Ask a Chasid
By Henshi G.
Ok, you see us everywhere. If you live in the ‘Burg, you can’t avoid us. The perception of us is a cross between “Fiddler on the Roof” and the insulated community of the Amish, but with mustaches and technology. Real estate has made for some strange bedfellows and while it seems that in a community that prides itself in celebrating its uniqueness and diversity, there are still some negative connotations and old wives’ tales that are born out of a lack of knowledge or politically correct trepidation. After a lifetime of tolerating comments such as, “Funny, you don’t look Chasidic,” and other brilliant barbs, I would like to initiate an open and informative forum to satisfy all your curiosities regarding the Chasidic “Sects in the City.” It is my sincere hope that this can foster greater communication between people and dispel many of the misconceptions that can cause rifts between the artistic, free-spirited colony of Williamsburg and its predecessors, the ultra-Orthodox Observant Jews known as “Chasidim.”
Before we get to the “sex through the sheet” myth, I would like to clarify a few facts about the definition of a Chasidic Jew. The word “chassidus” in Hebrew means “piety” and comes from the root “chesed,” meaning loving-kindness. This movement started in the 18th century as an alternative to the dogmatic and fear-inducing observance of the Torah and its tenets. It was started by a rabbi called the Baal Shem Tov, which literally means “Master of the Good Name.” He felt that serving God through love and spirituality was a great and evolved level of faith. (I personally think he was the original “hippie.”) He would travel throughout Europe helping people understand that we are all equal, yet we have our unique and individual contribution to this world with the paramount responsibility to respect all living beings. He was in fact a Kabbalistic Rabbi, who lived way before “Madonna.”
If you would like to know the correct lingo, the word is “Chasid,” not “Hasid.” Not “CH” as in “Chad,” but “Ch” as in the feeling of acid reflux causing the phlegm to regurgitate creating a gurgling and unattractive sound – sort of like a tickle in your throat. Once you have that down, you’re on your way to the proper enunciation of the word. (Practice using it the next time your bike nearly swipes a payes-filled school bus on the Southside.)
Finally, we get around to the fascination with the “Sheet.” This is a total fabrication. The custom of wearing white on your wedding day as a symbol of purity extends to the wedding night, where one is commanded to enjoy intimate physical relations and uplift the sexual act to a high level of holiness. Thus, the first time takes place on white linen. This is all symbolic and not rabbinical, or any other type of mandatory “law.” We are taught that anything between a consenting, married couple is accepted and that it is imperative that they satisfy each other in all possible ways that is respectful to both of them. Frankly, I still don’t understand how this morphed into the widespread rumor that it is, but I do know that sex through a linen hole is completely false.
Since this is my first foray into writing a column of this nature, I ask that you submit your questions so I can try to answer them as best as I can. Though I am not a certified expert,
I have spent all of my life as an “Observant” Jew and would like to share whatever I can. I truly believe that knowledge is the key to all understanding.
Please send your questions and comments to editors@blockmagazine.com.
Henshi is a singer/songwriter, real estate agent and, most of all, Mom, who works for Prudential Douglas-Elliman in Williamsburg. Born and raised as a Chasidic Jew, she combines her spirituality and love of people in all her endeavors. She is happy to be part of a creative community and especially thrilled to be contributing to this magazine!
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Williamsburg Pop
By Ava Dakota Kim
Williamsburg is the fabled land of the Hasidim, Puerto Ricans, Italians and Poles, art freaks, musicians and hustlers of all stripes, young Ivy League non-profit workers and grad students, and now WASPy executives and fashionistas. You may not realize it because you live in the eye of the tornado, but you as a Williamsburg resident have been typecast and commoditized by the advertising and entertainment forces that be, and it's only going to get worse.
The first and most obvious sign that the deluge of Williamsburg pop obsession is coming is Michael Eisner's new web comedy "The All-For-Nots," based on a real band playing a fictional Williamsburg indie rock band. Eisner admired Williamsburg-based production company Dinosaur Diorama's "The Burg" and passed on a sequel series, but decided the tribulations of indie rock band trying to make it big would hit big. If the former Disney chief has decided a Williamsburg product (even a fake one) is worthy of the masses, it's only a matter of time before other pop culture scions do.
Internet down, next up at bat: television. In a recent episode of America's Next Top Model, Jay Manuel leads the bewildered models into McCarren Park Pool for a photo shoot with Victoria's Secret photographer Russell James. "Williamsburg is a very up-and-coming neighborhood," Jay says authoritatively. He proceeds to make the models take on different musical personalities, from rocker to R&B diva, in accordance with the neighborhood's aesthetics.
