“Unorthodox” and Matters of Fact in Non-Fiction

Deborah Feldman's book  “Unorthodox” has been causing a stir for many reasons. But for me, as someone with a general interest in the genre of creative non-fiction (I, too, am currently working on a non-fiction book), the most interesting question here is the place of fact and artistic license in non-fiction writing. And it just happens, there's a new book that deals with this very subject: “The Lifespan of a Fact.”

I haven't read “Lifespan” yet (although I'd love to; hint, hint to perceptive friends, my two-thirds-birthday, I think, should be right around now....), but it's a subject that seems to be on a lot of people's minds, judging from articles in New Yorker, Salon, L.A. Times, Poynter, and others. Slate's essay on the subject even has 32 deliberate factual errors, complete with a correction noting that a previous version stating there were only 30 errors was incorrect.

“Lifespan of a Fact” is constructed from emails between John D'Agata, author of an essay on the suicide of a Las Vegas teenager, and Jim Fingal, a fact-checking intern at The Believer, where D'Agata's essay was eventually published. From what I can tell from this Harper's excerpt, Fingal seems to take his job very seriously, and D'Agata, a proponent of the “lyrical essay,” a poetry-prose combo form, seems to think him a bit anal. “I think maybe there’s some sort of miscommunication,” D'Agata writes, “because the 'article,' as you call it, is fine... I have taken some liberties in the essay here and there, but none of them are harmful.”

Old-time readers might remember a piece I wrote back in 2003, in my early blogging days, called “The Rebbe's Tisch.” My intention then was to capture the essence of a tisch through the eyes of one unaccustomed to it. Until then, everything I'd written was very matter-of-fact, taken from day-to-day events of my life. But “The Rebbe's Tisch” was different; it was, in fact, a composite of several events, and I didn't realize when I wrote it that readers might, in fact, care to know that.

As it turned out, they did. And how. After about six or seven comments on the post (unfortunately, all blog comments from back then have been lost, so I'm forced to reconstruct from memory), I realized that readers were taking some parts more literally than I intended, and I felt discomfited by it. Expecting it to garner no more than a “thanks for clarifying” or a quick “I thought so,” I hastily posted a comment saying: “Just so you all are aware, this piece is a composite of several events, not a single actual incident.”

I also noted that some details were changed in the description of the tisch so as not to give away my identity. (I was still writing anonymously back then.) In creating the scene, I used details that were true of many tischen I'd been to but not the one I attended most frequently—the tisch in Skver. (Some examples: They don't sing Mah yedidus at the Skverer tisch; there's no pre-kiddush chanting; Skverers wear boots instead of white socks; and while the rebbe sometimes hands shrayim to distinguished guests, it is generally not kugel.)

What followed were several hundred comments in which readers furiously debated the necessity of sticking to the facts as they happened. Many readers expressed dismay that I'd tricked them somehow. The non-facts I had used, however, felt so insignificant, that I was left, at first, profoundly puzzled. I had assumed (mistakenly, even foolishly, as is now clear) that readers—or at least the more perceptive ones—would take the piece as an incident that was faithful enough to several actual events but not necessarily faithful to a specific one. Instead, readers seemed let down and disappointed, their enthusiasm for my writing completely deflated.

I learned a valuable lesson back then: never take a reader's trust lightly.

I've since spent a lot of time thinking about this issue. The question is not a trivial one, although I think the answer is far from simple. Some want to argue that any deviation, however small, from real facts turns an entire work into fiction. They believe in the binary categorization used by publishers: “fiction” and “non-fiction,” and if a written work, even for the tiniest detail, doesn't fit into the latter, then it belongs in the former.

But does absolute and pure truthfulness even exist when it comes to narrative arts? One might argue that stories, if they are to be rendered vividly, simply cannot be told without a degree of creative imagination. Creative non-fiction is an art form, and perceptive readers should be able to distinguish between facts that matter to the narrative and those used as artifice.

I happen to be reading, at the moment, Caroline Knapp's memoir, “Drinking: A Love Story,” and the following passage appears on the page I now have open: (Come to think of it, I'm reading it in eBook format; can I truthfully say “the page I now have open”?)

[We] ended up at a bar on Newbury Street, a chic stretch of retail in Boston’s Back Bay, peppered with restaurants and hair salons and little boutiques. It was a summer night and three of us, me and two men from work, snagged one of the coveted sidewalk tables outside, and we drank Cognac, many glasses.

The passage is a setup for describing a night in which Knapp got herself supremely smashed and ended up drunk-dialing her mother for an extended session of weeping, of which she would later have only the vaguest recollection. So do the details in the scene above matter? What if it was, in fact, a warm day in late spring instead of summer? What if the “little boutiques” weren't actually so little, but rather ambiguously medium-sized? What if those sidewalk tables weren't particularly coveted? What if – heavens! – it didn't happen in Back Bay but in a neighborhood bordering on it and which only some locals called Back Bay?

In Knapp's story, these details don't matter. The scene had to be rendered somehow, however briefly, with whatever cursory attention to the facts, in order to set up the story. But most readers, I suspect, wouldn't feel betrayed if they were to learn that the scene was, in minor details, inaccurate. Does the author, nonetheless, have an obligation to be exactingly faithful to the actual event? I wonder if most readers would even expect that or care?

But all of this is different from deviating from facts that are actually significant. If Knapp hadn't actually gone out with friends, or if the event of that evening hadn't happened at all the way she described it, but she put it in for whatever reason (although it's hard to imagine the point of doing so), then the reader, assuming he or she would find out about it, might be justifiably unnerved.

