All Who Go Do Not Return

by Deen, Shulem

  This incident came after several months of sporadic violence toward those who relied on the eruv, and now I could no longer contain myself. Outraged, I turned to my blog. I had no readers, as far as I knew, but my intestines felt like a cauldron of rage, and I needed an outlet.

  Someone needs to show the Satmars that their terrorism won’t work in the land of the free and the home of the brave. America was for Hasidim, too; and so the eruv proponents, too, had a right to practice their religion as they chose, without fear of harassment by the Satmars.

  A few hours later, I forgot about the Satmars. Now I was thinking about how else I might make use of the blog. I checked my visitor logs to see if anyone had read my rant, but other than my own visits, the logs remained empty.

  Trying to think of something insightful to share, I wrote in my next post. Nothing so far.

  Later that day, I wrote about a book I was reading. Soon after, I had a disappointing meeting with a prospective employer. I was supposed to be hired for a new job, with a significant salary increase. I had been all but assured of it, but the prospect fell through. They were not hiring, they decided at the last minute, and I went to sleep that night terribly upset. The next morning, I blogged about how disappointed I was over not getting that job. So disappointed, that I was staying home from work to recover.

  Called in sick to work today, I announced to the world. I hoped that my boss wasn’t reading. I checked my visitor logs—still empty. My boss clearly wasn’t reading, and neither was anyone else.

  That afternoon, I thought back to the eruv disturbance. I thought about the ways our Hasidic society kept people in line. We could control not only the masses but even the leaders. The eruv was not a rebellious project by a fringe group; it was supported by prominent Hasidic rabbis. As far as anyone knew, they were God-fearing men. Except, in that narrow grid, between Lee and Bedford, from Broadway to Heyward, there was only one way to fear God. The Satmar way. And the Satmars were willing to use violence to ensure that everyone knew it.

  But these attitudes were not limited to Satmar. The same rabbis who were in favor of the eruv were themselves part of the structure that demanded conformity on everything else. In Skver, violence was used to enforce communal norms. In Vizhnitz and in Ger and in Belz and among so many other sects, there were always rumors of similar incidents. It was how our world worked. We kept people in line by whatever means possible.

  What kind of world was this? And who could possibly save us?

  George W. Bush, that’s who. That was the thought I had on that Monday afternoon in April 2003. George W. Bush, I wrote, should’ve sent troops to New York’s Hasidic neighborhoods. If Americans were so insistent on spreading freedom, there were places closer to home that needed it. Before we went off to bring democracy to Afghans and Iraqis, maybe Williamsburg and New Square could be liberated first.

  As military campaigns go, mine was perhaps weakly conceived. A battalion of U.S. Marines marching through Williamsburg or New Square wasn’t likely to impress the rabbis. There were no statues to topple, no insurgents with IEDs or RPGs, and no nation-building to embark on. But I was fed up, and I wanted the world to know that in our dark corner of the world, right in the middle of New York, there was in fact very little freedom. I wanted to shout it to the world, and I didn’t care who heard me.

  Actually, on second thought, I did care. A moment after I clicked “Publish,” I reread my post. It was four paragraphs long and very clearly expressed criticism of my own community, my own people. My name and e-mail address were right there in the open.

  This isn’t good, I thought. Someone isn’t going to like this, and I’m going to get in trouble. I should take my name off, maybe. Anonymity! That was it. And why not? This was the Internet. I drummed my fingers on my desk and tried to think quickly. I needed a name, any name. “Hasidic Rebel.” That’s it! I can always change it later.

  Then the readers came. First in the dozens, then hundreds, and soon thousands. My visitor logs grew and grew, the numbers rising, doubling and tripling by the day. Across the Internet, I found other bloggers who linked to me, excitedly, with a discovery they seemed to think astonishing: “Look at this! A Hasid writing in secret about his insular world.” Apparently, people wanted to read about my world, and it appeared that I had a compelling enough voice to bring them back for more.

