Hasidim and me

You know how people go through linguistic phases just like clothing fads? How a friend might use the same word or phrase often, and then stop as abruptly as they started. For instance, I had a friend who said "autumnal" for one entire fall season until I wanted to strangle her, and then subsequent years I never heard her say it again.

Years ago my mother got hooked on "Ultra Orthodox." She used it to describe any collection of pious Jews dressed in the garb of the Orthodox. She even made a slight gutteral sound at the "Ul" as if to make it more ultra Jewish. She'd say, for example, "Bertie lives among the UHLtra Orthodox near Fairfax Boulevard. The men with their long black coats and peyes (sidelocks) and the women with their wigs, and covered-up in long dresses and so many kids, and in the middle of the summer in Los Angeles."

When my mother was in the "Ultra Orthodox" phase, she was not a practicing, Kosher-keeping, synagogue-going, nor pious Jew. I was also not a practicing Jew then, and knew virtually nothing about the religion having been raised in a secular home. I never heard the term "Ultra Orthodox" and figured she made it up. It bothered me no end, not just because when someone has a word fad, they use it ad nauseum, but also because "Ultra" is such a fabulously queer word. It makes me think of Ultra Violet, Andy Warhol's glam queen star, or Russ Meyer's B-movie classic, Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Vixens - not pasty, sweaty men davening (praying) in black coats.

My mother, a second-generation-American and romanticizer of Jewish gendered history, was not fascinated with the religiosity of the "Ultra Orthodox" (which, according to a Google search, is a derogatory term, but she would not have known that) but with the clothes, and the gender specificity of the roles. The "Ultra Orthodox" are a window into a mythical life on the shtelt, the "old country," where men eeked a living selling schmatas from a cart when not praying for a better life, and the zaftig women stirred, with beefy forearm knocking against abundant bosom, a big pot of soup made with meat and smaltz (goose fat); the girls helped mother cook, maybe singing a Yiddish ditty about the man she will marry one day, and tended to the babies in the ever-expanding family, while the boys studied at the Yeshiva or at home with stern Father or spun wheels along the dirt path with a stick. And there was no romantic sex -- pft, who had time for that -- but deep love and a commitment to family.

I do understand the allure of well-defined gendered roles. I dig bikers and their old ladies. I think Marlboro men are hot. Mae West is the bomb. I am a femme lover of butch dykes. But my romanticizing has a politic: I admire deeply prescribed gender when the feminine woman is as assertive and independent and -- maybe this is mythical on my part -- respected, as the man (or butch). The Orthodox of all religions are by definition, sexist, usually in the extreme, since "orthodox" means to follow the original laws and tenets of the religion. And while many things have been updated over the centuries, such as figuring out what to do about electricity on Shabbat (...and God said: "have a Shabbos goy turn on and off your lights"), the status of women has barely evolved from being sold for a few more goats.

Even though I am now in my 50s, I still have an inner bratty teenager who rebels against the things my mother holds dear while at the same time taking comfort in them. My daughter is this way with me, and you are that way with your mother. Otherwise we'd be dancing to Frank Sinatra records without the distance of irony. My mother's glorification of the "Ultra Orthodox" made me a cynic about any group living in the U.S. as if they're in another time and place. The Amish and their damn cheese! The Mormons and those awful prarie dresses!

During my time in Northampton, MA, I was lured to Shabbat dinner with Lubavitchers. They are, according to Wikipedia, the group who were originally coined "Ultra Orthodox," so I was at the source. Lubavitchers are the only Jews who recruit and they do it with a fervor that makes Marines look like pushovers. I sat at the table with ten children, a kind and talkative wife with dress sleeves pushed up her beefy forearms, and the solemn father in his Shabbat attire and prayer book. Once dinner started he told me to ask him questions. My first question was: If the Rebbe is dead and there is no Messiah after him, how can the Lubavitchers continue? He answered in a long-winded way about how the Rebbe's teachings guide them and, in a nutshell, about the rebbe not being dead which sounded a lot like reincarnation. It quickly became apparent that this was not a discussion but scripted. It didn't matter what my questions were, I was a woman and therefore not worthy of scholarly discussion. I wanted out. I was suffocating in there under the weight of orthodoxy, sexism, sweat, and bad food. There is no ultra glamour in the old country.