Which brings me to Deborah Feldman's “Unorthodox.” A lot has been made of the interviews she gave prior to the book's release, but there have also been more serious questions about the life she describes in the book. Allegations have been swirling, made by people who claim to have known Feldman in the past, that she had, in fact, attended non-Satmar schools—or even public school—during much of her childhood. Some have also claimed that Feldman did maintain contact with her mother, at least in part, while growing up, a fact Feldman never alludes to. If true, this would significantly alter the dramatic impact of her story, at least in the way that she tells it. Feldman has also been clearly sloppy with other facts, such as placing a known event—pregnant with meaning—into the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur of 2001, right after the attacks of 9/11, when, in fact, that event, according to published articles in The New York Times and The Guardian, took place in March of 2003.

The book purports to tell the story of a woman who “escaped” from a “religious sect that values silence and suffering” (quotes are from the book's jacket cover), which suggests a harrowing tale of packing up belongings in the dark of night, her toddler son hanging desperately onto her arm and a band of Chasidic men in hot pursuit, à la Carolyn Jessop's “Escape.” The book itself, however, shows that Feldman, by the time she left her community, was living a rather carefree version of Hasidic life in the suburban village of Airmont in Rockland County, N.Y, far from the insular Satmar enclave in Williamsburg in which she was raised, and living with a husband who wasn't particularly pious himself. So does it all come down to the meaning of the word “escape”?

I, for one, lost my trust in Feldman's truthfulness, both for inconsistencies I found in the book and for statements she gave to the media. I couldn't, therefore, help wondering: did her cousin's sexual assault on her in her grandparents' basement really happen? Did her friend really have her colon ruptured by a sexual mishap? Which parts of her account can I trust are really true?

Feldman is a first-time author, a young one at that, at 24, and she can be forgiven for seeking to tone up aspects of her tale that would garner her more sympathy from secular readers, as questionable as her judgment might be. But the book—as opposed to Feldman, the author—deserves scrutiny on its own merit, and is certainly relevant to the general discussion of fact in non-fiction writing.

In “Lifespan of a Fact” (from what I gather from the articles on it) D'Agata argues that his work is art, not journalism, and therefore should not be subject to the same kind of scrutiny. He chafes at Fingal's reference to his essay as an “article,” suggesting it is subject to entirely different rules. But “Unorthodox” can make no demands for ambiguous genreficiation. While some parts of “Unorthodox” are artfully written, it is, on the whole, weak in artistic merit, especially the latter half. Its value is not that of a story well-told but of a tale that is riveting in its essential details, allowing the reader a glimpse of a lifestyle most readers know little about. Which is why those details matter, and significant twisting of the facts—if indeed such was done—lessens its impact considerably.

Ultimately, the writer is asking for a reader's trust, and different writers will feel differently about how closely they must stick to describing events accurately. But wherever one might fall on this question, there's a simple litmus test that should make at least some of this less complicated: if the writer would feel even the slightest twitch of discomfort if the real facts were to be exposed, then we can safely suggest the writer has ventured into questionable territory. In Deborah Feldman's case, only she herself can answer that question, and I only hope she has an answer that satisfies her own writerly conscience.

Taking Stock: Too Cool - Tablet

(As promised, this is the first of a series of thoughts on articles I wrote during the past year. More to come in the following days and weeks...)

Just as I was beginning to feel somewhat guilty for habitually hating on hipsters, I came across this sign on the door of a new trendy-looking restaurant in Bushwick. It read: "Don't even ask to use our restroom."

Or something to that effect. The message being: not only do we not want non-customers to use our restrooms, we don't even want them to think about it.

As if the standard and direct "Sorry, restroom for customers only" was not enough to illustrate the contempt these uppity restaurateurs had for one so unfortunate to need a restroom while out and about. As if the mere inquiry would impede the smoothness of their business operations. (For good measure, the message was translated into Spanish as well, which makes one wonder about its target audience in this largely black and Hispanic neighborhood. But I digress.)

I wasn't personally offended by the note, mind you, or at least not for any practical need. I happened to have worked at the time only two blocks away, and my workplace had sufficient restroom accomodations, thank you very much. But the sign summed up an attitude I've seen in Bushwick, North Williamsburg, and other hipster neighborhoods: If you can say it like an asshole, why say it any other way?

Hpster locales around town are notoriously snooty and unfriendly, and I've had many opportunities in which to sense this: Coffee shops in which I've been glared at as if I've come to rob the place when all I wanted was a soy mocha with an extra shot; bars in which my patronage was treated like an unwelcome distraction from the bartender's text-ing on her iPhone 4S; restaurants in which asking the waiter for a glass of water with my $14 8-inch margherita pizza resulted in a huff and a scowl. One might even say, when you're not personally affected by it, that this attitude is even kind of admirable. Hipsters are the one demographic that has defiantly flipped the bird to our consumerist culture and said, "I don't give a shit if the 'customer is always right'; I'm late on updating my tumblr page, dammit." But still, is there nothing to be said for common courtesy?

I assume your average non-Hasid would think Hasidim are no better -- or worse even. But personally, as much as I disagree with the Hasidic worldview -- and much of it is indeed abhorrent -- I still feel more at home among Hasidim (and Orthodox Jews in general) than among any other sort. It's true, I detest their clannishness, their overt feelings of superiority, the certainty with which they cling to ridiculous superstitions and outrageously primitive beliefs. But if I ever need a restroom real quick, I'll make a beeline for the nearest Hasidic-owned establishment, and -- judging by past experience -- I will be happily accommodated.

