Julian Barnett
Hidden Jewish Sects of Jerusalem, Part 2
Julian Barnett - Hidden Jewish Sects of Jerusalem, Part 2
- From Bloomsbury in the centre of London, about two blocks behind the British Museum, so good evening to you all, and thank you all for coming. I’m going to take you back to the summer of 1977 and my mother and father had brought me to Jerusalem just the summer before my bar mitzvah. And we were on a tour of Jerusalem, and they took me to various places. And we were in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, somewhere where I will take you in a couple of months’ time because, remember, today is part two of “Hidden Jewish Sects of Jerusalem.” And then, on the 7th and 14th of April is going to be parts one and two of “Islamic Sects of Jerusalem.” And then, in May is going to be Christian. We were in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and my parents take me into the edicule, the tiny, little area where, according to Christian tradition held by most Christians, Jesus was buried. And we’re standing in this little room, and I’m watching pilgrims going in, some of them weeping, going in, wiping their eyes, wiping their faces on the stone tomb, and kissing the tomb. And my mother looked at me looking at them, and she tugs my arm, and she says to me, whispers to me, “Julian, you’re looking at people here who are… This is the holiest site in the world to them, and this is very important to them. But we are Jews, and we don’t kiss the tomb of Jesus, so don’t kiss the tomb of Jesus.” Now, what do you think a rebellious 13-year-old boy who was told by his mother not to kiss the tomb of Jesus did?“ So the moment my mother and father’s backs were turned and they started to file out, of course, I did exactly what my dear parents told me not to do.
Why do I tell you that story? Because four years later when I was 16 years old, in 1981, I came back to Jerusalem, and I had been entranced and captivated by what I had done by becoming part of the surroundings I had been in those four years earlier as a rebellious 13-year-old boy. And the summer of 1981 was one of the most formative and powerful summers of my life because I was a young adult, age 16, in Jerusalem and I was able to go to whatever religious sects and holy sites I wished, and I concentrated, that summer, heavily on Islamic and Hasidic areas of Jerusalem. Now, the last lecture I gave gave a broad sweep of some of those Hasidic sects, and there was quite a high volume of questions on the night and emails afterwards about those Hasidic sects. So today, I want to hone in on one particular one of those sects a little later after giving a bit of a broad sweep again, and I want to talk about that particular sect because that feeling of being overwhelmed when I was in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1977 I wanted to seek out again. I didn’t want to avoid being overwhelmed. I loved being overwhelmed, and I wanted to chase that feeling again and savour that feeling, so I went to what still is one of the most extreme and closed religious groups in Mea She'arim, the Hasidim of Toldos Aron. So I’m going to share with you some photographs tonight, some of which you saw last time and some of which you wouldn’t have seen before that will try to explain further why this group is there, what they believe in and why, and what their lives are like.
I make no judgments on what they believe, either positive or negative. As I mentioned last time, that’s for you to think about and to make your judgments on them and their beliefs and their lifestyles. I’d finally just like to say, before I move into them, that they are a very, very intense group and that that intensity was something that really attracted me and that when I went back to live in Jerusalem, 2002 to 2006, I struck up a huge amount of friendships with many of them within the group. And that gave me tremendous access to that particular group, and that access and those friendships continue, really, all the way through to today. If we can now leave my home, there I am sitting there. You’re familiar with that. That starts off a lot of my talks. My home was in Musrara very close to Mea She'arim, and there I am, sitting in the library of my home with four Hasidim about to move on into Mea She'arim. Now, you will recall that the first lectures I delivered, two months ago, were about the physical skeleton of the city. It was about the gates, and it was about the roads, and it was about the buildings themselves. Last month’s lecture and today’s lecture and the next four lectures, on Islamic and Christian sects, are hanging on the hooks of physical Jerusalem, the sects and the groups within the city, so now I’m really going into the people of this city, now that I’ve brought the physical side of the city to you in previous talks.
There I am with a group of Hasidim about to go into; the next picture, please; Mea She'arim itself, and Mea She'arim, as I’ve mentioned before… Mea She'arim literally means 100 gates, but it’s a play on the words of the sedra, the Torah reading, of that time when Mea She'arim was founded in the 1800s. It was a blessing from the Torah that "if you keep my commandments and if you keep my mitzvahs and you keep my commands, you will multiply a hundredfold.” In other words, “follow my way. Be pious, and be good, and a hundredfold, you will multiply.” That was the promise given by God in the Torah to those that keep his Torah. The next picture. Mea She'arim is familiar to a lot of you, no doubt, but, to some of you, may be not. I should say that my access to Mea She'arim has never been anything other than easy and friendly, the same with my access to Islamic and Christian areas within the city. I must admit that access for a man into these worlds is, without a shadow of a doubt, easier, but it is not impossible for a woman to travel within these worlds and within these sects. And there is one of those street scenes that many of you would’ve seen before. Firstly, those signs, if we can get a close-up in the next picture of those signs, they’re signs that are all over the place: “Please, do not pass through our neighbourhood in immodest clothes.” And those immodest clothes stand for both men and for women, and modesty means, in effect, covering up, often more for women than for men. But it’s often forgotten that men shouldn’t wear shorts in Mea She'arim, and if you want really good access in Mea She'arim, a man should have a fully covered head, a hat, and should have fully covered sleeves, long sleeves, fully covered arms.