Next sign of the pop-apocalypse: the national commercial for the Ford Edge SUV. In this spot, rabidly culture- and oyster-seeking quarter-centurions glide across the Williamsburg Bridge in a sleek SUV, with a girl in the backseat (perhaps still naïve to Brooklyn's uber-fetishizable wonders) gazing in awe upwards through the panoramic sunroof while going over the bridge. When they pull up to the green and white awning of their hip destination du jour, Marlow & Sons on Broadway, the more jaded kids have to ask Tess of the d'Urbervilles if she wants takeout because she's still sitting in the car gazing up dreamily at the beautiful Brooklyn sky, uncluttered by skyscrapers.
The commercial posits Williamsburg not as a homey neighborhood base for operations, but as an exciting foreign field trip destination to visit in an SUV. (After all, the L Train hiccups frequently, and the JMZ Trains just fail to register on the chicness meter, yet). Marlow & Sons is the new bobo Peter Luger, worth driving across the bridge for, worth making these Reverse Bridge-and-Tunnelers leave Manhattan temporarily. Now, kids in Texas are looking up Marlow & Sons on the Internet and reading about its P.E.I. oysters, local jam and gourmet pickles, reading about Williamsburg on Wikipedia and saying they want to go there on Yelp. Maybe they'll hop in their SUVs and drive there during spring break, only to be shocked by how cold it still is in March and how barren and grimy once-beautiful Broadway can be on a weekday night.
I've got nothing against Marlow & Sons. I love oysters, and late one night some friends and I walked by to see the servers all dancing and singing like some kind of Turkish wedding. So we ran in and spontaneously joined their folk dance. It's got a warm atmosphere, but too many food critics, tourists and Manhattanites, and you'll see that atmosphere dissipate faster than an empty lot on South 4th Street.
New York in general has always been a pretty grimy place, from the days of horse carriages, trolleys and feces sharing the roads to the days of the subway full of sleeping homeless folks. However, in the past, Williamsburg was used not for its fashionable reputation, but passed off as other locations because it was convenient for filming. The Southside of Williamsburg, for example, has found a special place in the heart of filmmakers seeking a slummy background. In countless chase scenes and crack house busts, from Serpico to American Gangster, Williamsburg's once-elegant (we're talking late 1800s, before the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge) Southside has played the site of another city or neighborhood's crime. In fact, in the 80s, it was truly the site of many a gang crime and crack bust. Slanted tenement roofs and fire escapes evoke Bensonhurt in Spike of Bensonhurst and the Lower East Side in Once Upon a Time in America, and even Harlem in American Gangster. In The Departed, Park Luncheonette on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, with a few antiques added in, stands in for a classic Bostonian mom and pop grocery and diner, and the Marcy Avenue Armory and Works Engineering Motorcycle Shop play grimy interiors. In Garden State, Sea on North 6th Street stands in for a disgustingly posh Vietnamese restaurant that Zach Braff's character serves at in LA.
For a long time, a film hasn't told a civilian story centered in Williamsburg since A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but recent films Williamsburg, sitcom The Burg, comedy sketch “Hipster Olympics” and graphic novel Shooting War all center around a fanaticism for the supposed hipness of the neighborhood.
The most evident sign of the deluge is the print media's recent fanatical obsession for Williamsburg, from the New York Times' daily hipster newsletter UrbanEye, where an issue never passes without a reference to events in Williamsburg, Greenpoint or Bushwick, to bastion of libertarian Manhattanite wealth New York stooping to chronicle dirty loft shows on South 4th Street in their events section. The New York print media can't seem to get enough of Karen O playing a secret show at Glasslands, new loft buildings, bike festivals, mechanical failures and hot hookups on the L Train, Supreme Trading parties, film screenings at Monkeytown, the opening of Fette Sau and the closing of Pies-n-Thighs. These publications care about hipster glitz, the parties and happenings, not the daily survival bread of where we get our furniture fixed (Pillow Perfection in Greenpoint), who sells the best stuff on the street on Saturdays (the man with B horror flicks on North 7th), the better dog park (I like the informal one on Metropolitan and Union) or where to go urban exploring in the neighborhood (I can't divulge that one). Websites like 11211.com and billburg.com always give me better recommendations for my neighborhood than TONY, The New York Times or New York, because these publications are writing not for us, but like tourist books and The Hipster Handbook, for the foreigner who wants to get a little taste of what they think is Williamsburg style.
"Has Billburg Lost Its Cool?" The New York Times asked in July 2003. I haven't noticed a totally tragic loss in hipness in the past five years, but if it has plummeted on their scale, residents will be the last to say mea culpa.
