deceiving. When I ask the Hasidic man who believes Israel is a mistake, I'll call him Mark, why Chulent seems to attract more ultra-Orthodox men than women--(while a good portion of the men here are dressed like Isaac, fewer than a handful of women are dressed up to the par of traditional Hasidic modesty rules)--he points out that it's just easier for women to shed their garb. A wig, Mark says, can be removed and recovered at will. Not so for the beard. I can't help wondering if Mark isn't overlooking a reality: large families with as many as ten or more children often leave ultra-Orthodox women with little or no freedom to move at will.
Not everyone here is from a Hasidic or Orthodox background. There's Rochel, a woman who became religiously observant several years ago, and whose mode of dress suggests she is still Orthodox. George grew up secular and joined a Hasidic community in Monsey, New York, which he left less than a year ago. Today he wears no identifying markers.
Among those who do identify with ultra-Orthodoxy, individuals vary in personal commitment to faith, observance, and tradition. At Chulent, a husband and wife of Satmar background (the largest and perhaps most stringent Hasidic sect) take to the dance floor—an act which, while certainly not halakhically forbidden, is, like all expressions of intimacy and affection between husband and wife, typically kept behind closed bedroom doors in ultra-Orthodox communities.
For the individuals who continue to live as members of ultra-Orthodox communities, whether they remain observant or not, there is the ever-present fear of being seen by a neighbor, a relative, or a friend. Mark is a divorcee in his thirties, which would seem to preclude such fears—his status as a divorcee means he already bears a certain stigma—but he admits to feeling anxious about the possibility of running into a familiar face from back home.
Many of the regulars at Chulent are people who lead double lives, men and women torn between feelings of loyalty to family and faith, and the longing for freedom—a phenomenon that Hella Winston explores in her recent book Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. Winston focuses on the lives and struggles of a few individuals who have, to a greater or lesser degree, cast aside the tradition that, to the Hasidic communities in which they were raised, is synonymous with life itself. Unwilling or unable to make choices that may leave broken hearts and ruined families in their paths, these individuals must carefully juggle multiple worlds. But even for those who have openly rejected their traditional upbringings, every visit home evokes a trip down memory lane and back to a culture of which they no longer feel a part.
Though Chulent does not sanction any explicitly non-halakhic behaviors, the opportunity it provides for men and women to freely mingle and talk with one another opens it to potential criticism from authority figures and lay members of ultra-Orthodox communities. For the most part, though, Schonfeld has received only praise, even from the most unlikely of people. A respected figure from a Hasidic community and a well-known Yeshiva principal both gave Schonfeld positive feedback. In all likelihood, they see Chulent as a means of keeping the lines of communication open between the community and those who left it, perhaps even in the hope that they will return.
But some years ago an enraged community member called Schonfeld to complain, accusing him of "causing divorces." Schonfeld was unfazed. As he sees it, Chulent functions as a safety net for people on the edge. These are people, he tells me, who do not come to Chulent to break rules—they have enough such opportunities across the length and breadth of New York City. Rather, he says, Chulent provides a middle ground where they can give expression to their doubts without violating core Jewish principles—an opportunity that Schonfeld believes may in fact be responsible for saving marriages otherwise headed for doom.
While he is committed to providing an open, free forum for discussion, Schonfeld realizes that for some people self-expression means the freedom to dance, to flirt, and to smoke pot. To a limited extent, he says, he's okay with that, but it isn't what he had in mind, and some situations—like the time a Hasidic woman took to dancing with her brother—clash with his own sense of personal comfort and religious observance.
Schonfeld is not looking to make Jews become more religiously observant. Instead, he tells me, he wants to provide a safe space for Jews from a variety of backgrounds to share ideas and make friends in a culturally comfortable setting. To that end, he recognizes that for Chulent to work it must be allowed to evolve freely.
One Hasidic man, whom I'll call David, introduces himself and shows me a picture of his family—a wife and four young daughters. David shuffles uncomfortably when I ask whether his wife knows he is here. He says "she should know," and "what's the problem, it's not a club." It's clear to me that he would like to steer the conversation in another direction, but when I ask if he would visit a club he says "sure, why not."
Later, I notice David hugging a young woman goodbye. There is nothing suggestive in the hug, but Hasidim, like all ultra-Orthodox Jews, refrain from any physical contact with members of the opposite sex (with the exception of immediate family), and I wonder whether there isn't a certain complicity implied in the fact that Chulent offers people like David immunity for behaviors that are at odds with tradition.
When I ask Schonfeld what he would do if it were his own brother-in-law here, hugging a strange woman, however innocently, without his sister's knowledge, he tells me he would have no choice but to condone the behavior. To do otherwise would be to violate what Chulent stands for and his personal commitment to the cause.
