Re: [Marxism] Breaking with sectarianism

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thomas Campbell wrote:
> Pearl Gluck's 2003 documentary "The Divan" also addresses this issue,
> albeit in a more entertaining way and via a long hilarious detour to
> Eastern Europe.
> 
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303917/
> http://www.haro-online.com/movies/divan.html
> 
> Have you seen this film, Louis?
> 

I did see it but I never reviewed it. But the director does get a 
mention in this piece:

The Hasidim

Last night PBS aired an extraordinary documentary titled "A Life Apart: 
Hasidism in America." Most people are familiar with Hasidim as the 
"ultra-orthodox" in Israel. On TV news, you usually see the men in their 
long black coats, beards and sidecurls on the front lines of some 
demonstration for expansion into Palestinian land. The other major 
concentration of Hasidim is here in the tristate area around New York 
City, where some 150 to 200,000 live, mostly in Brooklyn.

They came to New York immediately after WWII and decided to replicate 
their communities in Brooklyn. There are numerous Hasidic sects, all 
named after the Eastern European towns that they came from. In these 
towns the Hasids were grouped around a charismatic rabbi. The largest 
sect is the Satmar Hasids from Hungary, who tend to be critical of 
Zionism since the sect believes that Jews can only have a state when the 
messiah comes. The most well known sect is the Lubavitcher Hasidim who 
were led by Rabbi Schneerson, whose caravan included a car that 
accidentally ran down a young black boy. This, combined with rivalry in 
the neighborhood over scarce housing, led to violent clashes with blacks 
and the murder of rabbinical student Yankel Rosenblum. The aftermath led 
to introspective discussions about blacks and Jews, such as the kind 
found in book co-edited by Paul Berman and Cornel West.

Ilan Halevi has written an authoritative Marxist history of the Jews 
(Zed Books). His discussion of the Hasidic movement places it in the 
context of economic and social dislocations of 19th century Europe:

"There is one area where Hasidism not only did not challenge orthodoxy, 
but outbid the rabbinical discourse: the crucial area of the cleavage 
Jews and non-Jews. The eschatological justification of difference as 
essential. Difference was one of the constantly recurring themes of 
rabbinical Judaism: Separation (havdalah) was a key concept. God 
separated Israel from among the Nations and this extraction was of an 
ontological nature:

"'Like day from night, like the sacred from the profane.' Talmudic law 
pushed the horror of the mixing of species to the prohibiting any 
grafting of vegetable species. Kabbalistic literature was full of such 
expressions of national pride and messianic particularism. But the 
intellectual practice of the Mediterranean Kabbala could, through 
exegesis, lead to heretical questionings of this basic distinction, 
which cannot simply be reduced to the divine guarantee of the ethnic 
superiority chosen group. The rabbinical caste, indeed, was dependent on 
it for relations with the princely rulers and the stratum of 
intermediaries. The weight of this dual relationship tempered the 
cosmological tribalism of the Law. It had even, under the tolerant Islam 
of the Abbassids, allowed this tribalism to harmonize its language with 
the surrounding civilization, which was itself fascinated by Greek Reason."

"Nothing like this, no modification of rabbinical ethnicism was at work 
in universe of the Hasidim: the fact was that the persecution of the 
community was occurring in conditions that were unique in the history of 
this Law. The de facto separation of the Shtetl from the surrounding 
society, a separation that was not only religious and social, but 
linguistic and spatial, found in this the theological weapons it needed 
to assert itself. While postponing to an indefinite future the hopes for 
a political messiah, Hasidism also expressed, by its outright denial of 
time and place, the historical subjectivism of the Shtetl which could 
later fuel the growth of Jewish nationalism.

"The internal crisis of the Shtetl, whose roots are to be found in the 
crisis of Polish feudalism, was exacerbated and radically aggravated. 
The domain of Polish sovereignty was shrinking rapidly. A kingdom that 
had stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea grew smaller and smaller 
as around it tsarist Russia, the Hapsburg empire and the German states 
grew larger and larger. The Polish question became the European question 
and centuries-old Polish Jewry saw its territory carved up among several 
states Austria, which took Galicia, lightened the conditions of Jews 
there: but Russia, having seized the Ukraine and Byelorussia, oppressed 
them there, said Lenin, 'more harshly than the Negroes'. The Napoleonic 
conquest, short as it may have been, precipitated the disintegration, 
inducing a general upheaval in the empires of the centre and east. 
Following the French occupation, the whole map of the region was 
transformed. The new frontier of Austria and Russia, which shared the 
whole of what remained of Poland in 1815, cut the Ashkenazi world in 
two, divided the dynasties of Hasidic rabbis, and determined new 
sub-problematics. The sociological unity of Ashkenazi Judaism was 
beginning to fracture."

