Of Syrian Jews, Ashkenazim and Hasidim and the reason I won’t wear a black hat
This article was first published 26 years ago in the Long Island Jewish World, where the author penned a column for many years. He is now a resident of Riverdale.
The Jewish Star welcomes reader feedback to this piece. Please address your comments to: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
It was a recurring comic tag line in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“Who are those guys?”
Asking myself that same question set in motion a gradual process of discovery, culminating in my resolution never to wear a black hat. Dear reader, allow me to explain.
It happened soon after commencing my yeshiva high school education in Brooklyn. I had come from a traditional yeshiva elementary school whose student body was dotted with names like Bernstein, Adelman and Liebowitz. Suddenly, in high school, I found myself amid people with names like Harary, Gindi, Silvera and Shamah.
They were different, and in ways that went beyond the strangeness of their names. They dressed stylishly; the boys favored those black, crepe-like, conical kippot I associated with infrequent attendees at my synagogue; and they were seriously into Motown rhythm-and-blues groups like Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Four Tops and the Temptations.
Who were those guys?
I was to learn that they were the “Syrians.” Though some were, in fact, of Egyptian lineage, such distinctions were usually overlooked. Actually, they were the American- born descendants of Syrian and Egyptian Jews. For the most part they resided in an enclave around Ocean Parkway. They regarded Arabic as their mother tongue, not Yiddish; were often named after living ancestors; had a spiritual leader they called the “Haham” (not the Rabbi); and (oddity of oddities) did not regard kreplach and cholent as the highest expressions of culinary art.
The ‘Real’ Jews
They referred to themselves as “S-Ys”; we were “J-Dubs,” short for “J-Ws” (Jews). This nickname indicated that they were fully aware of their position outside the stereotypical Jewish mainstream, and that they were not bothered by that fact one bit.
The process of this part of my education was slow but steady. It was, I must now admit, retarded by cultural prejudice. Though never articulated, those of us of Eastern European ancestry tacitly assumed that we were the “real” Jews and they were impostors whom we might, through our patience and indulgence and their malleability, eventually strip of their alien ways and shape into genuine Jews. Like us.
Oy.
• • •
I was to learn a great deal in high school, much of which, of course, I have since forgotten. One principle taught to me by the Syrians that I did manage to retain was that the terms “Jewish” and “Eastern European” were not synonymous. This seems self-evident, but dear (Ashkenazic) reader, can you truthfully claim that you have not, at some time, shared such a benighted attitude yourself?
To be fair, I knew better in the abstract. I knew that a large portion of Israel’s Jewish population originated from places like Morocco and Yemen. I had been taught that two of the greatest halachic decisors in our history, Maimonides and Rabbi Yosef Caro, were Sephardic. I had, in fact, been duly instructed that a Jew, whatever his or her country of origin, was a Jew. Period.
Nevertheless, because the overwhelming portion of American Jewry traces its lineage to places like Minsk, Pinsk and Bialystock and not to Aleppo, Cairo or Salonika, there had been insinuated into my consciousness the sense that the strength of one’s Jewish identity was measured by the degree to which one adopted the cultural affectations of 19th century Eastern Europe.
Even secular American culture adopted this point of view. Taking a cue from influential American Jewish writers (of European ancestry) such as the Roths (Henry and Philip), Budd Schulberg and Saul Bellow, Americans in general invariably associated Jewishness with Eastern and Central European manners. Jews were all supposed to speak Yiddish, answer questions with other questions (“Do you like this Mr. Goldberg?” “So, what’s not to like?”) and sway and moan in prayer in musty store-front synagogues.
Even those rebellious Jews who broke away and disassociated themselves from the old culture retained images of the Lower East Side of Manhattan or the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn as their frame of reference for Jewishness. Visions of bearded men clothed in black coats and women who kept their hair covered in kerchiefs animated the mindsets of Jews and non-Jews and were given wide expression in literature, theater and film.
• • •
Far fewer in number than their European counterparts and outside the cultural mainstream, Jews from Arab lands who immigrated here in the early part of the 20th century were hardly noticed. These first immigrants found business the most direct route to gain a foothold in a new society.
Unlike their Ashkenazic brethren, they did not feel compelled to guide their children into high-status occupations in medicine, law and academia to gain security and acceptance. The male offspring of these immigrants were expected to follow their fathers’ footsteps in business, which was considered a high calling. In this endeavor, they generally met with success, although it did little to raise their profile.
They may well have preferred it that way. It afforded these Jews from Arab lands the opportunity to preserve a heritage that was doubly at risk from both secular and European-Jewish society.
They flocked to the synagogue on Shabbat, young and old, more observant and less observant, as much to affirm their cultural identity as to discharge a religious obligation. To an Ashkenazi accustomed to relatively homogeneous congregations, the teeming Syrian mix of religious and less religious, and the evident respect and sensitivity that each accorded the other, was refreshing. Interestingly, there was also no way of detecting from their appearance who among them was more observant and who was less. Belief was where the heart was. Inside.
Clearly, to the Syrians, the rigor of one’s observance was not something that lent itself to, or cried out for, public display.
“But what,” you may be asking yourself just about now, “What about that black hat?” Patience, dear reader, patience.
