Be Rid of the Evil in Your Midst
“Hey, H.! Remember the Tenth of Teves?” N. called to me jovially. He was unpacking a crate of Tuv Ta’am products, babaganoushes, tomato dips, tuna and potato salads, and large containers of sour pickles. “You’re not fasting, are you?” he asked with a chuckle.
It was the Tenth of Teves all over again now, a day of fasting to commemorate the ancient Babylonians’ siege of Jerusalem. It was also a day that N. chose to remind me of every now and then, but always good-naturedly. He still recognized me, even though my beard and payess were now gone, only a yarmulke on my head for the chance collision with friends or acquaintances in this strictly kosher supermarket in the heart of Chasidic Williamsburg.
N. finished unpacking the crate, and took another off the hand truck next to him. He worked as a salesperson and delivered food products to kosher supermarkets around the tri-state area. We bumped into each other on occasion.
“Those were the days, huh?” he said as he whipped out a boxcutter and sliced through the packing tape with a smooth, fluid motion. I smiled, discomforted, as I always did when he brought it up.
~ ~ ~
It was a little after dawn on a cold Friday morning in January. We sat around old wooden tables in an abandoned room in our Yeshiva basement, our payess still dripping from the early-morning dip in the mikveh or still frozen from the short walk between the Shul and our Yeshiva building. We were fifteen young men, around nineteen years old and newly married. We were the elite, fiercely dedicated to the principles of our Chasidic sect, which demanded rigid fealty to the ideals of the early Chasidic masters.
The timing was set so as to weed out the weaklings, those lacking the passion enough to wrest themselves from the comfort of warm blankets into the bitter frost of a world still awaiting the sun’s compassionate rays.
Our leader was more than a decade older than us, an emaciated man with a scraggly beard, his dark eyes so intense under his bushy eyebrows they seemed capable of boring a hole through your soul. His gaze seemed far off as he began to speak in a soft voice. At first it looked to be one of his usual talks, spun around a homily of Chasidic teachings. But his words carried an unusual intensity, and we all sat stiffly, rapt with anticipation for what was sure to be a fiery talk.
Our leader’s voice rose as his passion seemed to rise within him, and he mocked, scorned, and vilified the evils of the world that were encroaching on our island of purity. And with a sudden jolt, with all the effort he could muster, he cried in a high-pitched voice, “Raboisai, s’brent a faiyer!”
An all-consuming fire was sweeping across our land, and we stood in its dangerous path. “All the work that the old Rebbe of blessed memory did to preserve our sacred and pure tradition is at risk of crumbling from within!” His voice broke; he chocked back a sob. Finally he continued, his voice faltering, “And our beloved Rebbe carries the stress of preserving it all… now ill from heartache… laid up with high blood-pressure…” And we all held back the sting in our eyes as we watched this small but powerfully intense man shaking with fiery passion, our hearts melting for the condition of the master of all of us, the Grand Rebbe.
“Rabboisi, it has come to my ears that within the hallowed rooms of this Yeshiva there are students who are committing the most offensive acts! And they are sweeping others with them to the depths of sheol!”
He went on to tell of students watching TV on small, compact devices, sometimes within our very study hall; students sneaking out of the neighborhood to watch the abominations of the goyim in movie theaters; students taking taxis to other unspecified places—places that no human being should ever be found in, let alone a student of a Yeshiva built with the sweat, blood, and tears of the remnants who rose out of the ashes of the Holocaust.
It was up to us to stop it. To take up the spear of Pinchas, and smite the evil within those who would dare commit blasphemy and sacrilege right under our noses.
We walked off as in a daze to our morning prayers. The sun was now up, and the sanctuary upstairs was filling with students donning prayer shawls and phylacteries. Our prayers carried an intensity we’d rarely felt, and each of us who’d been at the gathering felt a deep call to action.
It was the Tenth of Teves, a fast day, and prayers took a little longer than usual. It was soon over, though, and since no breakfast was being served due to the fast, we stayed in the prayer hall and huddled around for hushed consultations. Some of our friends who weren’t at the gathering inquired about the hubbub, and we told them of the urgency of our task. The outrage grew; even those who preferred warm and cozy bed sheets to the world’s frosty early morning welcome could not sit idly by as a matter of such gravity was to be dealt with. We were to take action.
~ ~ ~
A young man, one of our peers, a friend to us all, now sat quietly in a chair in one of the Yeshiva’s side rooms. Around him stood two dozen young men, confident that their task was sacred and right. The air was charged with tension as we were about to chastise one of our own.
The seated man’s name had been passed around as one of those who were transgressing our sect’s inviolable principles. We had no evidence, either of the alleged acts or of those guilty of them; all we had was the fiery early morning talk. But the moment called for action, and there was little time for establishing facts.