And if you really want to gain access, a man should wear a jacket on top of a shirt to really try to get the access that you would wish to get. If people sense that you are going into their area with respect, the more respect you show the more access you get. It’s a rule of thumb, and it works. And the next picture, please. There is a quarter within a quarter, and Mea She'arim itself is literally a very tiny neighbourhood, founded in the 1800s. It is a little walled enclave. That little picture I showed you last time of the George V period, British Mandate period, letterbox is still there and is still used, in fact. You go within to that little old quarter to get to the main part. Of course, when people use the term Mea She'arim generally, they really mean greater Mea She'arim, which is Mea She'arim; which is Ge'ula; which is Kiryat Belz; which is Mir, which is slightly outside; which is Beis Yisrael. It’s many areas around that, but Mea She'arim proper, speaking strictly, is a very small area with the little Mea She'arim within and the original Talmud Torah of Mea She'arim with Mea She'arim within. Next picture, please. Here we see the famous , these wall posters on Mea She'arim that are all over the place It has an interesting etymology. It’s a Yiddish word, , or Hebrew-Yiddish words. It’s said to have come from the Polish word, but nobody knows for sure, of , which, in itself, comes from the old French word , which is satire or, literally, caricature. Nobody knows for sure.
There’s other theories where the word comes from. The of Mea She'arim have now got a lot of attention around the world in recent years. There are departments in university that have, that keep, these posters, thousands and thousands of them, because it is of great anthropological interest. When you have a neighbourhood that does not use the internet officially, but there are many people that now are on the internet, a neighbourhood that certainly doesn’t have televisions or radios, this is the main mode of contact and information about the outside world, so walls are plastered with these things. Look at the little bottom there. To the left of the man, you’ll seen , holy. Often, you’ll get exhortations about things that people should be doing or things that people shouldn’t be doing, or there will be excommunication orders, or there will be information on people that have died or people that’ve been born. For many, many people in Mea She'arim, the plastered on the walls are their mode of contact within Mea She'arim and within the outside world. It’s an incredibly fascinating and, in many ways, subtle but also not so subtle, as well… It can be a very harsh way of communication. It’s very, very interesting way of how this very insular community communicates. I want to say a little bit more about the insularity of this community later. But if I can just add, it is insular in some ways, but it’s very, very worldly in other ways. The people of Mea She'arim take on the world and operate within the world and with the outside world on their own terms. It is too simplistic to say that they cut themselves off from the world. No, they don’t.
They cut themselves off from the bits of the world that they don’t like, which you could argue is most of it, but in their own way, they want to have the world on their own terms. They will do business. They will be in contact in the world through telephones and through the internet when it allows them. They have a massive web of contacts around the world. When it suits them and in a way that suits them, they are very, very worldly, but they will do it, as I said, on their own terms. More of that later. Next picture, please. Famous or infamous is the anti- stance of many but not all, many, people in Mea She'arim. The Toldos Aron Hasidim, which I’m going to hone in on later, are, I suppose, the ultimate example of that. And the next picture. Here is a piece of graffiti, “Palestine to the Arabs,” with one of those signs on the walls, and you’ll see that the man there is wearing not black. He’s wearing a black hat, but the yarmulke he’s wearing is a white knitted yarmulke, not to be confused with the Zionist knitted yarmulkes. This is the large yarmulke, head coverings, the Jerusalem head coverings. And the robe he’s wearing, although you can’t see it close-up here, more of those later, is a blue-and-gray-striped silken robe, and I’ll discuss that in its golden aspects later. I can already see Q and A’s coming in.
Don’t worry. I will get to them at the end. I will certainly answer those with the greatest of pleasure, and if I can also just mention before I forget that whilst I lived in Jerusalem, 2002 to 2006, I wrote a series of columns in “The Jerusalem Report” about the various Islamic, Christian, and Jewish sects of the city, and I’m happy to send those to people later on, relevant to today’s talk, and then later on in other talks. A lot of people asked for them last time, and I have sent them on, too. So by all means, just throw me an email, and I’ll send them to you. To the next picture, and this next picture shows one of the focal points of Hasidic life in Mea She'arim, the , literally meaning table, where Hassidim will come together, and they will sit and sing and pray with their rebbe. Sometimes the will have women there present, upstairs behind the ; sometimes, only men. And each piece of fruit or cake or whatever is being consumed at the will be handed out to the Hasidim, so the Hasidim break bread, so to speak, have a meal, with the rebbe. come in all shapes and sizes, from the many thousands to the few hundreds to, maybe, the tens. They come mainly on Shabbas and yom tov, although, obviously, I didn’t take this photograph on a Sabbath or holy day. Next picture, please. Staying topical, this is a Purim , Purim being Wednesday night - Thursday this week, and this is Yissachar Dov Rokeach, the Belzer Rebbe, one of the great Hasidic groups of Jerusalem. The Belzer Shul is vast in Kiryat Belz, which is in what would be the southern part of Mea She'arim, southern quarter of Jerusalem, and on the table is a huge array of hamantaschen, which will eventually be cut up into thousands of tiny pieces and passed round to all the people there.
