Rebels: The Other Face of Chasidim

Recently, my friend Stan — a nonpracticing lawyer who spends much of his time retooling his Web site and rollerblading around Venice in tight green biking shorts and what can best be described as Elton John sunglasses — has been flirting with becoming Lubavitch. Even though he isn’t ready to trade his shiny spandex for a black suit and hat, Stan is deeply attracted to the Lubavitch way of life: He longs for a wife and house full of children and is drawn by the prospect of fully expressing his Jewish identity as a member of a tight-knit community, steeped in Jewish tradition and insulated from the pressures of modern life.

Given all this, I was hardly surprised by Stan’s reaction when I began telling him about my own forays into the Chasidic world, conducting research for my book, “Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels,” among people who are struggling to live within, or even leave, their communities, and who are secretly transgressing in all sorts of ways in order to fulfill their intellectual and emotional needs.

“You mean there really are Chasidic people who are unhappy with that life?” he replied incredulously. “But it’s so beautiful.”

Stan is an incurable romantic.

Over the past two years, I have met many Stans — usually non-Orthodox Jews who look longingly upon the Chasidim as representatives of a kind of alternative lifestyle, attractive for both its perceived spirituality, as well as its commitment to the maintenance of Jewish tradition. Of course, more often than not, these Stans turn out to know almost nothing about how life is actually lived in contemporary Chasidic communities.

They are usually unaware of all the ways in which Chasidic people’s lives are governed by the strict interpretation of Jewish law their communities embrace, ranging from how they are supposed to put on their shoes to whom they can socialize with, and even when they can touch their spouse. (By the way, the hole in the sheet is a myth.)

And many also don’t know that — with the exception of the Lubavitchers, who are unique among Chasidic sects for their outreach to secular Jews — members of Chasidic sects are raised to avoid all unnecessary contact with the outside world. This means they are not allowed to read secular books, watch movies or television, use the Internet, go to museums, follow sports, listen to non-Jewish music or go to college. Being identified as someone who does any of these things can result in rejection by one’s relatives and friends, loss of employment in the community and stigmatization of family members by association.

Despite these prohibitions, there are those Chasidim who nonetheless feel compelled to explore the world beyond Chasidic borders. Some such people are religious questioners, like Steinmetz, a young married man who sneaks off to the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary behind his unsuspecting wife’s back to read forbidden books on Spinoza and Kant and the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment).

Despite his break, Steinmetz feels he cannot leave. He hails from a prominent rabbinical family and has a wife and several children. As a result, his fantasy of escaping what he calls the “tight cage” of his life is likely to remain just that, and books his only comfort.

Other people I interviewed are motivated to transgress in smaller ways, just to experience parts of the world. Chanie, a religiously observant woman, loves nothing more than to spend the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an activity that, if discovered, could get her fired from her teaching job in the community, but which is too important to her to give up.

For some Chasidim, these furtive forays into the outside world provide a much-needed outlet that enables them to remain in a community to which they feel deeply attached. For others, this kind of exploration can lead to doubts and questions about the Chasidic way of life, and even the tenets of the religion.

For example, when a married woman named Dini began surfing the net on a computer she and her husband had sneaked into their house in garbage bags, she started to encounter people and ideas online that caused her to reevaluate the Chasidic understanding of gender and to challenge it in her everyday life, earning her numerous letters and phone calls from the community “modesty patrols.”

When I describe these and other “rebel” Chasidim to the Stans, they are often somewhat taken aback. Most concede that the Chasidic way of life may not be for them after all. But many still express chagrin that it might not be good for some Chasidic people, either.

And they’re not the only ones who seem to feel this way. I have encountered many secular and Reform Jews who, while they actively oppose the Chasidic way of life, somewhat paradoxically still feel the Chasidim play a vital role in upholding “authentic” Judaism. This reaction is genuinely puzzling to the people who participated in my research.

“If these other Jews feel it’s so important to preserve this way of life, let them switch places with me,” one man suggested. He had done his time in the living museum and would be happy to quit his display case and give someone else a chance to be in the exhibit.