But Chulent is not only about venting frustration and questioning faith. In recent weeks, a pre-Chulent Arabic class has been added to the schedule, taught by a Muslim volunteer who was introduced to Chulent through a friend's friend. Music jams are common fare here, and the weekly email invite includes an occasional posting about an available job, or someone seeking employment. Schonfeld is planning to open a website (www.chulentny.com) in the near future.
Since its move to Manhattan under a year ago, Chulent's crowd has expanded significantly—and become ever more diverse. But its intended audience has always been the questioning Jew, the one who lives in what Mark calls a state of "Jewish religious limbo" and who, by not choosing one world over the other, in effect chooses to live in both. It is a choice, Mark tells me, which avails the individual the best of both worlds, and possibly also the worst of each. The warmth and acceptance that Chulent affords these people is perhaps the greatest service it can offer—a sort of bridge to ease the balancing act and lighten the burden of those caught between conflicting realities.
The hodgepodge stew is also an apt symbol of the eclectic crowd the weekly event attracts: the side-lock-sporting yeshiva boy, the Williamsburg artist looking for God, and the Italian non-Jew who just likes the chulent. They come because by all accounts, Chulent is one-of-a-kind, offering a social scene that brings together Jews from diverse backgrounds for late discussions about anything from Talmud to politics, with an abundant supply of free food and alcohol to boot. And because it's an underground event that doesn't answer to any establishment, Chulent often attracts the curious journalist interested in exploring the ultra-Orthodox underworld.
Dave, a yeshiva boy currently enrolled at Touro College, came here hunting down a free joint. But if rumors of weed brought him here the first time, what keeps him coming back are the people, the ideas, and the "crazy intellectuals." Chulent, Dave says, is the "unorthodox orthodox," encouraging the individual to reexamine Judaism through a critical lens.
Chulent started fifteen years ago as an after-business schmooze at the offices of its founder, Isaac Schonfeld, a thirty-something bachelor from Boro Park. The event began with a small circle of friends, mostly Hasidic men, many of them divorced, going through divorces, or single past the age of twenty-five—all aberrations in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic world, where men and women are typically married by their late teens or early twenties and where divorce carries with it a social stigma more in sync with the early twentieth century than our own decade. These men "found themselves at the periphery of society because their religious convictions were being challenged internally," says Schonfeld. Together they created a "mini-society" with Chulent serving as their "ir miklat," or "city of refuge" (a reference to the biblical cities of refuge to which a accidental killer was sent to escape a potential avenger). Though Schonfeld initially hoped to keep the crowd somewhat exclusive, he never made a secret of Chulent. News of it spread, mostly by word-of-mouth, and Chulent soon gained popularity among a fringe group of ultra-Orthodox men, some women, and eventually a larger, more diverse group of Jews.
Schonfeld's garb—a long beard, kippah, white shirt, and black pants—point to all things Hasidic. He considers himself "pretty much completely observant . . . in all ways, shapes and forms," but says his "weltanschung [world view] might not be 100% Orthodox." This becomes apparent in what Schonfeld considers the "high-minded aspect" of his vision for Chulent—providing an opportunity for people to expand their "horizons on a human and intellectual level" and to think critically rather than subscribe to dogma. For the traditionalist, such thinking opens up a can of worms. When a fellow Hasid tried to engage him in a discussion about dybbuk—the spirit of a dead person said to inhabit the bodies of living human beings—Schonfeld said he didn't believe in the existence of the dybbuk. His friend called him a heretic.
While Orthodoxy places an emphasis on action rather than thought—so that from the standpoint of halakhah(Jewish law), it is deed, not belief, that counts—living with doubt poses unique challenges. Giving expression to uncertainties exposes the individual to stigmas that can have a ripple effect with far-reaching implications. In communities that depend on arranged marriages, a sullied reputation can ruin one's chances at getting a good match, or even getting a match at all. Fear, then, is one of the reasons that Orthodox people with unorthodox ideas don't typically wear their internal conflicts on their sleeves.
Here, appearances are often deceiving. When I ask the Hasidic man who believes Israel is a mistake, I'll call him Mark, why Chulent seems to attract more ultra-Orthodox men than women--(while a good portion of the men here are dressed like Isaac, fewer than a handful of women are dressed up to the par of traditional Hasidic modesty rules)--he points out that it's just easier for women to shed their garb. A wig, Mark says, can be removed and recovered at will. Not so for the beard. I can't help wondering if Mark isn't overlooking a reality: large families with as many as ten or more children often leave ultra-Orthodox women with little or no freedom to move at will.
Not everyone here is from a Hasidic or Orthodox background. There's Rochel, a woman who became religiously observant several years ago, and whose mode of dress suggests she is still Orthodox. George grew up secular and joined a Hasidic community in Monsey, New York, which he left less than a year ago. Today he wears no identifying markers.