Our friend, pale and nervous, sat as one of us took the lead and pronounced that we, as a group, will not tolerate the kind of activity we’ve been hearing about. We declared that any association with certain undesirable persons would also be forbidden. And this time it was just a warning. The next time we wouldn’t be as tolerant. Force would be used if necessary. Serious force.
The scene repeated itself with a handful of other chosen subjects, each of them receiving the same warning, the same horror on their faces as they sat shamefaced, wondering what had come about to turn good friends into dreaded inquisitors. Some put up attempts to show they wouldn’t be cowered and challenged the group’s assertiveness as self-appointed guardians of our sacred traditions. But there was no mistaking our seriousness.
By now we had whipped ourselves into a frenzy. We’d turned from serious passion for an ideal into a crazed mob. And a mob’s zeal isn’t easily pacified; the mob wouldn’t be stopped. There was something deeply unsatisfying in the relatively moderate task of issuing warnings. The mob wanted more.
“Where’s N.?” someone asked.
We checked the study hall and some of the side rooms. He was nowhere to be found. But N. had to be found; he was one of those being sought for the same sit-down. N. was still unmarried and living in the dorm, and appropriate persons were sent to check his room. It was reported locked, with no one inside. The mob saw an opportunity.
But here a challenge presented itself. The Yeshiva’s policy—established at the request of the Grand Rebbe himself—was that no married students were to enter the dorm area. Excessive fraternizing of married and unmarried students carried various risks. And the mob consisted mostly of married men. The sense of urgency and frustration were now heightened as a satisfying opportunity for pacifying the lust of those now drunk with excitement for an extreme demonstration of their zeal was slipping away on a technicality. It was inconceivable that those who were to uphold the principles of the group would violate a clear and unambiguous Yeshiva policy. A quick consultation was held; we needed authorization for this task. But would it be given? The possibility of permission being denied was deeply disconcerting to some, as the satisfaction of the intended mission held too great an appeal. But the consensus was that we had no choice.
There was no need to be concerned. A notable rabbi, one of the community’s halachic decisors and a respected teacher at the Yeshiva, was just entering the building as the consultations were taking place. He too cared little for establishing facts.
“’And thou shalt be rid of the evil in your midst,’” he quoted the bible with enthusiasm. “It’s a mitzvas aseh d’oraysah!” An unequivocal biblical command. The mob now had the stamp of official authorization.
A ransacked room is an ugly thing. But for us it was a thing of beauty. The door smashed in, blankets and linen ripped off the mattresses, dressers overturned, its contents on the floor in utter disarray, the mob of dozens picking through items, searching for forbidden material. A locked cabinet was discovered. A hammer was procured and the lock smashed. The evidence had to be found; we knew it was there, because so we’d been told. That we may have been told wrong was neither a matter of concern nor consequence. That the information, even if true, was neither inherently offensive nor deserving of the zealousness we were engaged in would not have occurred to even the sanest and most level-headed among us.
Nothing was found. But the mob was now pacified.
~ ~ ~
“Yeah,” I said to N. “Those were the days.”
“How are things?” he asked with genuine interest. “See your kids these days?”
I gave him the brief rundown of my life, which wasn’t so different from what it was the last time I’d seen him. He was always around town, driving the Tuv Ta’am truck with the illustration of its products on the side, always giving me a honk and a wave when he noticed me.
I took my basket of groceries, and gave him our old friendly thumb-lock.
“Take it easy, man,” he said. “Come by to my place sometime when you come see your kids. Have dinner with us or something.” He was the same old N., kind, generous, playful, and didn’t give a shit about religion or those who’ve left it.
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Wonderful piece.
It is people like N. who have always fascinated me. Those who have suffered under the community but still firmly stand by it. I think your last line summed it up well, “He was the same old N., kind, generous, playful, and didn’t give a shit about religion or those who’ve left it.” It is that kind of mindset of indifference that would drive people like him and helps them survive.
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Yonadab — of course, N.’s attitude adds poignancy. But to me, thinking back, I’m amazed at my own ability to have been swept along in a mob-crazed frenzy. Of course, it may not be completely valid to extrapolate from oneself to human nature as whole, but to me this says something about our ability to suspend rational thinking and go along with a herd mentality. THe incident is to my own discredit, of course, but it’s taught me something valuable.
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Interesting you should say that.
I am much more baffled by N’s character than your own character in the story. Your character is as much caught up in a mob as much as he is intensely passionate about his religion and takes his religiosity very serious. Some one like that is also prone to leave his religion because he takes it so seriously (I don’t remember who said it but I once read someone saying “God, it is because I take you so seriously that I can’t get myself to believe in you”) Of course this isn’t a direct cause and effect, but I don’t see a contradiction there.
N’s character, however, would superficially, at least, appear contradictory. Since given his experience (in contrast to yours) who would have every reason not to defend his religion. But it his relationship to it as compared to yours that shields from going where you did. He wasn’t one of those who woke up fartugs, religion didn’t burn for him and it never did.
