Members of the Tribe

by Zev Chafets

“Yeah? Reggie who?”

  The New England Chasidic Center, when we reached it, did not look like the site of a dynastic court. It is a simple brick building that contains a synagogue and study hall and, up two flights of stairs, the rebbe’s study. In a large outer office, two modestly dressed secretaries busied themselves with clerical tasks, and a young man with a beard sat typing noiselessly on a personal computer. Through the open door of an adjoining room I caught occasional glimpses of a white-bearded figure who paced back and forth, wrapped in a large white prayer shawl.

  After a few minutes the man, now wearing an old-fashioned black frock coat, came into the waiting room. He exchanged a few words with the secretaries, peered briefly at the computer screen, and walked over to me and introduced himself as Rabbi Horowitz. He was an arresting figure, the very picture of a Chasidic rebbe—high forehead, prominent nose, long white beard, and soft, expressive brown eyes—and he radiated presence.

  The rebbe ushered me into his study, sat at his desk, and motioned me to a chair across from him. He regarded me with a benign stare that I found surprisingly unsettling—for a moment I imagined he was reading my mind. I was impressed, and annoyed with myself for being impressed.

  Twenty years ago, when I first moved to Jerusalem, I had a romantic attraction to Chasidic Jews and the lost world they symbolized. But as their fundamentalist fervor grew, I began to see them as the enemy—people who throw stones at my car on the Sabbath, seek to impose theocratic restraints on my freedom, shirk their duties as citizens, and consider me to be a second-class Jew at best. I came to Boston to see the rebbe out of curiosity; but I never considered the possibility that I might find him impressive.

  My discomfort made me go on the offensive. “I’m writing a book about Jews in America,” I said, “and I’m curious about what you do. Can you really work miracles?”

  The rebbe ignored the unmistakable irony in my voice and gazed at me thoughtfully for a long moment. “I think you have a misconception about the role of a Chasidic rebbe,” he said in a dry, analytical tone. “A person doesn’t feel good in the world if he or she is all alone. That’s why people need a rebbe. A Chasidic rebbe is, in essence, a support system.

  “There is a special relationship between a Chasid and his rebbe. But to be satisfactory it can’t be based on blind obedience. I want my Chasidim to understand me—why I do certain things, the way I see the world—and then to act on that understanding. A Chasid shouldn’t be a robot. His relationship with me, or with any rebbe, should make him more sensitive.”

  “I thought Chasidic rebbes were supposed to be wonder workers, intercede with God, act as an advocate to heaven,” I said.

  The rebbe smiled, recognizing the phrase from his brochure. “The role of a rebbe depends upon the needs of his Chasidim,” he said. “Those who dealt with more ignorant kinds of Jews went in for fairy tales and legends about the rebbe. Others, like the Lubavitcher, became total authority figures for their Chasidim. To a large extent, a rebbe has to be responsive to the needs and limitations of the people he leads.

  “Now in the case of our dynasty, when my father came to Boston he found Chasidim here from various courts. All of them had different ideas about what a rebbe should be. He had to be flexible, appeal to everyone, give each person what he needed. That was my father’s way, and it’s mine.”

  “You mean, if somebody expects miracles, then you perform miracles?” I asked, and this time he sighed. “No, I don’t perform miracles. No Chasidic rebbe can do the supernatural. A good rebbe is like a top doctor, a specialist. If your family doctor needs some help in dealing with a problem, he refers you to an expert. This expert can’t perform miracles, but he can get the most out of his training and knowledge, the most out of the natural. Of course, some experts are quacks,” he added dryly.

  I found his candor disarming. “To be honest, from my perspective as an Israeli, most of them seem like quacks,” I said. “Why are people like the Satmar rebbe so intolerant?”

  “I think you may misunderstand him,” he said. “I was just in Brooklyn for a visit with the Satmar—our families have a special relationship. And believe me, he’s a very fine man. But our world is based on different premises than yours, and it’s not always easy to understand one another.”

  The Bostoner was in a reflective mood that morning, and he turned my interview into a monologue. His topics were seemingly unrelated—the place of women in Judaism, the relationship between faith and science, Massachusetts state politics, town planning in Jerusalem—but somehow he managed to connect them, displaying a subtle intelligence and a surprisingly moderate view of the world.

  I was determined not to be seduced, however. “Let me ask you something, rabbi,” I said. “Are you a Zionist?”