These upheavals deepened in the 20th century and the Hasidic population 
found itself in Hitler's concentration camps, where they died alongside 
their secular relatives. After WWII came to an end, they relocated to 
America, led by their Rabbis. When they came here, not only were they in 
a state of shock but were not sure how they would relate to American 
society.

At first they did not adopt the familiar Hasidic garb. The men were 
clean shaven and both men and women wore normal clothing. The only thing 
that made them stand out were their tattoos, which they received in 
concentration camps. I recall seeing them up in the Catskill Mountains 
in the early '50s. The assimilated Jews referred to them as "the 
refugees." I remember how shocking the tattoos seemed to me at the time. 
No Jew was supposed to get a tattoo because it meant that you couldn't 
be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Jewish religious codes dictated that you 
had to leave the world in the same way that you came into it. The only 
tattooed Jews I knew were merchant marines who got them when they were 
on a drunken binge in some port.

Eventually the Hasidic leaders made an interesting decision which goes 
against the grain of the American melting pot. They decided to recreate 
the Hasidic world in urban New York. During the 1950s, when there was 
enormous pressure to assimilate, when xenophobia was at an all-time high 
under the auspices of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and 
when anti-Semitism was expressed openly around the Rosenbergs trial, the 
Hasidim made the decision to reject American culture and society. They 
would create an enclave of everything that was "non-American" within the 
American heartland.

Not only did they decide to look non-American, they decided to reject 
the temptations of American success. Hasidic youth were directed not to 
go to college, since worldly temptations existed there. Also, during a 
time of enormous popularity for television and movies, they rejected 
both as impious. Most Hasidic families are tightly constrained by 
economic duress. When you have 10 to 12 children--a typical family 
size--and the breadwinner is a truck-driver or clerk in a Hasidic-owned 
business, food and lodging expenses alone are onerous.

I have only gotten to know one Hasidic person in my life, and then only 
on a casual basis. This was Joe, a free-lance computer programmer I used 
to work with at Metropolitan Life. He had 9 kids and lived in a housing 
project. He said that it was extremely rare to see a Hasidic computer 
programmer like him because you generally needed a college education. He 
got into the field when this wasn't necessary. He was a very likable guy 
with a sense of humor. He made no attempt to proselytize me. If 
anything, I was more of a nuisance to fellow employees because of my 
Trotskyist politics.

Turning to the documentary itself, there is nothing remarkable about it 
except for the window it opens onto a very insular world. Hasids are as 
removed from other Jews like me as they are from Christians. I have 
never been in one of their households, so it was fascinating to see them 
dining, praying, playing with children, etc. One of the Hasidim, a 
jovial fishmonger, explains why the camera-shy group decided to 
cooperate with the two Jewish but non-Hasidic film-makers. He relates a 
story told by one of their most famous rabbis. The rabbi was approached 
by a photographer who wanted to take his picture. The rabbi, as 
expected, said no. That was unholy. The photographer said that he was a 
poor Jew and that if he had the photo he could sell it for a nickel and 
make a living. Hearing that, the rabbi agreed because "it was good for a 
fellow Jew."

(In general, by the way, Hasidic wisdom exists in their story telling. 
The original illiterate followers of the Hasidic rabbis in Europe relied 
on this medium to understand life and religion.)

The film has been described as a "recruiting" tool for their movement 
since the Hasids come across as a genuinely blissful group. They love 
their rabbis, they love their children and nobody gets divorced. Just to 
provide some balance, the film grapples with the problem of the 
subordination of women. Interviewee Pearl Gluck explains that she wanted 
more out of life than being a wife and mother. Pearl is studying film at 
NYU now and is a remarkable young woman. I reported on her 
work-in-progress "The Divan" a couple of months ago, which is about the 
effort of Hasidim in Brooklyn to track down a divan used by their chief 
rabbi in Europe.

The Hasidim are a complex subject. On one hand they evoke admiration for 
their steadfast refusal to blend in. It was this stubborn 
"un-Americanism" that appealed to Philip Roth. One of the most memorable 
stories in "Goodbye Columbus" is about the resistance of assimilated 
Jews in a suburban town to the presence of a Hasidic yeshiva. The main 
character goes through an identity crisis/nervous breakdown in the 
course of the fight and decides to don a Hasidic black robe and parade 
through the town's main street to everybody's shock.

On the other hand, their exclusionism when mixed with power politics can 
lead to some highly toxic chauvinism. The clashes with blacks in 
Brooklyn and with Palestinians in the Mideast indicate how the 
historical pariah and underdog can become the oppressor given sufficient 
military and economic clout.

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