I don't claim this is necessarily a function of "goodness," per se. And it isn't unique to Hasidim. Other "ethnic" establishments around Brooklyn -- black, Hispanic, Italian, Muslim -- seem to generally have a friendlier and more unassuming air than their hipster or yuppie counterparts. Chalk it up to cultural differences, the dynamics of close-knit communities, or whatever other psychosocial explanations we might come up with. But moving away from Hasidic enclaves and taking up residence among young, post-college creative types has offered some thoughts on contrasting social dynamics, some of which has taken some getting used to.

It's this culture of indifference to those outside our immediate buddy lists that made me attempt this lighthearted piece for Tablet Magazine, about moving from my former digs in Hasidic Monsey to an apartment in hipster Bushwick.

Read it here: Too Cool.

P.S.: It's worth noting, just in case any hipsters are offended by this post, that according to both conventional wisdom and a personal survey of the three hipsters in my acquaintance, there are no self-defined hipsters. Which means that no hipster can possibly be offended for being maligned because that would, ipso facto, disqualify them from hipsterdom. As I said, worth noting.

Also worth noting is that my definition of hipster is rather vague but is generally reliant on approximately three pages I skimmed in the book (published by the wonderful folks at N+1) called, "What was the hipster?"

Taking Stock: Part 2 -- Plus: Thoughts on Christopher Hitchens

As I mentioned in my previous post, this was going to be a roundup of my latest non-Unpious articles. I was originally going to post them all in one list, but decided instead to break them up into individual posts, to indulge my need for commentary on each as I post it. So, as I don't have those ready yet, I'm going to use this post for some brief thoughts on writing in general, and apropos of the latest news, some thoughts on Christopher Hitchens.

2011 has been a rather good year for me, writing-wise. It's been my ambition to get articles published on platforms other than my own, preferably for pay, and this was the year it happened. I'm rather proud of the fact, although I'll admit that, well, sometimes it feels like a bit of a cheat. Some people go to journalism school, or get their BAs in English lit and MFAs in Creative Writing, and then slave away at unpaid internships before they see their byline anywhere. I did none of those, and it's hardly to my credit. Instead, I came with an interesting background, and I've capitalized on it.

Being an ex-Chasid, for good or bad, has helped me stand out in a field where there are undoubtedly many with equal or superior talents but have to work harder to make their mark. I also can't help feeling humbled by the fact that many OTDs have stories at least as worthy of telling as mine. As the year winds to a close, I can't help feeling grateful for the opportunities I've had.

In the upcoming days, I'll be posting links to some of my recently published articles.

~ ~ ~

Thoughts on Hitch

Novelist Christopher Buckley said of Christopher Hitchens: "He writes the way Mozart composed." To me, that sums up the genius of the man, for whom churning out nearly perfect prose seemed as routine as drinking one's morning coffee.

Ordinarily, when we read a perfectly constructed essay, the typical reader has no way of knowing whether its author rendered every elegant turn of phrase effortlessly, slaved over attempt after failed attempt until it was just right, or—shudder—had his work given its final sheen by the swift keystrokes of a skilled editor. Hitchens, however, by all accounts, wrote effortlessly and required minimal to no editing.

Buckley made the above comment when describing how he watched Hitchens write an essay for Slate Magazine in 20 minutes, during a brief interlude in the middle of a dinner with family and friends. And many of Hitchens's editors have spoken of his perfect prose, always delivered before deadline. His instincts were so well-honed that in mere minutes he was able to put out what often takes other writers—even gifted ones—hours or days. It was that deftness with the written and spoken word—aside from his actual opinions (which I can't say I was always partial to)—of which I found myself in awe, hoping perhaps to learn just a smidgen of how he did it; that genius ability to convey his thoughts with clarity and wit and extraordinary vividness that forced his opponents to—if not convince them of his views—think more clearly about their own.

It's somewhat embarrassing to admit that while I've read many of Hitchens's essays, I've never read any of his books, at least not from cover to cover. It is to my discredit, perhaps, and I sometimes wonder why I haven't. Perhaps because I was already a non-believer when he wrote his famously caustic screed against religion, "God is Not Great." Perhaps I never cared much to learn why he thought Gandhi a "naked Hindu fundmantalist," Mother Teresa a "thieving Albanian dwarf," and Henry Kissinger "a thug and a crook and a liar and a pseudo-intellectual and a murderer."

But I think it says something about Hitchens and his staggeringly prolific output that even people with only limited exposure to him and his work not only knew of him but were moved by him enough to admire him, often just from watching an occasional YouTube clip of an interview or a debate.

Consider: Hitchens was a writer and a public intellectual in an age when people would rather watch X-Factor or the latest Kardashian shenanigans than read a book or a newspaper. The Facebook- and Twitter-worlds were aflutter with the news of his death, even though he was not a pop-culture celebrity or a technological innovator. (Think Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs.) His views were often nuanced and complex, and he held them on such a breathtaking array of topics, some of which few of us can claim even passing knowledge on let alone expertise. He was a literary critic, a cultural critic, a political analyst, broadly erudite in many areas of science, art, and philosophy, a masterful essayist and rhetorician, and, lest we forget, a connoisseur of fine spirits. He was also something of an expert on how to make the perfect glass of English tea. And all of these were areas he wrote and spoke about, and somehow, millions of people came to admire—even love—him for it. Probably more than any other individual of our age, he made it sexy to be an intellectual.

As for myself, there was something about him—beyond his particular views, beyond his genius as a wordsmith, beyond even the cultural elitism hinted at in his classic Oxford accent—that I found irresistible, and I sometimes wondered what precisely it was. It's hard for me to pinpoint it even now, although ironically, one of the things I once found particularly delightful about him, he himself was unable to explain. It was at the end of the documentary film "Collision," which documents a series of debates between Hitchens and Evangelical theologian Douglas Wilson, where Hitchens says one of the most astonishing things I've heard from him:

If I could convince everyone in the world to be a non-believer, and suppose I've really done brilliantly, and there's only one [person] left—one more and then it'd be done, there'd be no more religion in the world, no more deism or theism—I wouldn't do it.