  It was magical. Every day, another link would pop up somewhere. The Yada Yada Yada Blog and the Head Heeb and Allison in An Unsealed Room and the elders over at Protocols, all of them were linking to the “Hasidic Rebel.”

  “Fascinating stuff.” “A unique perspective.” “A rebel with a cause.”

  It gave me the encouragement to keep writing, about the parts of my life that I loved and the parts that frustrated me to no end. I wrote about my wife and about my kids. I wrote about the rebbe. I wrote about what it meant to live as a Hasid, within and around New York City, both as part of a broader culture and also, tenaciously, grittily, distinct from it.

  The anonymity allowed me to be critical, but I tried to write honestly. There were things about my world that I still loved, and I wrote about them along with our extremist practices and the narrowness of our worldview, the frustrations with which I was now consumed day and night. I wrote about the stresses of trying to embrace modernity and aspects of outside culture while living in a world so steeped in tradition. I wrote about hiding videotapes after secret runs to Blockbuster, about sneaking my daughters into the library, about the wonders of a rebbe’s tisch, and about Hasidic hitchhikers who didn’t approve of the music I played in my car.

  Readers could not get enough. And yet, I could not tell my readers everything.

  I could not express outright heresy. My persona was still one of a believer, despite my critical views. Questions of faith, I believed, required a more solitary struggle, a search within, not one aired for public entertainment and submitted to the rapid-fire bursts of Internet comments. I believe in God and the Torah, I wrote in one post, even as I knew it was not true, not really. Even under anonymity, I could not yet say otherwise. To declare myself a heretic was a step so terrifying and so bold that I could not say it out loud, even to myself. Apikorus. Heretic. It was such an awful, awful word. Shameful and wicked. And I still desperately hoped, deep inside me, that I was not one.

  Chapter Eighteen

  At first, I told Gitty nothing about the blog. I wanted to tell her, and I knew that I would eventually, but the right moment felt elusive. We had just barely recovered from a difficult episode: only several weeks earlier, I had purchased a television set.

  It was a shock to Gitty, the day she discovered it. It was a Sunday, and I had gone to Costco, where I’d noticed the tall pile of cartons on four pallets, 32-inch models, $39.99. I had wanted to get one for a long time but had feared Gitty’s reaction. Now I couldn’t resist. I placed a carton in my cart, and picked up a package of rabbit-ear antennas a few aisles down. I covered it all in a large black trash bag in the back of my car and brought it home. I laid the television set on the dining-room floor, still wrapped in the bag, and shut the door.

  An hour later, Gitty walked into the dining room. Ten seconds later she emerged, her face frozen. For three days, she kept silent. She cooked meals, fed the kids, did laundry, but she would not say a word to me.

  On the third day, I snapped. “Stop acting like a child,” I said.

  She broke her silence with a scream: “A TELEVISION … IN MY HOME!”

  It burst from her like a force of nature. A shriek that even she could not have anticipated. For a moment, her face contorted into something grotesque, and then she turned away, toward the kitchen sink, a dish towel in her hand. Behind the sink was a window, and she stood there, her controlled posture from behind looking almost peaceful, as if she was gazing out at the birds, at the sky. From the tiny tremors of her body and her shoulders, though, I could tell that she was sobbing. A moment later, she ran from the kitchen, hiding her face in her arm, and locked herself
in our bedroom.

  The violence of Gitty’s reaction shook me. Over the years, she had begun to accept that I had changed. We had just passed a decade of marriage. For our tenth anniversary, we spent a rare night out, dining at a kosher Italian restaurant in Monsey. We had learned a lot about each other, how to stay out of the other’s way when things were tense and draw closer when the mood was light. There was little passion between us, but there was real feeling. And sometimes, even love.

  Still, conflicts constantly arose. Barely a week passed when our differences would not stand in contrast, and each time, I felt resentment all over again toward those who had brought us together.

  “This isn’t how I married you,” she would say, sometimes in anger but also on occasion tenderly, her eyes pleading. “It’s not fair,” she would say, and a single tear would trickle down the curve of her nose.