The next picture, please, an unusual view of a , where you can see the children crouched under the table, looking at me, the photographer, and looking at other people, so you can really get an idea. This will be what I would call a small-to-medium-sized . The biggest in Jerusalem tend to be the Belzer Hassidim and the Gerrer Hassidim. The Gerrer can number up to between 9,000 and 12,000 and happens once a month in the Gerrer Shul. And the next picture. Now we’re going back in time, and what we’re looking at here is the old Toldos Aron Shul. Now I’m really getting into Toldos Aron itself. Toldos Aron was founded by Reb Areleh Roth. Reb Areleh Roth lived from 1894 to 1947, although he only moved to Jerusalem in 1939, so just the last eight years of his life he lived in Jerusalem. He was born, in fact, in what is now Ukraine, but he spent the lion’s share of his life not in Ukraine but in Beregszasz and Satu Mare: Satu Mare, a small town in Hungary, where the word Satmar comes from, and Beregszasz, a really small village in Hungary. And he founded his own group, called Shomer Emunim, the Guardians of the Faithful. Reb Areleh Roth was renowned for his piety, for his intensity.
He set up what he considered to be a holy fraternity. Let’s go to the next picture and see a picture Reb Areleh Roth. There are very few pictures of him. You can see the intensity there. He died young, age 53. He’s buried on the Mount of Olives. From 1939 to 1947, he set up his Shomer Emunim community within Jerusalem. It was then known as Shomer Emunim. It became known as Toldos Aron after his death. They are Hasidim, but it is not a . What does this mean? Well, Lubavitch is a . Vizhnitz are a . Belz are a and many, many other groups. Pupa are a . There are many dozens of Hasidic groups. Each of those Hasidic groups have stations and groups around the world. There are Lubavitch and Belz and Vizhnitz dotted all over the place: in Antwerp, in London, in Paris, in America and Monsey, in Canada, and so on. But there is only one Toldos Aron, and that is in Jerusalem. I actually tell a lie, because the group has become so large they now have a satellite group in Ramat Beit Shemesh, outside of Jerusalem, but eventually, the plan is that they will move back to the old precincts where they originally were. I’ll come to those precincts shortly.
The Toldos Aron Hasidim are first and foremost a kehillah, a community. They are not a , really. They don’t have a Hasidic philosophy like some of the other, larger groups because they haven’t been around for that long. They were founded in the 1930s-‘40s. The same, by the way, with Satmar, which was founded by Reb Joel Teitelbaum, and if we can go on to the next picture, Reb Joel Teitelbaum is there, the mighty Reb Joel Teitelbaum, the founder of the Satmar Hasidim, who escaped from Hungary in 1944, ended up taking a boat to Haifa, and then eventually ended up in America a couple of years later, where he set up the most remarkable successful Hasidic colony, community, in Williamsburg, which grew at a fantastical rate and is now thriving, although, after his death, in 1978, it went to his son-in-law Reb Moshe Teitelbaum. And when Moshe Teitelbaum died, just a few years ago, it split between Reb Moshe Teitelbaum’s two sons. Hasidic groups tend to get pretty bitter when they split when the old rebbes die. If we can’t just go back one picture, please, back to Reb Areleh, Reb Areleh was the founder of Toldos Aron, but although he fell out with Reb Joel Teitelbaum back in Hungary, the Satmar Hasidim in Williamsburg has, in effect, become the paymasters in certain ways, the great financial supporters, of Toldos Aron. And now, we can jump two pictures because we’re now going to look at the things that… There is Reb Joel Teitelbaum again of the Satmar Hasidim, and the next picture, we’re going to look at the things which really get the headlines. Now, Reb Joel Teitelbaum and Areleh almost built a cult of personality around them.
This is a siddur of Reb Joel Teitelbaum, a prayer book of Reb Joel Teitelbaum, that was auctioned at Sotheby’s for a phenomenal amount of money. Anything of these old rebbes that comes onto the public market is massively sought after because these were really major charismatic powerful figures, and as I said before, they set up a kehillah where all revolved around their interpretations of Hasidism and their interpretations of the direction that they Hasidim should move in. To the next picture. The most famous, or infamous, I suppose, to many, of the current rebbes in Mea She'arim is this man and his brother, and this man and his brother is… This man is Reb Dovid Kohn. He is the son-in-law of the previous Toldos Aron rebbe. In other words, he’s the third generation of Toldos Aron, and he resides in Mea She'arim. I got to know him really well, a fascinating man from the point of view of his worldliness and how much he knows. Let me take you on to his brother, Reb Shmuel Yaakov. To the next picture, please. When the previous Toldos Aron rebbe died, it split again. They’re the two brothers: Reb Shmuel Yaakov, the previous reb; Reb Dovid Kohn. So you have Reb Toldos Aron and Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok, but they both are hewn from the same stone. Strongly anti-Zionist, very, very inward-looking, they believe in remaining in Mea She'arim and not establishing communes or groups all over the world.