And [Richard] Dawkins said, "What do you mean you wouldn't do it?!"

And I said, "I don't quite know why. I wouldn't do it." 

It's not just because there'd be nothing left to argue with and no one left to argue with. It's not just that. Though it would be that [too].

Somehow, if I could drive it out of the world—I wouldn't.

And the incredulity with which [Dawkins] looked at me, stays with me still, I've got to say.

This is something I've often thought myself—to the bafflement of some of my friends—and I was stunned to hear Hitchens say it. I, of course, don't know Hitchens's reasons for having felt that way, and I'm not sure I understand why I feel that way myself. Perhaps it's not genuine religion that Hitchens would want to preserve in that last religious specimen, but a certain innocence and passion that—when stripped of its ability to inspire evil—has a kind of fantastical quality, a fairytale of sorts, that is at once beautiful and silly and delightful and strangely endearing to the playful and childish within each us.

I've often thought there was something paradoxical about Hitchens, a profoundly cerebral person with a touchingly sentimental side, an abrasive personality who could be surprisingly gracious, an astounding intellect who was also, in some ways, a romantic—not only with women, although it is said that he was that too, but also towards humanity as a whole.

Having said all this, I'll admit there's something slightly discomfiting in my own gushing adoration of a man I didn't know, and who, as is well known, had plenty of faults. He often came off as mean-spirited. His acerbic wit was appreciated by his many admirers, but his detractors sometimes found him an intellectual bully. He was an unapologetic drunk, and he cared not a wit who knew it—or if it was evident in his public appearances. He often appeared slovenly. While capable of boyish self-effacement, he could be venomous about his opponents, sometimes to a degree that seemed disproportionate to their sins. I also am a bit wary of those quick to emulate him. Hitchens' lack of humility regarding his own views was perhaps justified in a man of such prodigious talent and clarity of thinking, but most of us would be well advised to be a bit more circumspect about things we're so certain about or we might just miss a valid but as-yet-unconsidered perspective.

Hitchens too, of course, changed his views on many issues over time—most notably his transfomation from left-wing socialist to, well, a rather hard to define pendulum of positions that keep him out of any neat political label — but the point is that Hitchens too was not infallible, even by his own admission.

 And perhaps that, in part, is what makes him so great.

Taking Stock: Part 1

For some time now, I've wanted to update this blog with links to my most recent articles, both on Unpious.com and elsewhere, but shit tends to get in the way and I keep putting it off. But taking stock of one's accomplishments is always a good thing; no time like the present, and all that -- especially if the present is one of those days with a long To-Do list, with several articles facing deadlines and emails to catch up on and super drafty windows to seal before our rather chilly climes catch us unawares with a New York freeze. But when the list is already long, adding just one more task doesn't seem all that intimidating.

This will be a two-part post. The first (this one) will list a batch of Unpious essays that I haven't yet posted to this blog, since sometime during the spring of last year. The second part will be a list of essays published elsewhere.

My most recent Unpious articles:

David Assaf's excellent work, "Ne'echaz Basvach," had long fascinated me, and finally I got to write a review. (The book is also available in English as "Untold Tales of the Hasidim.") Being a former Skver Hasid, I found the chapters on Chernobyl, Tolna, Skver, and Breslov to be the most fascinating, and I focused my review primarily on those chapters. In particular, the story of Yitzchok Nachum Twerski was both fascinating and touching; an early 19th-century kindred spirit of sorts, a Chasid (and son of a prominent rebbe, no less) who felt trapped in his world, and penned a poignant and eloquent manifesto describing his nightmarish experience of living a double life.

Check out the full review here: Thorns and Roses: Hasidic historiography, inter-sectarian violence, the struggle against Breslov, and the case of Yitzchak Nachum Twerski.


Like many writers, I've occasionally tried my hand at poetry, and like many writers, quickly determined that I'd better keep my day job before declaring myself the Rebel Bard of Borough Park. However, when Footsteps held an event for which they asked for people to read some of their written work, I decided to take on the challenge and write a piece of "Spoken Word Art." The event was called for 7 pm. I sat down at 3 pm at a Starbucks in Carroll Gardens, paced the sidewalk outside while I went through an entire pack of Marlboro Lights, and by 6 o'clock I had this piece. It was a respectable effort, I think, but I don't think I'd ever try something like this again. Way too much much brain-squeezing and too little juice for it to be worth the effort. It was fun reading it at the event, though, and it got a good smattering of applause. Although, truth be told, my greatest disappointment was not mastering the passionate air-chopping of performers at the Nuyorican. There's always a future life as a gangsta rapper.

Read it here: Success: An O-D-E to the O-T-D.


Films about Chasidim are always frustrating to watch, with few exceptions. (With Luzer Twersky putting out his consulting services though, hopefully that will change.) And Holy Rollers, the drama/thriller about Hasid-turned-drug-dealer was no exception. Bad accents, bad costumes, bad cliches, bad stereotypes. All around very disappointing.

Read it here: Peddlers of Ecstasy.


This is a piece about which I can say a lot, but I'm going to choose not to. I'll only say, it was an experiment, and, by my own standards, an OK one. Some people don't care for "meta" stuff, and I can't say I always do. But in this case, well, it was easier to write than the actual novel it references. So there. Plus, experiements are always fun, especially for the experimenter, if not always for the beholder.