  “A Zionist? Of course I’m a Zionist. I may not agree with every single policy of the Israeli government, but is that a reason to punish Israel?”

  “A lot of Chasidim seem to think so,” I said, and he sighed again. “Look, I have a lot of followers in Har Nof, in Yerushalaim. The neighborhood where they live is ninety-seven percent Orthodox. But the other three percent here have rights, too. So I told my supporters, don’t close the streets to traffic on Shabbes—let those who want to drive, drive. We can make Shabbes here without stopping the traffic.” I noticed that when he said “here,” he meant Jerusalem.

  “You see,” he continued, “ ‘Shabbes’ used to be the most beautiful word in the Jewish vocabulary. And the stone throwers have turned it into a curse, a threat. When a Jew hears the word ‘Shabbes’ he should think of flowers, not stones.”

  “What about here in America?” I asked. “A lot of American Jews don’t even know what the word ‘Shabbes’ means.”

  The rebbe nodded in agreement. “We’ve been doing outreach programs in Boston since 1950. Singing, dancing—you’d think such things are old-fashioned, foreign to American students. But it’s surprising—a lot of assimilated students respond to it very strongly. I think Americans may be missing certain things in life, certain spiritual things. We respect them, even if they’re not religious. We try to understand them, and to remember that it isn’t their fault. They haven’t had a chance to learn.

  “But the problem is, what will keep them ‘yidden’ in the future? Most of the liberal Jews who come to Harvard or MIT don’t have any Yiddishkeit and they don’t want any. The ones who want it will find it, but the majority will marry goyim. It’s happening now. And their children won’t be Jews. We real Jews, with everything we’ve got, can’t hold on to our Judaism here in America; what chance does the child of a mixed marriage have?” He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, but there was real pain in his eyes.

  There was a knock on the door and the rebbe’s secretary came in to remind him that his next appointment was waiting. I looked at my watch and was amazed to see that we had been talking for almost two hours.

  “I’d like to tell you something personal,” I said. “I’m not religious, and I have a pretty cynical view of what Orthodoxy is in Israel. But talking to you makes me almost wish that I had a rebbe.”

  Horowitz smiled gently. “Don’t be so surprised. Everyone needs a rebbe sometimes.”

  “Who’s your rebbe?” I asked, and for the first time in our conversation I had caught him off guard.

  “Good question,” he said in a soft voice. “You know once, in Jerusalem, a man had a problem, and he decided to travel to Poland to consult with a famous rebbe. His friend said, ‘Why leave Jerusalem? After all, here you have the Kotel, the Wailing Wall.’ And the man said, ‘I’m going to Poland because I want a rebbe who can answer back when I talk to him.’

  “You see, my father’s example is always before me. I try to imagine what he would do,” the Bostoner said in a wistful tone. “But I don’t have a rebbe who can answer back.” Suddenly his eyes cleared, and his voice resumed its matter-of-fact tone. “Nu, that’s just the way it is. There are occupational hazards in every profession. Even mine.”

  CHAPTE
R SIX

  OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

  On the door of Cisco’s Restaurant, Bakery and Bar on East 6th Street in Austin, Texas, there is a sign, WE DO NOT HAVE A NO SMOKING SECTION. Cisco’s is the kind of place you’d expect to find Billy Clyde Puckett eating a chicken-fried steak and listening to a jukebox full of Waylon and Willie. Its walls are festooned with photographs of famous sons of the Lone Star State inscribed to Rudy the owner—pictures of Lyndon Johnson and Chill Wills, Tom Landry and Tex Ritter. I took a seat under the portraits, ordered a cup of coffee, and waited for Kinky Friedman to join me for breakfast.

  Fifteen years ago Richard “Kinky” Friedman captured the imagination of country & western fans—and the indignation of the American Jewish establishment—by becoming America’s first (and only) Jewish hillbilly singer. Like black country crooner Charlie Pride, Kinky was a novelty act; but unlike Pride, who performs standard songs without reference to his race, Kinky Friedman wrote and sang Jewish country tunes. At rodeos and sawdust-floored gin mills across rural America, on college campuses and at Manhattan’s Lone Star Café, he and his band, The Texas Jewboys, played his original compositions: “Ride ’em Jewboy” about the Holocaust, “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore,” and my own personal favorite, “We Reserve the Right (to Refuse Services to You).”