Very strongly in favour of strong control within Mea She'arim itself. Next picture, please. What really marks, and you saw some of these pictures last week, these groups out is their vehement anti-Zionism, and I’m happy to send, to those people that would be interested, an article I wrote some years ago, back in 2004, that I had published, trying to explain where their anti-Zionism comes from. Here is a picture of Reb Moshe Hirsch, who was one of the leading lights in Neturei Karta, with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, where they would meet once a month. Reb Moshe Hirsch would go to Ramallah to the Mukataa compounds, and there, they would meet, and they would discuss aspects of a future Palestinian state, post state of Israel, where Reb Moshe Hirsch was meant to be the Minister for Jewish Affairs in any such future state of Palestine. And the next picture. George Galloway was an MP for a while, now on RT, Russian Television, although that has now been closed down at the moment, and here he is with members of the London-based Neturei Karta. There they are, wearing the Palestinian flags, and they tend to walk at the forefront of any pro-Palestine marches in Jerusalem, marches that go to the Israeli embassy. These marches tend to happen on Saturdays, and these people will walk down from Stamford Hill to join the march, and of course, the Palestinians will make hay from this, and they’ll put them right at the front of any march. Jews marching with Palestinians and with various other groups of people marching against the state of Israel itself or the actions of the state of Israel, and there they are. Next picture, please. And here are more pictures them.
There they are in Trafalgar Square; look at the placards; right underneath one of Landseer’s Lions and one of them flying the flag of Lebanon, which I can only think is a reference to Hezbollah. And I will be returning to Edward Landseer’s lion in a completely different guise in some weeks’ time when I start to look at hidden London and aspects of London that people don’t know, when I branch out into cities of the world. Next picture, please. Here they are again, standing outside University of London on Malet Street. “Judaism rejects the Zionist state, condemns the criminal siege and occupation,” and what you have there is “www.nkuk.org,” the Neturei Karta website, a strange website. Have a look at it if you’re minded to do so. And next, please, is another of the causes that Neturei Karta and others and Toldos Aron have been associated with, and I mentioned, a couple of weeks ago, that Mea She'arim is really divided how they react to social issues that come their way, almost right underneath them; for example, here’s one, the gay pride march in Jerusalem. One school of thought is you campaign against it, you stand up and stop a gay pride march bringing disgrace to the holy city of Jerusalem: “If they want to do that in Tel Aviv, that’s their business. In Jerusalem, Jerusalem is holy, and we don’t want them here,” to do what they feel that the Zionist entity has done to Israel, which is to take a holy land and to make it profane. And they would say the same is being done in Jerusalem. The other school of thought is “no, we must”… One school of thought is “we must actively campaign against them. It is our duty to do so. It is a Torah duty to go out and to rebuke those that do the wrong thing in holy places.”
The other school of thought is “this draws attention to gay pride and to the gay cause or to whatever other causes people want to march with”; for example, the Gerrer rebbe, the Boyana rebbe, the Kaliver rebbe all said, “We shouldn’t be campaigning against this march. It legitimises it by campaigning against it. We remain within Mea She'arim, and we ignore it.” They also, by the way, said that, if we campaign against it, then our children will ask, “What’re you campaigning against? So our children in our Hasidic groups will actually, ironically, learn more,” about what they say are these terrible lifestyle choices, terrible lifestyles, and simple lifestyles, “because we campaign against it. Don’t legitimise it by campaigning against it.” This is a big debate within Mea She'arim itself. And the next picture. These show people on the march, two soldiers. And the next one, please. There we have some demonstrators. Speaks for itself. And the next one. You will see people dressing up in sackcloth or; the next one, please; being carried off by the police after demonstrating. There are the police arresting people who are demonstrating on a Shabbas afternoon, the Sabbath, in their golden coats. More on those later. And the next one. In sackcloth, praying, saying Psalms about the horrors and profaning a holy city. Look at the faces. And the next, please. One single person in the streets, parading in sackcloth. And the next, please.
These will often lead to violent demonstrations. And the next, please. And the demonstrations will sometimes turn violent. And the next. One of the favourite things to do is to take these huge plastic dustbins and set them on fire, which send the most horrific fumes across Jerusalem, as well as causing damage, and so on. And sometimes, fires will spread, but there’s an example. And the next. Because I draw this parallel to the previous, if you can just go back one, please, here you can see the publicity that these groups get when they demonstrate, but if we now go back to the next, or go to the next, picture, Sorry. Yes, and thank you. I want to take you to this picture because it’s a very different side of Mea She'arim that I touched upon last week. This is Batei Ungarin, the Hungarian compound. It is a quarter within a quarter. I want to draw greater attention for what I did last week, or a couple of weeks ago, about the cleanliness of the streets, not something, I should add, that Mea She'arim has an image for. People have an image of Mea She'arim being overcrowded, dirty, smelly, unhygienic, and so on. This is none of those things. Look at those streets. There are wells there, and you can see the street is just sloping outwards because Batei Ungarin is, in effect, three triangular squares, so to speak. Bit of a contradiction in terms, but you get my meaning. Look at the communal washing line at the top. Next picture, please. It’s another picture of a square in Batei Ungarin.