Read it here: Unpublished Memoir, by Bigtha


Footsteps is, in my view, a phenomenally important organization. (Full disclosure: I've recently joined its Board of Directors.) And one of the things that make it as phenomenal as it is, is the work of its program director, Michael Jenkins. On a personal level, Michael has been a tremendous source of support and inspiration in so many ways, which was why I was particularly pleased when he agreed to this extensive interview about his work at Footsteps.

Read the full interview here: Interview with Michael Jenkins.


Ah, the scandal of scandals. After four decades of sex-segregated bus service on the B110 "Boro Park-Williamsburg" line, New Yorkers were shocked to find out about it. Which, to me, was all kinds of ludicrous, not because it isn't an important issue, but because New Yorkers, in my opinion, care about it for the wrong reasons.

Read more about it here: Sex-Segregated Buses


Part 2 coming soon....

The Trapped Chasid

For those of you who haven’t seen it, I recently published an essay in Brooklyn Rail titled “A Person of Prominence.” Check it out if you haven’t yet.

The comments I received from friends were overwhelmingly positive, but some people also expressed a degree of sadness from reading it, and I thought a few words were in order to address that.

I’ll admit I had some reservations writing it, and they were mainly for two reasons: a)The man was really a sweet Chasid, who of course saw his actions as entirely normal. The tone of the article is one of mild scorn, and I wondered whether it was fair to be so flippant. Perhaps, I wondered, I would do better to write a more serious piece to reflect on what is a truly pathetic situation. b) It reinforces the stereotype of Chasidim as awkward and sex-crazed, a stereotype that is perhaps unfair to the many – the majority, perhaps – who aren’t like that.

The second issue I quickly dispensed with. This is a story of a single encounter, and if there’s a perception out there that it somehow reflects on all Chasidim, well, it’s up to Chasidim to change that, not to me.

The first issue, however, did niggle at my brain for a while, and at one point I even considered shelving the piece. The man certainly deserves more sympathy than this piece affords him. Ultimately I decided to publish it because, well, it’s a good story. The encounter was so richly bizarre that I almost couldn’t help it.

But it’s true, at heart there’s a troubling element that deserves more discussion: a man with the bulk of his years past him finds himself trapped in a life he dislikes, yearning for experiences that most other people take for granted. And he feels there’s little he can do about it.

It is here that the main issue presents itself, an issue I feel quite strongly about. The Chasidic world takes for granted that individuals are not in charge of their own destiny, that their choices often have too broad an impact, and an individual has no right to choose a path for him- or herself that will affect the people around him negatively.

Even if the underlying sentiment has some validity, I don’t believe it does in the case of leaving the Chasidic world. The negative impact, while triggered by the action of one individual, is only there because of endemic societal attitudes. It isn’t the individual choice that will affect the shidduchim of one’s children, it is the choice of the society that will choose to shun them. It isn’t the individual who will choose to cut off from his family, friends, and community; it is the choice of the family, friends, and community to disavow the individual who steps outside of communal norms.

Furthermore, the self-righteousness that the Chasidic community has so prodigiously mastered allows them not only to engage in the truly callous act of breaking up families and relationships but also to turn the blame around, allowing themselves no reflection about the human cost – both to the one who leaves and the ones left behind – for which the society is more than partly responsible.

To say that I don’t sympathize with the plight of the Chasid in my story would be entirely incorrect. I do, tremendously. Not to do so would be to pre-judge his actions without truly knowing his situation, and I can’t possibly reflect on one individual’s circumstances and determine his possibilities. But as a matter of general principle, I believe a person in his situation should do everything possible to leave the community. If such a person lacks the resolve to follow through on his own yearnings for a different life, he or she is at least partially complicit in perpetuating the injustice meted out by a deeply misguided community.

Dangling Thoughts

If there’s one thing I've lost over my years of blogging, it is a degree of honesty, the ability to speak and write with forthrightness about events in my life, without pretension, without seeking to cover up as much as I exposed. Perhaps it’s a natural result of the shift from anonymity to openness. Even before I openly declared my identity, I was slowly letting friends and acquaintances know about my blog. As several writers commented when I “came out” -- some in veiled hints and some more overtly -- they’d known my identity for quite some time. The result was a more guarded approach, carefully scrutinizing sentences and paragraphs for sentiments I thought were best kept private.

There’s another reason I've become more cautious in my writings: the ever-present need to present a face of one who has gone “off the derech” and remained materially and emotionally stable, “well-adjusted,” to use a term I hear bandied about a lot. I believed that the stereotype of the OTD suffering from a smorgasbord of mental ailments and scars of a deeply troubled past must be proven wrong. That the common perception about those who leave family and community and then find themselves lost, drifting through a world of impossible adjustments, cannot, must not, be admitted to if we believe that despite the difficulties it is the correct, the honorable, the only true path.

But if the stereotype is wrong, it isn’t wrong in my case. Openly admitting unhappiness often requires a degree of introspection that many of us are incapable of, either constitutionally or simply due to the unpleasantness of the inevitable reactions. It also goes against the cultural zeitgeist of keeping our emotional vulnerabilities well-hidden – and if that’s true in general, it is particularly true for men. It is even more difficult in my present case, not least because it serves as a red herring to those who think that the realities of leaving the ultra-religious world are in any way a reflection of the truths or untruths of their claims, and of the inherent qualities of their own lifestyle.

Ever since I’ve left the Hasidic world, people have been asking, “Are you happier now?” For quite some time I was happier, and being able to say so was easy. Several years later, when due to a confluence of events I could no longer say so without reflection, my responses became more tentative, and sometimes evasive. “How do we judge happiness?” I would ask.  I was careful to remark that even if I wasn’t happy, it is a mere accident, the result of unfortunate events that I couldn’t possibly foresee: the loss of  a comfy job of nine years, exorbitant legal fees while fighting to maintain contact with my children, a downturn in the housing market that led to a loss of a substantial amount of equity and every cent I had in savings, and the wily manipulation of former friends and relatives that led to the near-complete alienation from my children. To put it succinctly, my troubles are due to the combined machinations of a tanking economy and a vindictive ex-spouse – both well-documented as formidable forces of nature.

