I came to New York 3 years ago intent on having the dreamy, strange experience that I had always heard so much about...the immigrants getting off the boats at Ellis Island, the crowded cozy victorian lower east side, the brilliance in the co operatives in the Bronx, all of it. I snooped around for a close knit Jewish neighborhood, and ended up living in the Shalom Aleikum houses in the Bronx, just a few blocks from Grand Concourse. I moved in with an 80 year old woman who's every other word was "nu?" but she was about the extent of the Jewish neighborhood. The big brick apartment buildings, named after the wonderful novelist who wrote Teyve the Dairyman and other great yiddish stories, now houses mostly the new waves of immigrating people, sadly none of them Jews. There were stories I heard now and then from people in the area, of where the Jews went...New Jersey, Florida, who knows, but the vagueness and unsure-ity was troubling. And so, despite the fact that the great Lithuanian artist Marc Chagall had stayed for a time in the bedroom just below mine, that the great fashion designers who's clothing I loved grew up next door; despite countless other stories of the Bronx jewish community, I decided after a year and a half of living in abandoned jewishness, to leave and find another area to fulfill my desire to experience the New York I had loved in stories. I went to Brooklyn.
Why not live in Riverdale, you say? Why not move to Manhattan upper East side? Well to be honest, I could not afford to live very many places. And so when I moved to Brooklyn, I found a modest studio apartment sandwiched between Kensington and Ditmas Park, on the edges of all sorts of amazing Jewish Communities. After a year of meeting no one, I squeezed in to an online Jewish group and got myself invited to the Catskills for a week end. Hurrah! Now I was on my way, was I not? "So you're going to the Borsht Belt?" my uncle asked on the phone. "Your grandmother used to spend summers in Tannersville I think...I have photographs of her there..." This then was it, the old jewish life, fun fun fun, a bee Gezint. Oh but the intellectual jews moved to florida or new jersey so they say, and I went to the catskills with an ultra orthodox group.
As I drove up route 28, I passed endless religious getaways, including Zen retreats, Baptist camps, Jehovah Witness, Christian, Yoga places, and finally came to the Jewish Condominium village set on lakes and nestled in the mountains. I realized I did not have on my modest clothing I had just purchased so I admit I threw the long black skirt on right in the parking lot, but I don't think anyone saw me. And besides I put it on over my slightly shorter skirt. I put a long black shirt over my teeshirt and added a long open front sweater over the ensemble. I was now ready to meet the group. It was 91 degrees that day and I had remembered to put on long black stockings before I left home, and frankly I was fainting by the time I crawled to the front gate and got my welcome package. The girl there looked at my sandals and I saw a flicker of horror cross her face. "Should I wear sneakers?" I said immediately. "Whatever you are comfortable with," she said, in a dubious tone. "But I don't want to offend anyone," I said, sweating profusely and looking down at my stockinged toes poking out of my sandals. The girl was speaking Hebrew to another girl and did not answer me. I pulled off my sandals and put my sneakers on and when she gave me directions to my room I rushed to it and collapsed in a modern chair by the twins beds. "Oh they don't sleep in the same bed," I said looking at the twin beds one in pink and one with a blue blanket. Well, neither did lots of couples. Anyway what was it to me? I was past the age of concern. The important thing was I was in the Catskills with a group of brilliant jews! I was going to learn Yiddish and Hebrew and study Torah and read Heschel and Abrahmson and all the other wonderful writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. I looked around the apartment, which was rather large and not at all a motel room as I thought it would be. I had a balcony overlooking a man made lake and the ducks rushed right over to me when I stepped out and began honking. If only I did not have to wear winter clothing in 90 degree heat!
For two days I wore my black clothing which was only just warm enough inside the buildings where they kept the temperature like a refridgerator. Although the grounds were beautiful I could not remain out for long before I began fainting from heat. We ate constantly, and washed our hands constantly. I could not keep up with the group. There was breakfast and then midmorning food and then early lunch and then real lunch and then midafternoon food and dinner and then real dinner with endless courses, and then evening food. And during all of this people washed their hands and prayed and then prayed and broke challah and then in the middle of eating the men would suddenly burst into song and one by one they got up and began dancing around the tables where the women sat feeding their numerous children. It took everything in me not to join in, but it is forbidden for women to sing or dance, as it shows a lack of modesty. So I clapped and I ate. I ate potato things and carrot concoctions and cholent and strange wraps filled with cheese and bread bread bread. And every so often when someone thought to include me, I drank grape juice for a prayer. But the very heart of the visit was exactly the praying. When the men gathered behind a partition and prayed it was like an extra terrestrial haunting sound... a humming as of a hive of bees, and then a calling of synchronized vocals. One night they prayed to the moon and I stood watching them in astonishment. It was like being in a movie, actually standing in the set and watching astonishing things and yet having absolutely no part to play and in truth not really being there at all, but only thinking yourself there. I had always wanted to watch the men pray and the Hasidics dance and sing and there I was among them, right there, close enough to touch their black clothing which of course one would never do. Right there and yet invisible. As a woman. As a non orthodox. Perhaps even tref. Who knows what one is labeled when one is not obeying their laws. I felt enormously grateful to have been allowed to see what I saw. And I felt enormously embarrassed for not being entirely correct, for making blunders like taking a photograph on the Sabbath, for not wearing a head scarf, for carrying my purse around.
And I was disappointed too. The books on hand were all in Hebrew and were Torah related. Only one of the group had heard of Elie Wiesell and no one knew of Sholem Aleichem or the Singer brothers. The rabbis spoke of the formost need to respect and obey authority. Even so, it was better than the blah world of living on the periphery. It was better than superficiality and indifference. And the old Borsht belt is gone, along with the grand Victorian hotels and the brilliant intellectual jews who read and discussed everything and created madly and were hilarious and who sang and who gave America the greatness of Eastern European genius.
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