  And yet, we’d made it work so far. I imagined that, as with the radio and books and movies and the Internet, the TV would be just another boundary to cross, not easily but inevitably.

  I had misjudged. Television was a taboo so entrenched that to violate it was nearly inconceivable. Television was the symbol of all the outside culture we were meant to avoid. The Internet might have become the real culprit for corrupting minds, but the television had been, for decades, de tumeneh keili. The profane vessel. So abhorrent that many would not even utter its name.

  I was almost prepared to return the TV to Costco, but a few days after Gitty’s outburst, we talked it over. She was still angry but also forgiving. “If you want to keep it,” she said, “I won’t stop you. But I will never watch anything with you. And don’t you dare let the children see it.”

  She said it as if she knew what was coming—that once she gave in, I would not be content to transgress alone but would try to get her to join me, and then I’d try to reel in the kids. This had happened before. When I first began to watch movies, renting DVDs from Blockbuster and playing them on my laptop computer in the darkness of our dining room, she refused to join me. For months, I would ask, plead, tease, promise to choose something with no objectionable content, no nudity or violence or profanity, until finally she relented, even as she swore that we would never let our children join us, ever.

  The old computer cabinet in our dining room had been sitting empty for a while. I had purchased it seven years earlier, with double doors and a lock to hide the computer on Shabbos. Now it would serve as a home for the television set. I would keep it locked at all times, and the children would never know.

  I soon began to spend an hour or two each night in our dining room, alone with the TV. Mostly I watched the news, and occasionally one of the late-night talk shows, but really, I was fascinated by all of it, in the same way that I had once been fascinated by the radio. I was riveted by soap operas and public-access programming and late-night infomercials. “Order now, for only $99, and get the full set of Frank Sinatra videos on VHS!” What a deal!

  As Gitty grew accustomed to the TV’s presence, I grew bolder.

  “Want to watch something with me?” I asked her one night.

  She shook her head coolly, refusing even to entertain the notion.

  But eventually, she gave in. One night, as I sat alone in the dining room, she opened the door. “Can I join you?” Her expression was bashful. From then on, each night after the children went to bed, we would lock the doors and windows, draw the curtains, and sit together in the corner of our dining room in front of the small television set, the volume on near-mute to avoid raising suspicion with the Greenbergs through the wall.

  We would watch whatever was on: Friends, Charlie Rose, Eyewitness News, Big Brother. There were no guilty pleasures—we were guilty for all of it: Masterpiece Theatre and Jerry Springer, Nightline and American Idol. Everything, all of it, was part of America’s great crescendo of profanity.

  It was during one of those nights in front of the TV that I ended up telling Gitty about the blog. I had implemented a new feature that day: Each time a reader posted a comment, I received an alert on my cell phone. As we sat in front of the TV, watching a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond, my phone buzzed, harshly interrupting the grainy images on the screen. I ignored it, and Gitty kept her eyes fixed on the TV. Frank was haranguing Marie, who was haranguing Ray, who was already being harangued by Debra. All the while, Brad Garrett was musing about “life’s imponderables.” Then my phone buzzed again, and then again soon after. Gitty finally turned her head just slightly and raised an inquiring eyebrow. I shook my head to brush her off, and then my phone buzzed twice more in rapid succession.

  “What is all the buzzing?” Gitty blurted.

  “Nothing. Just alerts.”

  “Alerts?”

  “Comments. From … this website.”

  “What website?”

  I turned off the TV and told her all about it. I told her how I’d always wanted to write, and now I was writing, and I had readers, too, lots of them. I was the Hasidic Rebel.

  She let out a grunt, as if to say, Well, how unsurprising.

  “What do you write about?” she asked.

  “Just … about my life.”

  “Do you write about me?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I could see in her eyes that she was intrigued.

  “You’re welcome to read it,” I told her.

  The next day, when I came home from work, she sat down and put her hands flat on the table. “I read your site,” she said.

  I looked for disapproval in her eyes, awaiting her outrage.