These days I don’t think of my children that much. When friends ask about my relationship with them and I tell them it is pretty much non-existent, they tsk-tsk, and I say, “It is what it is.” Gone are the days when I would lay awake nights and throw things at the walls of my apartment with a rage I was unable to silence.  Gone are the days when my anguish led me to near-suicidal despair, which led in turn to a brief stint imagining myself as Jack Nicholson’s character in “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.” But these things have a way of leaving deep scars, and even if in some ways I’ve moved on, there are moments – particularly when Mr. Johnny Walker and his beloved companion, the Grey Goose, offer their assistance – I find myself back in a place of overwhelming, um, reflection...

If I were still writing anonymously, I would’ve written freely about these events as they happened, rife as they are with nuggets of pathos that would probably make for good reading, at least of the easy tear-jerking sort. Instead, I thought of ways to sugar-coat my experiences so that readers would find them more, shall I say, palatable.

Somewhere on my hard drive lie several drafts of unfinished essays about events over the past few years. Believing that readers would find it difficult to read unadulterated accounts that trigger raw emotions, I tried to do funny, to find the humor in the tragic. Sarah Silverman and Shalom Auslander have done it successfully with the Holocaust: (Silverman to her mathematically challenged niece: “It was not sixty million. That would’ve been unforgivable.” Auslander: “Never again, said my teacher. Again, he meant to say.”) But writing with humor about tragic events of the past (which, of course, neither Silverman nor Auslander experienced themselves) is different from writing about painful experiences that are hardly over. Again and again, I tried to find an angle, a way of softening the rawness of the deep pain I felt. And each time I’d slap down my laptop screen in disgust. Fuck this, I’d say, and force away the tears that threatened menacingly to disrupt the emotional equilibrium I tried so hard to maintain. I had parties to attend, and people to meet, and jokes to laugh at. Sad thoughts would do me no good.

Instead I grew angry. The affection I once felt for the Hasidic world – despite all my disagreements with the lifestyle and the dogmas on which it is based – made way for rage and disgust. Trying to verbalize it to a friend, I told him that if I’d be lying on the ground bloodied and mangled from a bad car accident, I’d refuse the services of Hatzolah. “Well, when you’ll be in that situation, you’ll think differently.” He was right, of course, but that’s beside the point. I simply couldn’t imagine accepting help from a community that prides itself for its kindness and generosity but, at the same time, is responsible for astonishing acts of callousness. But, of course, my friend didn’t get the point, which is wont to happen even with the most well-intentioned listener. And that is the most frustrating of all. Even if I can find the courage to write of those things I feel deeply, speaking of them is another matter. A pity party in the comments section of a blog is something one can choose – even if it comes with difficulty – to ignore. To see the faces of friends at a loss about how to respond to outbursts of emotion is entirely different.

If this were a properly written essay, I’d wrap it up nicely, finish with a bang, give the reader what is referred to in publishing as “the takeaway.” I won’t do that here. It’s also the reason I post it not on Unpious.com but on this blog, which, truth be told, I’ve been trying to decide what to do with. And now, true to my words, I leave you with no more than this dangling thought…

Cracking Our Nuts

Mostly impertinent thoughts on the Ground Zero mosque, the Koran burning, religious tolerance, and kowtowing to religious nuts.

The world has a lot of nutty people, but events over the past few weeks might illuminate just how nutty. The first nuts were the Islamophobes against the proposed Islamic center a few blocks from Ground Zero. Then came the Koran-burning nuts. Then came the nuts from the Islamic world who believe that burning a book, sacred as it might be, is cause for global mayhem.

So now the world is in uproar over this nuttiness frenzy, while some of us are left scratching our heads trying to determine who is nuttiest of all, which nuts to appease, and which nuts might be easiest to crack.

Let’s get a few things straight: There is no question here of legal rights. Talk of constitutionally sanctioned freedoms—the freedom to build a house of worship, the freedom to burn books, the freedom to oppose either of the above—is besides the point.

Muslims have the unimpeachable right to build a mosque, community center, gym, Islam-themed strip-joint, Kuran publishing house, or a Hooters-style restaurant with provocative waitresses in form-fitting burkas anywhere in America. Not only can they build it two blocks from Ground Zero, but, as far as the law is concerned, even within the soon-to-be constructed Ground Zero plaza itself. (Or at least—with respect to a strip joint—if it abides by local statutes of appropriate distance from schools, places of worship, and the like.)

Pastor Terry Jones too has the unimpeachable right to burn Korans. I too have the right to—again, subject to local statutes such as fire codes—stage a blazing conflagration of bibles, Talmuds, statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and images of Reb Shayaleh Kerestirer along with dead mice in their traps.

Protestors too have the right to demonstrate against both the Islamic center at ground zero or the Koran burning.

Our freedoms are clear and well established. The issue, then, is not on of constitutional rights, but of coming to terms with the constitutional principles underlying these rights, and the degree to which we should embrace those principles where an issue’s legality is not in question. This is where our personal and subjective sensibilities come in, and they’re worth examining.

