"Do you have place for Shabbas?"
I turned in surprise to face an elderly man with a long white beard, clad in a broad fur hat and a black satin robe. His concern for four non-Orthodox strangers walking down a Boro Park side street on Friday afternoon as the sun set was clearly genuine. I reassured him that we were on our way to Temple Beth El/Young Israel, a large modern orthodox synagogue.
"And Shabbas dinner?"
I explained that we were going to local homes.
"Where will you sleep?"
I named the shomrei shabbas hotel Adat Shalom used as a base for our Brooklyn trip.
"And tomorrow? You have a place to daven? You have breakfast? Lunch?" Only when he knew that we had plans for every part of Shabbat, that every need was met, did he smile and happily wish us "Gut Shabbas". This chance interaction, motivated by true hospitality, generosity and concern for the welfare of us as Jewish strangers typifies how 55 Adat Shalomers were welcomed to Boro Park, a hasidic neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Earlier in the day, yeshiva boys tagged along as our group toured the neighborhood. Young hasidic matrons tapped Adat Shalom women politely on the shoulder to ask, "Who is this group?" "Why have you come to Boro Park?" "Reconstructionist Judaism? What is that?!?" Like early explorers in a foreign land, we were as much objects of open curiosity to the residents of Boro Park as they were for us. While we did our best to be respectful in our dress and demeanor, I think that the real secret to the welcome we received was that we came to share what this community values most--Shabbat.
Walking the streets of Boro Park and traveling in and out of the neighborhood by bus, we saw Boro Park’s treasures. Like the Shabbat, some of these treasures embody values central to Adat Shalom as well. Seen everywhere and central to everything in Boro Park are children. Couples typically have 8, 10, 12 or more children. Shabbat morning, fathers hurry to shul, trailing sons (and a few daughters) in stair-step order; Saturday afternoon, families walking together fill the sidewalks; Sunday morning, mothers and fathers by the scores push strollers with another 2-3 little ones following like ducklings. The yeshivas, girls’ schools, kollehs, high schools, nursery schools, and cheders to educate these children line the main streets. Virtually all of Boro Park’s one hundred thousand children receive privately-funded Jewish educations. The community uses its considerable political clout not for more police or parks but to lay claim to over half of the subsidized daycare slots given to Brooklyn. While our ideas about educating and raising children are quite different, Boro Park models what it means for a Jewish community to truly be "family friendly". It does not mean dumbing down the service or de-emphasizing adult Torah study. It means investing in education, viewing every child as the community’s responsibility and treasuring each child as our Jewish future.
Charitable organizations are Boro Park’s other obvious community jewels. Ambulances, wedding dresses for poor brides, "lending libraries" of infant equipment, support for the elderly, interest-free loans, job training, housing for the disabled, and food for the hungry are provided by organizations crowded into basement apartments and in tiny offices tucked above storefronts. Testimony to the primacy of tzedakah is everywhere -- every religious institution, school and community building bears a donor’s name. But giving is not just for Boro Park’s wealthy. Counters in delis and entrances to synagogues hold dozens of tzeddakah boxes. Posters advertising fundraising events cover shop windows and on blank walls. Boro Park’s residents, including those barely eking out a living, take their religious obligation to support the community very seriously with most contributing 10 percent out of every paycheck. Our own Tzedakah Guidelines describe an ideal based on these same principles. Yet, at last year’s retreat where 25 people signed up to talk more about social action, not one person signed up to talk more about tzedakah. In Boro Park, large contributions are publicly celebrated in a way that makes many of us uncomfortable. As liberal Jews, we treat tzedakah as a personal and private choice. This approach is more comfortable to our secular sensibilities but it diminishes the message of Jewish obligation. Ideally, each of us at Adat Shalom should each recognize that our obligation begins in our own community, as it does in Boro Park, but we should also see our obligation extending to the wider world. Yet, while we define our responsibility more broadly, we are far from taking it as seriously and so we have much to strive for.
On our way to Brooklyn, we watched A Life Apart, a documentary on Hasidic life, to orient us to various sects and explain many aspects of Hasidic life. The film’s basic message was the community’s insularity, maintained by limiting access to education and contact with the outside world. This film reaffirmed my own prejudices and so in no way prepared me for our dinner host, a Montreal-born professor of psychology at Stern College whose four married daughters all hold graduate degrees in the social sciences. Professor Hirsh Fried wore full Hasidic garb but he had read more of Mordecai Kaplan’s work than any of his four Adat Shalom guests. He asked where our members came from, what their backgrounds were, what drew them to our community, what made us a community, how we educated our children, how we educated ourselves, and more. Through his questions, as well as through our answers and his reactions to them, it struck me how much of what Adat Shalom is trying to create is deeply and traditionally Jewish.
Judaism, from biblical times through the shtetl to today, has always been about building a spiritually rich and ethical life through community. That is what they are trying to do in Boro Park and what we are trying to do at Adat Shalom. Hasidic life demarks how its members dress, eat, educate their children, where they live, who they marry, the roles given each gender -- Every aspect of their lives is defined by their brand of Judaism. Their Jewish values are an integral part of the culture in which they live and their community supports Jewish culture to the exclusion of all else. Professor Fried explained that he sees the hasidic lifestyle not as an end itself but as a bulwark protecting Jewish values. At Adat Shalom, our community demands both more and less. We connect to our Judaism without cutting ourselves off from the modern world, attempting to integrate the best of two worlds. Yet, virtually all of us know American culture far better than we know the Jewish culture whose best features we are trying to make the core of our communal lives. Boro Park serves as a time capsule, letting us see at how Shabbat, hospitality, education, the centrality of family life, tzedakah, community support, and many other traditional Jewish practices look in a community that rejects the secular world. Our challenge is to make these same basic values central in a life that embraces the best of what America has to offer.
Shalom uv’racha (peace and blessing),
Judy Gelman