Hello from Jerusalem,
Surrounded by waves of fervor, I stood amazed and delighted at the 450 gold robed, fur-hatted, side-curled Hasidic men and boys welcoming in and relishing their Queen: lovely, precious Shabbos.
On a Friday night not long ago I had the amazing experience of witnessing a Tisch at a local Hasidic (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) synagogue. Tisch means table in Yiddish, the mother tongue of these conservative communities. (How can Hebrew, the official language of Israel yet also the language of God be used to say things like, “Son, take out the garbage,” or” How much is the gefillte fish?” or worse yet, “Honey, I have a stomach ache.”) The event is called a Tisch because it takes place around a very large table (ten smaller ones pushed together) on which a meal, sometimes symbolic, sometimes full, is served. The 300 year old Tisch tradition is one opportunity for the holy, mysterious Hasidim to celebrate Shabbos (the Sabbath) together and reaffirm their unity as a community. Perhaps you can imagine how out of place I felt at first, wondering if this holy throng minded an outsider’s presence. As my host and guide, one of Katie’s teachers with an interest in religious expressions, theology, and the bewildering, delightful array of human behavior assured me, they were so intent on the event, they hardly knew or cared I was there.
The Tisch took place in a rickety old synagogue in an anachronistic, European-ghetto-like part of town called Mea Shearim. Upon entering the synagogue we had to literally plunge into an unparted Red Sea of men. Can you picture a Hasidic Jewish person? If you live in Brooklyn or Jerusalem you surely can, but in Indianapolis or St. Louis? Maybe. In the heartland, a Hasidic male dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black frock coat, black shoes and a black hat might at first glance be mistaken for an Amish man dressed for Sunday meeting. I think if the Amish and the Hasidim compared notes, they might find they have a great deal in common.
Hasidic hats vary quite a bit, some being pretty classy looking black fedoras, but many others looking a little goofy at least anywhere else but here: half-crowned felt covered derbies, black Don Quixote-esque flat round plates with tiny crowns, and of course, the fur layer cake hats I’m seeing so many of this evening (these last are worn on Shabbos, holidays and for the week after marriage). Hasidic men have long black beards and side curls. Side curls grow when a man does not cut his hair from a two inch square on the side of his head just above his ear, right above where sideburns would begin. Sometimes side curls are only three to four inches long, but others are nearly twelve inches. Many are neatly curled, others hang loose and free. They don’t cut that area of the hair on their heads because of an interpretation of a verse from Leviticus. How they dress, black robes or gold, white socks or black, the style of hat and all the rest, stems from how the Rebbe, the particular group’s founder and original grand rabbi, dressed.
When you see these folks walking down the street, they look somber, restrained, and a bit severe. That’s part of why the evening feels so incredible. This gathered mass of people in that place, mostly standing, were filled with a religious excitement I would have expected from American Protestant Charismatics. The event began with a wordless chanting: Yie, yie, yie, yie, yiiie, yie yie yiiiie, a haunting and lilting semi-melody that wrapped the gold coated throng and me with its haunting unison notes. The surprising amount of coordination in such a large group impressed me. They would chant a song for awhile and then, as if at a signal, begin chanting another. At one point their songs took on words. One was the twenty third Psalm. One was a hymn of thanks and praise to God for His gift of Shabbos. Some of the songs were several hundred years old, one was nearly 2,000 years old, all sung one Shabbos after another, generation after generation, age unto age, amen.
One thing that still surprises me is how united around the rabbi they are. There is probably something freeing in opening the closet every morning and knowing exactly what you’re going to wear that day, and more than that, knowing your place in society: the expectations placed on you and the benefits given. One example of the centrality of the Rebbe, a venerable white robed man at the end of the table, was how they toasted each other when they took a drink of wine. The amount anybody had to drink was hardly enough to wet a whistle but that wasn’t the point. The point was for each person in that throng of 450 to hold his cup and wait to drink until the Rebbe had made eye contact and nodded, toasting each person, L’Chaim! I was dumbfounded watching him nod again and again, working his way down the rows of his people, l’chaim, l’chaim, l’chaim, over and over to each of his sons and brothers, uncles and cousins in faith and joy, relishing the moment, each other, and of course, the Shabbos.
How can I convey the sense of unity, of energy, of electricity there? The old wooden room was like a giant amplifier, taking the sound, swirling it around the singers in waves of joy and piety and praise, round and round the space, spiraling upward toward the rafters and then, I suppose, to the throne of God. The singing and swaying, the sharp, repetitive bowing from the waists of scores of participants, though foreign, also expressed the familiar human emotion of praise and ecstasy, faith in God. I wanted to think of a way to harness all that force for good in this world, but who am I to presume that a lot of good isn’t already coming from all this? These communities carry on a faith and in so doing, also do good for those around them, for those in need, for each other in the extremities of life.
The evening ended with the throng, including me and my host, filing past the Rebbe, jammed in, person next to person, to wish and be wished Good Shabbos. My host whispered to me, “he likes to make eye contact,” so at my turn I looked into his eyes, wished him good Shabbos, as he did the same in return, and left. One thing I love about my life here are the many opportunities to connect with so many different sorts of people. And though I can worship, sing, toast someones health, and experience family and friends anywhere, I am treasuring this opportunity to do all of that in fascinating Jerusalem.