Rashi Didn’t Speak Yiddish
We know that one’s appearance, the image one projects, functions as a kind of non-verbal language or code that suggests who we are (or, perhaps, who we would like people to think we are). Our clothes, our mannerisms, even the inflection of our speech, project to others something about our general orientation. This is true no less of our Orthodox Jews (of whom I suppose I am one) than of any other group.
Hasidim dress in a distinctive way both to show disdain for a popular culture prone to fad and excess and to affirm their focus on the spiritual. It is hard to quarrel with these motives; it is the symbolism that is faulty. And mischievous.
In their fervent dedication to emulate their ancestors, they ignore the likelihood that those same ancestors were perfectly indifferent to what they wore. No one seriously thinks that the rabbis of the Talmud dressed like the Satmar Rebbe. And Rashi didn’t speak Yiddish.
It seems reasonable to assume that when Jews first began to wear long coats and fur-trimmed hats, they were simply reflecting the customs of their times and never imagined that someday their descendants would transform that clothing into a religious imperative.
• • •
Though Hasidim stand out in bold relief, these observations are not confined to them alone. Other Orthodox Jews, no less zealous than the Hasidim in their religious practice, attach similar value to certain Old World conventions.
Found in large numbers in the Borough Park and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn, the men favor dark business suits and fedoras and white-on-white shirts. A few hours spent with them drops one into a time warp: people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, all certifiably “Born in the USA,” acting as if it’s 1949 and they just got off the boat. It is evident in the tone of voice, the gestures and the Yiddish that is sprinkled liberally into their conversation.
All this might be perfectly benign but for the fact that adherence to such external standards is used as a gauge by which to measure other Jews’ religious commitment. The analysis infrequently penetrates any deeper than that.
Ostensibly, these Jews dress and conduct themselves this way because their fathers dressed and conducted themselves this way, as did their fathers before them. It feels authentic. Maintaining behavioral habits and serving G-d are inextricably linked. It is as if clinging to the one is a kind of insurance policy against offending the other. Any departure from accepted outward standards is viewed suspiciously as an indication of an ominous inner shift in values. The beginning of a rejection of Tradition.
One wonders: If authenticity is really the point, why go back only 100 or 200 years? Go all the way. Dress like Rabbi Akiva and converse in Hebrew (or at least Aramaic). If dress and manners are not critical enough to go that far, then why assign so much importance to the indicia of one certain era to the exclusion of others? Why indeed insist on those … black hats?
• • •
Well, there you have it. I won’t wear one of those black hats because to do so would be an endorsement of the myopic notion that the great Jewish parade began in Central Europe a mere 200 years ago and because it implies that our European experience is somehow at the core of our beliefs.
It didn’t and it isn’t.
Something is askew when places like Bobov, Lubavitch and Mir are accorded near-mythical status and regarded almost as shrines.
The Holocaust raises many unanswerable questions and teaches many lessons. Perhaps one such lesson has to do with the futility of identifying too strongly with any of the hundreds of places we have sojourned in exile, whether it be Babylon, Barcelona or Lublin. Or Brooklyn.
Confusing the superficial, outward manners that our ancestors absorbed from the alien culture that surrounded them with the essence of the legacy they bequeathed to us makes it too easy to misplace priorities. We risk trivializing that which we set out to venerate.
• • •
The hard fact is that the Eastern Europe that my parents and their parents knew is no more. It is ashes and ghosts and deserted graveyards. To draw from that glorious era everything of value that it has to offer, to savor the fruit of its inspiration and reflect on the puzzle of its many agonies, is a worthy endeavor. But our attraction to the past must be tempered by an appreciation of a cold and sober truth concerning that world.
It is over. And we ought to be mature enough to recognize that the sum total of our inheritance is older, more varied and more encompassing than the world so lovingly memorialized by Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Agnon and Grade.
To persist in acting out a lifestyle that has vanished, as if time has stood still, arbitrarily elevates one part of our history over others and renders sacred that which has no inherent sanctity.
There was never anything holy about the bricks and cobblestones of Vilna. It was the Gaon and his followers who imparted their holiness to it. Now it is virtually devoid of Jews; it is just Vilnius, another Lithuanian town. Does this sound harsh? Does it sound blasphemous? It shouldn’t. The unintended consequence of worshiping a phantom culture is a kind of bogus, pre-Copernican Jewish theology that has faith revolving around Europe rather than the other way around.
My old Syrian friends understand the inherent fallacy quite well.
So you see, the Syrians opened my eyes to something that should have been perfectly obvious: Judaism transcends time and place. If our hearts are to be drawn anywhere it should be to Safed and Jerusalem rather than Warsaw and Berlin.
Aping the language, clothing and manners of old Eastern Europe has more to do with nostalgia than with faith and is a faulty barometer of the strength of one’s identification with Judaism. Some even derive from these habits a kind of Cartesian logic: I look the part, therefore I am.
The essence of Judaism was born thousands of years ago in the land of Israel. It has been refined, as a diamond, since then. The settings for our gem have been changed — against our will — over time. While of interest, those settings are necessarily secondary. The diamond itself is all.
Judaism is bigger than a black hat.