  “We Reserve the Right” tells the story of a rebel who isn’t welcome at his local synagogue. “Hear O Israel, yes indeed, my book was backwards, I could not read,” he complains, and the rabbi demands, “Baruch atah adonai, what the hell you doin’ back there, boy?” Finally he gets kicked out and the synagogue fathers explain, “We reserve the right to refuse services to you. Your friends are all on welfare and you call yourself a Jew.”

  The song, like most of Kinky’s songs, is funny. But it is also the best three-minute statement I know concerning the plight of the Jewish misfit in America—someone who wants to be Jewish but can’t fit into the normal Jewish community framework. Mutual friends told me that the song described Kinky himself and, curious to meet a Texas Jewboy, I called him from New York and set up this meeting.

  There was no picture of Kinky on Cisco’s wall, but I recognized him the minute he walked in. He looked like a Jewish country singer—cowboy boots, faded jeans, a worn work shirt under a khaki jacket, and, planted squarely on a mountain of black nappy hair, a Borsolino hat. To complete the ensemble he was smoking a very large, very aromatic Jamaican Royale. Cisco’s is one of the last places in America where you can stoke up a cigar at breakfast without getting into a screaming argument with a subscriber to Runner’s World.

  With me that morning was Michael Stoff, a professor of history at the University of Texas. Stoff is a forty-year-old transplanted New Yorker who, after half a dozen years in Austin, is still fascinated and bemused by the natives. Although he lives in the cosmopolitan world of Austin academia, he is a close student of Texans and their mannerisms. On the way to Cisco’s that morning he explained Stoff’s Law of Texas Behavior. “Just remember, Texans can’t stand to be beaten at anything by anyone. It’s total competitive adaptability. Whatever you are, they are more,” he said.

  Despite his analytical tone, I could tell that Stoff was excited about meeting Kinky Friedman; at breakfast he would have the chance to test his theory on one of the Lone Star State’s most extreme personalities.

  Friedman stood at the door, canvassing the room, and I waved him over. “You look just like I expected,” I said, meaning it as a compliment. But he fixed me with a hard, wary stare. Friedman has the eyes of a sensitive badass, a man who’s taken abuse for being a Jew among rednecks, and a redneck among Jews. “Yeah, well all you book-writer types look the same, too,” he said, pulling up a chair.

  We ordered huevos rancheros and tequila sunrises. While we waited for the food, Kinky told the story of his recent unsuccessful campaign for the office of sheriff of Kerrville, Texas, a small hill-country town near the ranch-summer camp owned by his father. “I didn’t do all that bad; I got two hundred more votes than the candidate who chopped up his collie with a chain saw,” he deadpanned. Kinky went on to describe how he had been hurt by his association with Bob Dylan and other unpopular Yankee show biz types. “Them connections lost me the trailer park vote,” he lamented. His habit of addressing the voters as “my fellow Kerrverts” probably hadn’t helped, either.

  Friedman related his election story in the Texas way, as a set piece. Texans don’t tell jokes, they spin elaborate yarns that have a fixed, stylized form. Friedman is a genuinely funny man in a dark sort of way, and later in the day he cut loose with some spontaneous humor. But at breakfast, with a highbrow professor from the university and a possibly unfriendly book-writer, he stuck to safe ground.

  I discovered as the day went along that Kinky has several accents—Texas cowpoke, Houston sophisticate, newscaster neutral (for sincere moments), and even a creditable New York imitation. He uses Texas cowpoke to hide behind, and at breakfast he laid it on thick.

  “I’m the Jewish ambassador to the fucking rednecks in this country, pardner,” he declared belligerently, watching Stoff out of the corner of his eye. Kinky’s father, whom he idolizes, is a retired professor of psychology at the University of Texas, and Kinky himself attended college, but he never graduated and he’s sensitive about it. His first priority that morning was putting Stoff on the defensive. He and I would be spending the whole day together, and I could be dealt with later.

  “The only two Jews these shit kickers ever heard of are Kinky Friedman and Jesus Christ,” said Kinky Friedman. Stoff, who sees shit kickers mostly through the windshield of his Japanese car, nodded pleasantly. “I have a close friend who knows you,” he said, mentioning the name of a prominent local journalist. Kinky snorted. “I hate to tell you this, boy, but your friend’s an asshole. I don’t want to hurt your feelings or nothin’ but the guy’s full of shit.” Stoff blinked; in his world people don’t go around calling each other’s friends “asshole,” at least not on the first date.