There you can see the triangle coming into shape; a shul, synagogue, there at the end; with communal washing lines. Look at the density of population there. We’ve got here, oh, by my estimate, one, two, three, four, five. 14 homes are visible there. Each home would have about 10 people within it. That’s a lot of souls living in a small area; again, not a speck of litter anywhere. Batei Ungarin cleans its own streets. It refuses to accept the Iryah, the municipality state cleaners, coming in to clean their streets. They clean their streets. They scrub their streets. They do their own hygiene. And everything is communal. Ironically, these most anti-Zionist Hasidim live the most early Zionist way. They live almost the style of the kibbutzim. They share everything. They share their food supplies. They share their homes. They share their properties. It’s very much a communal form of living in the style of those early kibbutzim. Not many of those early kibbutzim exist anymore, living on those truly communist communal lines, but in Batei Ungarin, they do. All wealth is pooled into the community, and all people take from that pooled wealth. It’s a completely different style of living, even from other groups within Mea She'arim itself, this subquarter within a subquarter. Next picture, please.
Here you can see sukkahs at the time of the Festival of Tabernacles, Sukkot. Look at the density of population again, and the next picture’s an aerial view of the sukkahs that I took from the roof of the shul. Just look at that. Oh, just before we move, look how many residences there are there. Yes, thank you. Look how many residence there are there. I’m counting one, two, three, four, five, six per floor, 18. There’s about 20 residences there so about 200 people on average. Families there are between 8 and 15 people in a family. By the way, when one family’s girls get to reach the age of prepuberty, so we’re talking about 9 or 10, maybe earlier, the girls will move out of that family and move next door. And the boys from the next-door family will move next door, so you have whole families of boys and whole families of girls. So even the brothers and sisters aren’t living in the same homes, because of reasons of , modesty. Next picture, please. Look again at the density there. Now, these are old compounds, the Hungarian compounds, Batei Ungarin, Hungarian houses literally, with these flyover stairs going up to the next floors. Nobody owns their property there. They move in until a family moves out and another one moves in, so they are almost living in a rental that was paid for by the builders of the compound, again very much like the old kibbutz setups. Look at the floors again. Not a speck of litter. I just turned up randomly and took these pictures. These are very, very peaceful and quiet neighbourhoods. They don’t have the hustle and bustle of what most people know as Mea She'arim, although they’re bang in the middle of Mea She'arim.
But they are their own quarter with their own ways and their own atmospheres and architectural designs. Next picture, please. You can see now one of those washing lines, no women’s clothes in sight, all men’s. It is immodest to hang women’s clothes. It’s all white men’s clothes. To the left of the washing line, you can see tights, but they’re not women’s tights. They’re men’s tights because men, on Shabbas, will wear white stockings, married men. I took this photo on a Sunday morning after Shabbas had passed, and they’re all men’s shirts. The men’s shirts, as you can see, are quite unusual. They’re not fully button-down shirts. They’re just these tunic shirts that’re worn under their tzitzis, their fringes, and, on top of that, their gold coats, so even their shirts are different that’re worn under these. And the next picture. You can see the inside of one of these houses, and they’re very, very simple. Now, when you think that there’s going to be a family of between 8 and 15 in there… I think I mentioned last time that some families are much larger. The largest family I knew was 22 children, and the great-grandparents that family would see every single one of the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, the total number being round about 240 people. They would see every single one of them every Shabbas afternoon, so there would be a procession coming into the house, where the great-grandparents would give a blessing to every single one of their family as they came through their tiny home, remarkable, another world. Next, please.
Here you can see a family scene of all the grandchildren of one grandfather, and I showed this last time, as well. This is Purim. Again, it’s particularly topical. They were at a Purim , a family , and all the children there are wearing their crowns. The table was so long I couldn’t get a whole-table view. It was so long, but you can see the man on the right, one of the sons of the grandfather; in other words, one of the fathers of some of those children. And he’s the uncle to others. He has a microphone. There were so many in the room. There were something like 40 of these children if I remember correctly. And the next, please. Now I’d like to talk about the Toldos Aron clothes, which I touched upon last time. The Toldos Aron Hasidim wear the caftan , the Jerusalem caftan. When Reb Areleh, who I mentioned to you, came to Mea She'arim, in 1939, when he arrived, sorry, 1937, he said that we are now living in the Middle East: “We’re not going to wear black coats anymore. We’re going to adopt a robe that is suitable for the Middle East.” And he went to a store on Christian Quarter Road, and the great-grandson of that store is still there. He now owns it. And he went to this man, a Palestinian man, a Christian Palestinian.