  “I kinda like it,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I mean, if it makes you feel better, maybe it’ll do you good. You know, like therapy.”

  “You seem less tense these days,” a friend said to me one day. I said nothing, although I knew it was true. The ability to speak my mind gave me a peace I had been lacking for years. A small community had sprung up around the blog, and it gave me a sense that there was a world somewhere in which my thoughts were appreciated. Reader comments on my posts often went into the hundreds.

  I didn’t know these commenters in real life, but their names were soon as recognizable as my real-life friends: Ani Yesheinu, JK from KJ, Susan in Queens. Some commenters earned followers of their own. One man went by Isaac, and soon there was an “Isaac’s Fan.” They came from across the Jewish spectrum, from Hasidic to Yeshivish to the Modern Orthodox to the Reform. There were regulars who were non-Jews. Susan in Queens was Catholic. Evy was Mormon. PadrePaz was a Protestant minister somewhere in the South.

  One day, I received an e-mail from a reporter for New York’s Village Voice. He wanted to write a story about my blog. Would I agree to an interview?

  Several weeks later, at a kosher café near Manhattan’s diamond district, one block from my workplace, we met for lunch. A small tape recorder lay on the table, next to my beaver-fur hat. The writer looked younger than I’d imagined, in his twenties, with hipster eyeglasses and a polite but slightly detached manner. “Can we be friends?” I wanted to ask him. “Can you tell me about your life?”

  He was a journalist, though, and I knew he did not want my friendship but my story. He asked broad questions, and I offered long-winded philosophical ruminations, which he listened to patiently, smiling and nodding encouragingly. I imagined that every word I said was important to him, not realizing that out of a ninety-minute interview, he would quote me for a total of about ninety seconds.

  The article, titled “The Sharer of Secrets,” appeared in the Village Voice a month later, accompanied by an image of a Hasidic man in profile, with a bloated torso and a long, tangled beard. The top of the Hasid’s hat was sliced horizontally across, its upper half raised like the spout of an old-fashioned teapot, a cloud of yellow-and-blue six-pointed stars, the Hasid’s secret ruminations, rising from within.

  I disliked the image and disliked the article even more. In my blog, I had taken pains to write simply as I experienced my world, subjectively
and judgmentally, but also honestly. I had written not with malice but my own truth. The Voice, however, had its truth, which was clearly different from mine. To them, I was not merely a curiosity, a Hasid offering a glimpse of his world, but a sensational curiosity, a Hasid dishing dirt on his own people.

  “Have you heard of this website, ‘Hasidic Rebel’?” my friend Zurich asked me in shul a few days after the Voice article appeared. He spoke in a low voice, as if sharing a secret.

  “I’ve heard of it,” I said.

  Zurich didn’t have a computer or Internet access, but he’d heard the news: a renegade Hasid, an Internet website, an article in some newspaper. He couldn’t understand it. “Why would someone do something like that?”

  “Do something like what?”

  “Write about us that way. Make the non-Jews hate us.”

  “Why would it make the non-Jews hate us?”

  “Well, he’s telling the whole world how bad we are. And so he’s confirming what all the non-Jews already think.”

  I quickly changed the subject. Zurich had no idea that I might have something to do with the website, but there were others who had their suspicions.

  “Just so you know,” Yossi Breuer said to me one day, “Some people are saying you’re the Hasidic Rebel.”

  Instinctively, I opened my mouth to deny it, but Yossi held up his hand.

  “I have no opinion. Just thought you’d want to know.” We were in the basement of the shul, near the mikveh, and as soon as he said it, he turned and walked past the large bins of towels, thick with the smell of industrial bleach, and headed up the stairs.

  Chezky, too, called me with a warning. He was one of the very few I had told about the blog, and when he heard talk of it in the coffee room of the Vizhnitz shul in Monsey one morning, he grew alarmed. “They were discussing the Hasidic Rebel. They were talking about hiring private detectives, scheming to draw you out. They’re going to send you e-mails pretending they’re women. They say you won’t be able to resist. You’ve gotta be careful.”