  Friedman, sensitive as a cat, felt the professor’s disapproval and moved in for the kill. “Where you from, boychik? I know it ain’t from these parts,” he demanded in an aggressive voice.

  “New York. Long Island, actually,” said Stoff. Friedman snorted derisively. “Long Island ain’t New York. You know New York City? You ever been to the Carnegie Delicatessen?”

  “Sure,” said Stoff in a neutral way. “I know it well.”

  “Yeah, well when you go in there, you don’t get linen, I guarantee you that.” Stoff looked puzzled. “The regular customers get paper napkins; only superstars like Kinky get linen.” Satisfied, he burst into a grin, and Stoff grinned back. “Whatever you are, they are more,” he had told me on the way over. Michael Stoff was at his happiest, an academic in possession of a corroborated hypothesis.

  Stoff left for a class, and Kinky watched him go. “You think your friend liked me?” he demanded. “About as much as you seemed to like him,” I said, determined not to be intimidated. Friedman surprised me. He softened, and in an almost boyish voice said, “I liked him all right. But guys like him, sometimes they don’t appreciate Kinky, ya know?”

  We paid for breakfast in a hail of y’all-come-backs and climbed into Friedman’s pickup truck. “I’m sorry we met down here in Austin,” he said. “I hate this town. It’s full of phonies. Next time you’re down this way you come out to the ranch and we’ll have us some fun, I promise you.”

  Kinky had just published a detective novel (the hero of which was a Jewish country & western singer named Kinky Friedman) and he asked me a few questions about contracts and agents. Suddenly he caught himself. “How old are you, anyway?” he demanded.

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Thirty-nine! Shit, I’m forty-two. I don’t go to people who are younger than me for wisdom and advice, they come to me. You need any wisdom or advice, you come to Kinky. Don’t be shy.”

  “Yessir, Mr. Friedman,” I said. He narrowed his eyes for a moment, and
then nodded emphatic approval of my deference to an elder statesman.

  Kinky drove to his father’s place, a conventional ranch house in one of Austin’s better neighborhoods. Tom Friedman was reading by the fire when we arrived, but he put his book down to chat with us. A warm man, as friendly as Kinky is suspicious, he shares his son’s cockeyed view of the world. He is originally from Chicago, and when his wife died recently he took the body back there for burial. “Listen to this,” Tom said. “I was looking at the tombstones in the cemetery and I saw one with a Yiddish inscription. Know what it said? It said, ‘The Cubs stink.’ In Yiddish. How about that?”

  Tom Friedman once taught for a semester at Tel Aviv University, and he still takes a keen interest in the Middle East. He is a hawk on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and we chatted about various aspects of the problem while Kinky listened fitfully. Kinky is a hawk, too—he once was awarded the Jewish Defense League’s prize for cultural contribution—but it is a hard-line attitude that owes more to John Wayne than to Menachem Begin.

  There is nothing country about Professor Friedman. He could be any Jewish academic in the United States. His home, where Kinky was born and raised, is not exactly a trailer park. Growing up, Kinky belonged to a Reform temple, attended Jewish summer camps, and generally had an urban, middle-class upbringing. As a redneck, he is a self-made man.

  And yet, there is something genuine beyond the posturing. Kinky gets linen at the Carnegie, but he can also out-country the biggest hick in the house when the occasion calls for it. He is a man who belongs to two worlds, and to neither.

  After high school and a stint at the University of Texas, Kinky joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Borneo. There he acquired a tattoo on his left arm and, inspired by the Six-Day War, wrote his favorite song, “Ride ’em Jewboy.” The song is pure Kinky—lyrics that express a deep Jewish sensibility, a tune from an equally authentic feeling for Texas music.

  When he came home from the Peace Corps Kinky formed his band, and began touring. He had two audiences—country & western fans who liked his music and young urban Jews who liked his attitude. He could be irreverent, even offensive—he once invited an audience at the Lone Star Café to “save Soviet Jewry and win valuable prizes”—but he was saying something interesting about the Jewish condition. He even did a concert in Brooklyn with the Chasidic singer Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. “Yeah boy, that was really something,” he said, recalling their evening together. “That same week I did a show with Merle Haggard. Ain’t too many singers can say that.”