Our neighborhood, Katamon (Part 1)

Well, the hagim are now over, and Kara and Beruria will be heading back to the 'states on Tuesday. Needless to say, I'm not thrilled. About them going back, that is.

An interesting conclusion to the holidays on Thursday night. As Kara and I were settling in after putting the kids to bed, we were confronted by a din outside our windows. It was the sound of Hasidic simcha (party) music, clearly being played over loudspeakers, and it was growing louder and louder with each passing minute.

Now, I just can't tell you how thrilling this was to me, because I just LOOOOVE canned Hasidic simcha music, especially played at a deafening level outside my window. (That was sarcasm). And to make things even better, it kept playing the same tune. Over. And over. And over. And over. Below is a little clip I took...check it out, and then just imagine THAT going on for two hours or so outside your window. I don't mean just the noise, I mean THAT TUNE for two hours.

Looking out the window, I noticed that a group that usually hovers around the apartment building around the corner seemed to have grown quite large. They are the Erlau, a Slovak/Hungarian haredi (ultra-Orthodox) group who have their major yeshiva just down the road in Katamon. As the noise grew louder, we saw this brilliantly lit-up van with loudspeakers playing said tune, a big keter (crown) made of lights on its roof. The text around the crown read "אשר בחר בנו מכול העמים ונתן לנו את תורתו" (Who choose us from among all the nations and gave us His Torah"). I don't know if they meant them specifically, or what...you never can tell with the Hungarian types.

I've discovered that they also seem to own a significant chunk of the apartment building next door to ours, which may in fact be the home of the Erlau Rav. The procession, as I found out when I asked two young Erlau girls knocked on the door to ask if they could use our bathroom, was of the Erlau Rav himself being escorted up Rechov Bilu (our street) to their apartment around the corner after the conclusion of Simhat Torah.

So, for the uninitiated (which included me until someone set me straight a couple of weeks ago), the Erlau look like Hasidim...the same furry hats (streimels), same bekeshes (silk caftans), knickers, the whole nine yards. But technically they are not Hasidim, but the followers of the more extremist ideological descendants of the early 19th century leader of the Pressburg Yeshiva, the Chatam Sofer. Interestingly, when I found this out, I realized it was a bit like a homecoming -- another offshoot of the same Hungarian ultra-Orthodox strain live just up the road from us in Westchester County (near Mt. Kisco), the Nitra. Nowadays, they've pretty much merged in terms of dress, behavior, language (Yiddish, although I also hear them speak a lot of Hebrew on the street) and rebbe-reverence (or should I say "rav" reverence) with Hungarian hasidim.

So, you see the Erlau walking around all over the place in the 'hood...and they are usually pretty low-key, but this was quite the extravaganza.


It brings to mind my deep ambivalence about the haredim. In Israel, they are an extremely controversial block in a way they aren't in the United States, so my feelings are slightly less complex here...I am fairly well-ensconced in what I would regard as the plain old "da'ati" (just traditional or religious -- that is, keep shabbat, kosher, etc., but not in anyone's face about it), and ergo not so thrilled about the haredim.

But one of the things that has struck me -- in fact, shocked me -- is how difficult it is in the United States to be just plain old "da'ati." Because there really is no over-arching society of "Jewishness" in the sense that it exists here. In other words, here there is an entire infrastructure of culture, identity, symbolism, and so on that are "Jewish" no matter how you slice it. You speak Hebrew. The holidays are the Jewish holidays. People take vacation on Sukkot, even if they've never sat in a sukkah, because that's the vacation time. The founding literature of the national identity is the Tanakh (Bible), the Mishnah, as well as Shay Agnon and Yosef Hayim Brenner.

In the US, you have to choose your Jewish identity in a way that you don't have to here, and I've noticed it makes for some strange bedfellows once Americans come here. You especially see it in the Americans who come for the holidays or for the year. If they are Orthodox in the US, they constantly try to find that right category that seems most familiar as "Orthodox" in Israel. The problem is, it doesn't really exist per se. As a result, many of the Americans gravitate towards a kind of ersatz haredi-ism. They aren't truly haredi, in the sense of my Erlau neighbors, but their cultural signifiers are really closest to haredi from the Israel mindset. They are kind of an "Anglo-da'ati/haredi," if I had to come up with a term for it. It's an interesting thing to observe.

Oh, shul update. I discovered that the Yad Yehuda ha-Levi, the minyan that meets in the actual beyt knesset (synagogue) of the Yehuda ha-Levi school (Toby's school), is just perfect for me. To my delight, over Sukkot I discovered that it is the shul of choice for just about the entire Bar Ilan University Jewish studies faculty, which is just great for me. And the bonus is that Toby's friend from school, Natan, and his family go there. So, happily, after our long search, I think we've found a home. And the drashot (speeches) are in Hebrew!

Next time I'd like to write a little more about Katamon...a fascinating neighborhood.