Our legal principles are not created in a vacuum. The framers of our constitution operated on the conviction that these principles carried a primacy that was worth codifying in legal statutes as nearly inviolable. Our acceptance of these legal principles should guide us, not only as to the legality of certain matters, but also as to their spirit. If our constitution grants us certain freedoms, and if we believe in those freedoms, we should incorporate those principles into our mindsets with the same revolutionary thinking of our revolutionary forebears. Granted, we don’t know whether our founding fathers would’ve been enamored with Islam per se (although we have no reason to believe that they wouldn’t have), but the principles they established transcend any particular issue.

It is a sad day in America when xenophobia takes hold, when the public becomes so detached from the spirit of religious freedom that it becomes an almost arbitrary matter of which religious beliefs to tolerate and which to excoriate. It is a sad day in America when ignorance takes hold and lies and half-truths are spread about millions of people and their beliefs; when, in the service of demagoguery, talking heads will seek to perpetuate populist drivel and nonsensical judgments about followers of one of the world’s major religions due to an inability to discern nuance in the various shades and colors of those who cling to that religion.

When the issue of the ground-zero mosque was first raised, I was appalled at the rhetoric of those opposed. A part of me (the part that isn’t lazy or cynical or pessimistic about the ability to change minds) wanted to organize a “We are all Muslims” campaign in response. What better way to demonstrate our dedication to the principles on which our democracy is built? A “We are all Muslims” campaign would demonstrate that we too, like those who responded after 9/11 with “We are all Americans,” possess in our hearts the ability to look past stereotypes, to honor peace-loving people, and to stand up for those who are unfairly demonized.

The Koran-burning in Florida, however, raises a new issue. While many of us were rightfully horrified at this blatant attempt to unnecessarily provoke, to stir up conflict and hate, to inflict damage on already-strained relations between Muslims and the West, it was also disturbing to see the fear in our responses. President Obama said that the Koran burning has the potential to cause “profound damage” to U.S. interests abroad, a not-so-veiled concern for a violent Muslim response. General David Petraeus expressed fear that the event can put U.S. troops in danger. Statements from British, German, and Canadian officials echoed the American ones: the Koran burning might trigger violence against us. The violent protests in Kabul earlier this week show that the fear isn’t overstated.

It all seems calculated to avoid a redux of the Danish cartoons incident. Muslims around the world, we seem to be saying, will rise up against us if we offend them. And if our response is primarily motivated by that fear—and I suspect it is—it is worrying. As morally outraged as we might be over a senseless insult to Muslims, we should be more concerned about allowing ourselves to be intimidated by threats of violence. Muslims in the developing world have a serious problem with religious tolerance. The problem may not be ours to fix; it is a problem their own societies need to address. But it is worrying when we kowtow to Muslim sensibilities because we fear their outrage rather than because we respect their faith.

After the Danish cartoon brouhaha, a Muslim leader commented on a BBC talk show, “We love the prophet Mohammed more than we love our own children.” Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said of the proposed Koran burning: “That is the most heinous crime and action, it's unthinkable.” When Muslims express that kind of fanatical outrage at deeds that cause no bodily harm to anyone, we need to evaluate how much respect such fanaticism deserves. If we apply our moral outrage equally, we’d refrain from voicing an irreverent word against any religion, religious figure, or religious object. Ever. Our sensibilities don’t go that far though. An American (at least a secular one) might employ a vulgarity such as “Jesus Fucking Christ” without a second thought. If it were up to us, we’d see little wrong with a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed. 

Our respect for other religions, therefore, must come on our own terms, not on those imposed on us by fanatics. It is admirable to respect religious sensibilities, to avoid gratuitously offending the beliefs of others, to seek harmony among people of all faiths and cultures. But to do so out of fear, out of respect for sensibilities that we find offensive (Loving the prophet Mohammed more than your children? Really? Burning a Koran is the most heinous crime? Worse than honor killings? Worse than genital mutilation? Worse than stoning an adultress? Suicide bombings? Airplane hijackings? Beheadings of Western journalists?) is to capitulate to religious fanaticism, against which we should take a stand at least as strongly as that of opposing the gratuitous insult to religion.

Sermon on the Hotline

Yoshke, Shimon, and Avremel discuss their latest outreach efforts.

Yoshke sat in the swivel chair in his office, and stared at his computer screen. He was thinking about this week’s hotline recording, and he did his best thinking while looking at his screensaver. Five shiny golden brown challahs and two slices of gefilte fish floated across the screen in random patterns for a few seconds. Then the screen began to fill with more challahs and more fish of all sorts: large braided egg challahs, unbraided water challahs with large crusty slits across the top, small bilkelech, along with slices of carp, white fish, salmon, and for an added touch, a few bowls of chrain. The gefilte slices each had a perfect orange carrot slice on top. The carrot was the graphic artist’s idea, but the chrain was Yoshke’s.

Read more at Unpious.com.

Leave No Trace

A day with my son at Harriman State Park.

Rievi and I sit on rocks near the shallow stream, the water cascading over tangles of rocks, branches, and fallen tree trunks, seeking its way, as water always does, to the lowest point. We eat the food we brought along. I take a hotdog and a container of sautéed liver from my black plastic bag, which I got at Mechel’s Takeout on Route 59. Rievi has a sandwich his mother packed for him and a water bottle.

Read more at Unpious.com.

Are Chasidim Missing Out on Good Sex?

Vei Zmeer, in an article on Unpious.com, laments the missed sexual opportunities of the Chasid. In a counterpoint article, I posted that sex isn't the be all and end all of human experience, and that to take issue with the sexual repression in the Chasidic world misses a wider point.