He said, “I want a robe of beautiful Damascus silk.” And so, the robe was designed. He got a robe which is this golden robe with blue stripes on it, and a robe was designed, and a belt was designed. So they kept the , the fur hats, from Beregszasz in Hungary. They kept with that tradition, but everything else became local and Palestinian. This was a Damascus fabric, and remarkably, when I was in Damascus and, even more so, when I was in Aleppo, way back in the ‘90s, I came across Islamic sects that wore this fabric as their sects. They didn’t wear this cut of a coat, because that’s unique to Toldos Aron, but they wore the fabric. So very strangely; it was all rather surreal; I came across this Islamic sect, and I’ll deal with this one day with Islamic sects of Jerusalem, who wore the same sort of thing. I had to do a double take. Here we have two of these unmarried members of Toldos Aron. I can tell they’re unmarried, because they’re wearing black stockings. When they’re married, they wear white stockings. They’re wearing the robe, which is formed out of 26 pieces of fabric, 26 being the numerical value of God’s name, and and and . And you can see there the coat. Before the tailor makes the coat, he has 26 pieces of fabric that he then stitches together. The belt has 248 lines, representing the positive mitzvahs within the Torah and the stripes is the remaining number to make up the 613 mitzvahs. You can also see that they are wearing not trousers but they’re wearing leggings, short knee-length britches. They’re wearing a white shirt underneath. They wear their very long and the . Toldos Aron are the only group of Hasidim where the boys wear after their bar mitzvah, not after marriage. This is very, very… Well, it’s unique, not just unusual but unique. There are other Hasidim in Jerusalem who will wear this caftan because the caftan , notice, is called the Jerusalem caftan. It’s not called the Toldos Aron caftan.
So you might well see old postcards and old pictures of Jerusalem where some of the old Hasidim of the period wear this golden caftan. In my opinion, it’s very beautiful and very exotic, and when you see a group of Hasidim walking along the streets, wearing these things, the men are truly like peacocks, and don’t they know it. They know that they’re wearing something beautiful and dramatic, and I should add expensive. Next picture, please. There you can see some close-up of those robes, and the reason I took this is because you could see the men and women together. It’s a rare picture because men and women are never together, and there they are. And look how the women dress. The women are pretty immaculate too. Toldos Aron women completely shave their heads. And then, they wear a , a headscarf, on top. They don’t wear a wig, and the women wear these luxuriant strings of pearls, and the boys wear these very large knitted kippot, kippah, or yarmulke, , the Jerusalem yarmulkes. Once they reach bar mitzvah, the boys will don the Jerusalem caftan and the black stockings. The men there, as you can see, are married.
They’re wearing white stockings with these Jerusalem caftans, which are very cool to wear. As you can see, they’re thin, and you can see one of the wives there. Behind her’s one of the girls, just in the distance there. The women are all in black on Shabbas, and they also wear a white apron there when they’re in shul. It’s literally a white lace apron, very, very precise. Some people have said the women look rather like the Amish. Now look at the girl with her back to us. She has two plaits. Two plaits denote certain things. Everything in the Toldos Aron community is to do with codes, so a girl in Jerusalem with a double plait of hair is not yet ready for marriage. With a single plait, she is ready for marriage. She is available. Next picture, please. Here you can see some of the Toldos Aron women again; again those shaved heads. And you can see there very, very dark stockings they wear and clothes that are extremely baggy so that nothing accentuates the body line. I have seldom spoken to a Toldos Aron woman. I’ve spoken to hundreds of Toldos Aron men, but it would be completely immodest for a Toldos Aron woman to speak to another man, let alone another secular man, a man that’s from outside of their community. Next, please. And you can see more of the Toldos Aron women there with many children in tow. Next picture, please.
There are some of the boys. Again, white stockings for the little boys. Once they reach bar mitzvah, it would be black stockings and a gold coat and then white again when they’re married; pre-bar mitzvah, white stockings and, as you can see there, with those white big knitted Jerusalem yarmulkes. Next, please. And the girls, there they are. From another, slightly different sect, here they have a single plait, so in that particular sect, they are not ready for marriage. And the whole thing about how marriage is organised is very interesting. For those that’ve seen “Shtisel,” now on Netflix, all three series, it’s well worth watching, because there’s lots of very, very accurate information about how marriages are organised in Mea She'arim, although it’s not the Mea She'arim of the Toldos Aron Hasidim. That’s something different. And by the way, the Toldos Aron Hasidim more or less only marry within their particular sect. If a woman not from Toldos Aron marries a Toldos Aron man, she will adopt the Toldos Aron way. A man will never adopt the way of the bride that he marries, but generally speaking, the Toldos Aron Hasidim marry within their group, and they have a very, very distinctive look, which we’ll come to extremely shortly. Next picture, please, a magical picture on Hoshana Rabbah. I could take this picture because it’s the last day of hol hamoed in Sukkot.