Among those who do identify with ultra-Orthodoxy, individuals vary in personal commitment to faith, observance, and tradition. At Chulent, a husband and wife of Satmar background (the largest and perhaps most stringent Hasidic sect) take to the dance floor—an act which, while certainly not halakhically forbidden, is, like all expressions of intimacy and affection between husband and wife, typically kept behind closed bedroom doors in ultra-Orthodox communities.
For the individuals who continue to live as members of ultra-Orthodox communities, whether they remain observant or not, there is the ever-present fear of being seen by a neighbor, a relative, or a friend. Mark is a divorcee in his thirties, which would seem to preclude such fears—his status as a divorcee means he already bears a certain stigma—but he admits to feeling anxious about the possibility of running into a familiar face from back home.
Many of the regulars at Chulent are people who lead double lives, men and women torn between feelings of loyalty to family and faith, and the longing for freedom—a phenomenon that Hella Winston explores in her recent book Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. Winston focuses on the lives and struggles of a few individuals who have, to a greater or lesser degree, cast aside the tradition that, to the Hasidic communities in which they were raised, is synonymous with life itself. Unwilling or unable to make choices that may leave broken hearts and ruined families in their paths, these individuals must carefully juggle multiple worlds. But even for those who have openly rejected their traditional upbringings, every visit home evokes a trip down memory lane and back to a culture of which they no longer feel a part.
Though Chulent does not sanction any explicitly non-halakhic behaviors, the opportunity it provides for men and women to freely mingle and talk with one another opens it to potential criticism from authority figures and lay members of ultra-Orthodox communities. For the most part, though, Schonfeld has received only praise, even from the most unlikely of people. A respected figure from a Hasidic community and a well-known Yeshiva principal both gave Schonfeld positive feedback. In all likelihood, they see Chulent as a means of keeping the lines of communication open between the community and those who left it, perhaps even in the hope that they will return.
But some years ago an enraged community member called Schonfeld to complain, accusing him of "causing divorces." Schonfeld was unfazed. As he sees it, Chulent functions as a safety net for people on the edge. These are people, he tells me, who do not come to Chulent to break rules—they have enough such opportunities across the length and breadth of New York City. Rather, he says, Chulent provides a middle ground where they can give expression to their doubts without violating core Jewish principles—an opportunity that Schonfeld believes may in fact be responsible for saving marriages otherwise headed for doom.
While he is committed to providing an open, free forum for discussion, Schonfeld realizes that for some people self-expression means the freedom to dance, to flirt, and to smoke pot. To a limited extent, he says, he's okay with that, but it isn't what he had in mind, and some situations—like the time a Hasidic woman took to dancing with her brother—clash with his own sense of personal comfort and religious observance.
Schonfeld is not looking to make Jews become more religiously observant. Instead, he tells me, he wants to provide a safe space for Jews from a variety of backgrounds to share ideas and make friends in a culturally comfortable setting. To that end, he recognizes that for Chulent to work it must be allowed to evolve freely.
One Hasidic man, whom I'll call David, introduces himself and shows me a picture of his family—a wife and four young daughters. David shuffles uncomfortably when I ask whether his wife knows he is here. He says "she should know," and "what's the problem, it's not a club." It's clear to me that he would like to steer the conversation in another direction, but when I ask if he would visit a club he says "sure, why not."
Later, I notice David hugging a young woman goodbye. There is nothing suggestive in the hug, but Hasidim, like all ultra-Orthodox Jews, refrain from any physical contact with members of the opposite sex (with the exception of immediate family), and I wonder whether there isn't a certain complicity implied in the fact that Chulent offers people like David immunity for behaviors that are at odds with tradition.
When I ask Schonfeld what he would do if it were his own brother-in-law here, hugging a strange woman, however innocently, without his sister's knowledge, he tells me he would have no choice but to condone the behavior. To do otherwise would be to violate what Chulent stands for and his personal commitment to the cause.
But Chulent is not only about venting frustration and questioning faith. In recent weeks, a pre-Chulent Arabic class has been added to the schedule, taught by a Muslim volunteer who was introduced to Chulent through a friend's friend. Music jams are common fare here, and the weekly email invite includes an occasional posting about an available job, or someone seeking employment. Schonfeld is planning to open a website (www.chulentny.com) in the near future.
Since its move to Manhattan under a year ago, Chulent's crowd has expanded significantly—and become ever more diverse. But its intended audience has always been the questioning Jew, the one who lives in what Mark calls a state of "Jewish religious limbo" and who, by not choosing one world over the other, in effect chooses to live in both. It is a choice, Mark tells me, which avails the individual the best of both worlds, and possibly also the worst of each. The warmth and acceptance that Chulent affords these people is perhaps the greatest service it can offer—a sort of bridge to ease the balancing act and lighten the burden of those caught between conflicting realities.