That’s what I saw in your piece, I guess that’s the beauty of writing, you get all these different reactions.
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Oh, Yonadab, you’re certainly right that that’s the more unusual part. That’s of course why I bracketed the piece the way I did.
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I guess the reason I pointed out what I did was because N.’s subsequent behavior only struck me as a tool for adding poignancy to the piece — and it only came to me as an afterthought. Might say something about my writing skills — although not sure if good or bad…
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Great story.
I know what you mean about mob mentality. There’s a special kind of crazy mobs are capable of. I’ve also experienced rabbis exaggerating the “sins” of others to make everyone feel guilty. (Incidentally, religion is often the soap box used by despots to rile up the masses and order bloodshed–think the Church in medieval times and mullahs in the Middle East.) Personally, I’ve been part of a small mob that vandalized Lubavitch property…
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I think the major difference is being “in the box” or outside, from a societal perspective.
I remember the disdain for those who were beneath the threshold of “acceptable yiddishkeit”. it was a s serious and as factual as any reality. It has been a long time, but if my memory is correct, it was the attempt to “understand them” that finally unpicked the irrational lock.
I was approached by a friend in yeshivah; i have a stack of “shmitzige magazinen” in my closet. You can take what you want whenever. I politely refused, but didn’t condemn him. I was 19 by then.
Yep; those were indeed the days.
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Powerful writing.
This is my own bias, but I can’t think of 19 year olds as “men,” married or not. You were a bunch of over-enthusiastic teenagers with a very limited world view. The real culpability here is with the rabbonim who encourages and sanctified your behavior.
Out of curiosity, what bad things could come out of fraternization between bochrim and married men? And was “N.” ever reimbursed for his damaged property?
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G*3: You’re certainly right abou tthe leaders being the ones culpable.
Re the fraternizing, I can only speculate, it was never made clear, but some possibilities:
a) the dorm becomes a hangout, keeping guys away from their new wives (in whom they have yet to develop much interest…), b) guys schmoozing with ‘bucherim’ too much can lead to them divulging some secrets that only married guys should know, c) there was actually a general policy of keeping the dorms free of non-residents (which, for some reason, the married guys seemed to ignore, especially if they’d previously lived in the dorms; hence a new, more explicit, policy).
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What makes that different from a cult ?
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Beautiful, HR. As always.
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>What makes that different from a cult?
Religions get respect. Cults don’t.
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you folks were only nineteen. you had a limited worldview, limited experience and you were taught to revere the leaders of your community. you were at an age where peer pressure is still a reality, especially in a tight community where conformity is the expected norm and non-conformity can mean expulsion. to top it off, you didn’t all just decide to do this on your own, you were stirred to action by elders you trusted and then you were basically told that god is on your side. you all believed that you were doing the right thing.
this is why boys of 17, 18, 19 are drafted into armies. this is why missionaries and cults prey on the young. at those young ages (and into the early twenties)there exists an idealism and increased creativity and a belief that you can change the world.
while the actions that you guys took are hardly excusable, you should realize that you were all just as much victims as were the guys you folks victimized.
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excellent, as always
disturbing yet appealing
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I agree with some of the comments above; 19 yrs old is an old teenager, and it’s disgraceful that some rabbonim (so called mature educators/examples)are allowed to misguide and abuse peoples minds.
Secondly as a “funny” aside, Tuv Ta’am in Israel is a chain specialising in treif products!
Well written as always.
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This is some {expletive here} story. I come from a similar setting, but never had the pleasure to witness such Phineastic zealotry unfolding. Group think and Herd mentality are actually defined behaviors. And that N guy? No hard feelings towards a mafioso like you?
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I had a more mild incident at age 12 or so, in which I behaved in a way I’m very not proud. We since lost touch. Reconnected via facebook. After all these years I think she had no recollection of the incident that I felt so guilty about. So its ironic but sometimes (not always but sometimes) we hurt ourselves most with our own evil.
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Great story and brilliantly told. As you know of course, and have mentioned often, this doesn’t mean that frumkeit is necessarily any worse a way of life than any of the other lifestyles that have proliferated throughout history, but its problematic parts are somewhat unique in our time and place as they often relate to both a level of conviction and a level of group cohesiveness that is less common in general than it used to be.
Your approach as a documenting novelist of the unique culture of frumkeit somehow manages to combine the objective aloofness of the anthropologist with the poetic and caring soul of the prophet. It’s good stuff. Keep em coming.
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Religion also breed Jihads.(Jihadim?)
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Brilliant writing, HR. I loved your closing line.
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Moshe, your observations are certainly on target. Meaning, of course, those about my prophetic soul, etc, etc….
Seriously, though, agreed 100% on the uniqueness/non-uniqueness of frum cluture.
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