It’s gold and white, just quite magical and magnificent, taken in the Toldos Aron Shul. It’s like something from another world really. And the next picture, please. Here is Purim again, being topical, a group of Toldos Aron Hasidim. They’re allowed to wear fancy dress on Purim, but even that is controlled. They’re allowed to wear fancy dress, but the fancy dress can only be one form of fancy dress, which is a red fez. Why a red fez? Because it’s a reference, of course, to the Ottoman period in Jerusalem. Even when it comes to Purim and fancy dress, the one type of fancy dress that they are permitted is the fancy dress that resonates with when Toldos Aron was in Jerusalem when it came to Jerusalem in the 1930s, which was the British Mandate period but where the dress was still that, the robes of the Ottoman period. And the next picture, please, and this is a close-up of a Toldos Avrohom, oh, sorry, a Toldos Aron, boy. Again, look at the blond hair. The gene pool in Toldos Aron, something like 70 to 80% of the men in Toldos Aron are blond-haired or redheaded. They’re very, very distinctive-looking. And the next picture, please. And here you can see Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok, that other breakaway from Toldos Aron, but again the gold coats.
And in Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok, they’re only allowed one fancy dress, and what’s that? Gold fezzes, instead, to differentiate from the red fezzes but all in gold fezzes. There are two people there in black. They’re not members of Toldos Avrohom Yitzchok. They’re just waif and stray Hasidim from another place, coming to the Purim . You can see they’ve all been drinking, by the looks of it. And the next picture, please. I took this and the last two pictures because this is just so wonderful. This is a Jerusalem Hasidic family going to the Purim , so it’s the Purim seudah. It’s the big meal on Purim afternoon, but why did I take it? Because, these people, they’re dressed up for Purim but they don’t realise as they walk past the and also some other things on the walls about sales. “100% ,” it says there, so it’s about some product that’s under 100% supervision, and so on. But the wonderful thing is they don’t realise that they’re walking along a Mea She'arim street with all their children dressed up as St. Nicholas. Isn’t it fantastic? I particularly, particularly loved that picture. And the final two pictures, please, because, although I’ve gone to the Toldos Aron Hasidim being anti-Zionist and then their way of life, which is away from Zionism, here they are lighting a flag. And I showed this picture some weeks ago, but I want to draw your attention to it now because, although people from the outside are fascinated or perhaps obsessed or perhaps appalled, but certainly, people from the outside, their attention is very much about why so many of the Hasidim are anti-Zionists, I should add that, in all my years of going in and out of Toldos Aron, which goes back to 1981; I’ve been going to them for a long, long time; I can say this categorically; never once have they voluntarily launched into anything about the state of Israel.
So people from the outside are fascinated or appalled by their stance on Zionist Israel, but Toldos Aron themselves, they’re anti-Zionist, but that’s how they are. They’re not particularly interested in it, because they have big families to feed. They have busy lives. Most of them work. Contrary to the perception that most of them don’t, in Toldos Aron, most of them work, and they just get on with it, and they don’t really get involved in politics. Here there’s a rare example going through the motions on Yom Ha'atzmaut of burning an Israeli flag, and the attention I want to draw you to is what I did last time. Look at the man on the left of the picture. Pay close attention to his face. Now, please, go to the next picture, the final picture, and there he is again, on the left of the picture. But here he is with me, and he’s presented me with a gift you might recall. It’s the Dome of the Rock in the form of an alarm clock, and there I am, standing there. It was one of my last nights in Jerusalem before I left Jerusalem, 2006, in a very bare room. That’s the room that the opening picture of this lecture started with, a room full of my books and my rugs and my collections from various travels. Here it’s very bare. Everything had been packed up, ready to ship back to Bloomsbury in London, and here I am and looking at the gift the three of them have very kindly given me as a memory of Jerusalem.
So this so-called closed Toldos Aron Hasid who burns Israeli flags and is so unworldly and doesn’t know what’s going on, here he is with me, a not-especially religious person, and he’s given me a gift of the Dome of the Rock. Nothing is as it seems in Jerusalem, as I have mentioned a number of times, and I’m sorry there is a final picture. We posed rather wistfully the night before I left Jerusalem, and there the three of them are. I’ve stayed in very close contact with them. They all have very big families. The one on the left has 12 children, the one in the middle has 14 children, and the one on the right has, I think, six or seven. I’m not in as-regular touch with him as the other two. And there I was in robes, ready to depart, so there it is. They’re the pictures for this evening. If I can remind you that I’ll be back with images of Islamic sects of Islamic Jerusalem in future talks, 7th and 14th of April, and many more after that, about Christian. For now, the floor is open to questions. I see that there are 23 questions there pending. I’m going to start working through them, and I’ll take as many questions as you wish. And a reminder: if you have other questions to ask me, just email me, and I’m happy to send articles that I’ve had published in the past, too.
Q&A and Comments:
Ah, first question: “From the way you”-
Julian.
Yes.
That was fascinating.