The secular world allows for romantic encounters and passionate entanglements might be denied to those in the Chasidic world. Secular adolescents and young adults have sexual opportunities that, to a Chasid, world hardly enter the realm of fantasy. If you’re lucky enough to be secular, you might get luckier and get a blow job on the school bus from your cute sixth-grade classmate in pigtails. But then again, if luck is in your stars you might be born to a filthy rich head of a multi-national conglomerate and have no lack of earthly pleasures. You, my friend, just happen to be unlucky. Being unlucky isn’t pleasant, but human lives are profoundly determined by the forces of nature’s indifference. One can’t blame any particular person or society for being dealt a bad deck of cards. You’re not the offspring of a filthy rich daddy, and you weren’t born into a society where carnal pleasures are to be had at every turn. Deal with it.

Read more at Unpious.com.

Blogging in Anonymity: A thing of the past

Sometimes it is time to say Goodbye. Well, not quite goodbye, but goodbye to an old and cherished moniker: Hasidic Rebel. Well, it isn't quite goodbye to the moniker as a whole, but to its service as a convenient mask, affording me the possibility of writing anonymously for so many years.

The following essay is an overview of anonymous and pseudonymous writing in the Chasidic world, its prevalence along with some of the reasons, and finally, a long withheld revelation.

In June of 2003, I met with a writer for The Village Voice in a kosher café in Midtown Manhattan. Over a diet coke, with the writer’s recorder on the table between us, I spoke about my blog, my views on religion, and Chasidic society. I’d been hesitant, apprehensive about the inevitable publicity following an interview with a major publication. But I’ll be honest: there was something enticing about gaining that kind of publicity. A blog isn’t a personal diary; it’s meant for readers, and increased readership serves a blog’s raison d’etre. But I knew there was a degree of risk involved. Then again, there was risk involved with blogging to begin with; it didn’t stop me from blogging, and increased exposure would serve whatever purpose I had for the endeavor.

The Voice published their article several weeks later, and the ensuing reaction was somewhat predictable – although its leap from the theoretical to the actual gave me a reality-check. With increased readership came increased hostility and outrage. I was accused of selling insider secrets, airing our dirty laundry, and being a traitor to my people. “We must find out who Hasidic Rebel is and where he lives and hold a not-so-peaceful demonstration,” one person wrote on an online Yiddish forum.

Read the rest at Unpious.com.

 

Diary of an Unpious Editor

Running an online journal can be frustrating and tiresome. It can sometimes feel like a full time job without the benefit of pay. But it has its rewarding moments too, of course. Here's a light-hearted presentation on the inside story of running Unpious.com:

– I’m not looking to publish on blogs, he says.

– It’s not a blog, I say, it’s an online journal.

– Whatever, he says. It’s not the kind of thing I’m looking for. I mean, no offense, I think what you’re doing is great, don’t get me wrong, it’s really amazing what you’ve managed to do, and, you know, keep it going, really. Some of it, I mean, not everything, but some of it is really good.

– Well, yeah, it takes a lot of hard work.

– I’m sure it does, I’m sure it does. And you should keep it up.

– So how about submitting something? I mean, you’re a writer, you know. And this can get you a foot in the door. You can have it in your bio: Published on Unpious.

– Yeah, I know, I know. But it’s not the kind of platform I’m looking for, you understand?

I understand.

Read the rest at Unpious.

 

Secular Education in the Chasidic World

The state of secular education in the Chasidic world has long been considered severely lacking. Along with denial of addiction and mental illness, sweeping sexual abuse under the rug, and deep-seated ethnocentrism, it is perhaps one of the greatest problems in the Chasidic world. What are its causes and can something be done about it?

When I was a toddler, even before my mother started curling my little payess around her finger and brushing it with a bit of sugar-water, she taught me the English alphabet (after I had mastered the Alef Beis, of course). By the time I was enrolled in pre-school I knew that c-a-t spells cat. And while religious studies were always the priority, my parents, bless their souls, always encouraged my voracious reading habits. Mostly those consisted of Yiddish books, and a smattering of material from Artscroll, Feldheim, and their offshoots, but here and there I’d chance upon a secular title, and they wouldn’t make much of it.

Read the rest at Unpious.com.

 

Crossing Cultures

I’ve often felt that the transition from a Hasidic lifestyle to a secular one is very much like moving to a foreign country, only more so. While globalization has made the world a smaller place, with McDonald’s and Coca Cola making way for Holywood films, pop music, and National Idol competitions, the Chasidic and the secular worlds have even less to bridge the wide cultural gap.

A recent lunch with an old online acquaintance reminded me of my own tentative steps into this new and foreign culture and the sometimes frustrating attempts to understand and partake in it.

He was ok with non-kosher, he said, which took me by surprise. I have many friends who play the game well, living the lifestyle without believing in it. But his wool talis katan fluttering beneath his open vest, clean and well-pressed though it was, would’ve fooled even me.

He didn’t know how to order from a menu, how to ask for a check, that a gratuity was pretty much required. But he was far from a Forrest Gump-like dunce. His comments on my blog posts were thoughtful and well-written. He could hold his own on many an intellectual topic. His awareness of the contemporary world was fairly advanced. But it was all theoretical, achieved from within the confining space of the shtetl-like community he came from.

Read the rest at Unpious.com.

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Mob Insanity

I’ve often wondered about the ability of charismatic figures to whip a mob into a frenzy, able to spur them on to acts of genuine insanity. Adolf Hitler, of course, is the prime example. But I’ve seen it – of course, without the murderous intentions (and you’re always on shaky ground when making Nazi analogies, requiring special caution around the literal-minded) – among my very own, and have experienced times where I too was swept up in the fiery rages of a mob gone insane.

Such an event took on special poignancy for me when the victim of a crazed mob—a mob of which I was a willing and enthusiastic participant—chose to bear no grudge and to this day still regards me as a friend.

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 themikveh 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.

Read the rest at Unpious.com

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