Pleasure. Glad. I’m glad.
Thank you. I’m always astonished at how they are so anti-Zionist.
Indeed. Indeed, they are. Their attitude is as follows: that we live in the land of Israel; I’m just talking about Toldos Aron here; that we, as a group, came to Israel before it was a state of Israel so we love the land but we hate the state. It’s a strange position, and I should add that the Hasidim are changing gradually, but because they keep the same clothes and they look the same, people assume that they are the same. They are not.
I know.
Its tectonic plate shifts, they changing slowly. We’re talking about changes that take generations, but they are, and even Toldos Aron, there are changes there. There was a time. I remember, in 1981, I found it extremely difficult to found Toldos Aron Hasids who spoke Hebrew. Now, most of them speak . They only spoke Yiddish. Most of them now speak . I spoke to them-
But you- Sorry, go on.
Yes, go on.
Go. No, go.
Sorry, it’s all right. I spoke to most of them back in the '80s in English. Some of them had learnt English because they were beginning to go into the outside world and work. I wasn’t able to converse in any form of Hebrew at all. Now almost all of them speak . They all, of course, still speak Yiddish, but changes are happening. It’s unavoidable, but their official position is still that we are against the modern state of Israel, which is… How can I put it? It’s a destruction, and it’s a profaning of the Holy Land of Israel, and indeed, it is forbidden according to their interpretation of halacha and Jewish tradition.
But that’s just the Satmar, not Hasidim. Just the Satmar group.
It’s an interesting question. Definitely the Satmar, and Toldos Aron are almost the client Hasidim of Satmar. They’re from the same gene pool of belief. Other Hasidim, I would say… I would say that there are three takes on Zionism. Take number one is those that are now embracing it, like Lubavitch, like Ger, the Gerrer Hasidim. Take number two is that we don’t like but we have to work with it: “It’s here to stay. The Zionists are going nowhere.” So they will accept it but not warmly. Group number three: “We’re still opposed to it.” But that group number three is becoming more and more isolated because the reality of the situation is the Zionist state is going nowhere. So it depends who you ask and when, and indeed, even within Toldos Aron, I know of no Toldos Aron Hasid that say, “Oh, we’re Zionists,” but in effect, a lot of them are. But they won’t publicly associate themselves with it. Does that clarify?
Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
Pleasure. Ron: “From the way you speak, you had almost unlimited access to any sect of any religion or to, essentially, any site in Jerusalem.” Yes, it is true. I developed a sense of doing it, because I relished change and I relish difference and I relish the idea of being overwhelmed. I loved it; therefore, they sensed I didn’t have fear, firstly, and secondly, they sensed that I didn’t judge. I loved being amongst Christians or Jews or Muslims. And I should add I was particularly attracted to the most extreme of them all, so that gave me the access I needed. That was between 1981 and 2002 'cause I kept going back to Jerusalem time and again. And then, also, in summers, I would travel to Islamic countries around the Middle East; therefore, the Islamic sects I visited in Jerusalem add a hinterland of knowledge of Islam that I could take to those sects, and that gave me additional aspect. Then when I moved to Jerusalem in 2002, I chose where I lived, very carefully. I chose Musrara, which is this fascinating neighbourhood at the crossroads of East and West and Mea She'arim, and so on. That meant that I chose a house where I knew that I could have Muslims and Christians and Jews there, because a lot of these sects are very closed and, if a closed sect has members of that sect that are seen miles away from their home sect, questions will be asked of them because everybody in Jerusalem is watching everybody. But if I chose a home that was in an area that was a hop, skip, and a jump from East Jerusalem and a hop, skip, and a jump from Mea She'arim, then a resident of East Jerusalem or resident of Mea She'arim… Nobody would bat an eyelid if they saw them wandering into my home and into that area, so my home became a place where not only I could then go out with ease to these groups. But crucially, they could come with ease to me, and that’s what happened over that four-year period. I hope that answers that.
Q: “Can you talk about the education of girls?”
A: Yes, the girls in Toldos Aron are kept very, very tightly uneducated from the point of view of religious learning. They will not learn Halakha. They will not learn Talmud. In other groups, it is changing. In Toldos Aron, it is not. They will learn a very, very, very quick diet of what they need to know, in the opinion of those that run the group, to run a home, to run a family, to have a relationship with their husband, so it’s extreme limited.
Q: “Do the Hasidim interact at all with the Orthodox Mizrahi community?”
A: Depends how you define interact. Not officially, but there are many, many links, of course. We’re talking about human beings. I keep referring to “Shtisel.” In a sense, “Shtisel” confirmed to me all the things I’ve known about Hasidim and discovered about Hasidim over the years, but what “Shtisel” confirmed to so many people that I’ve read time and again when people have watched “Shtisel,” the series, in Israel is that the biggest single realisation is that these are human beings with the frailties, with the sadness, with the happiness, with the good and bad points. There’s nasty Hasidim and saintly Hasidim. My old rabbi from school, Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, who, I believe, spoke on Tuesday evening at Lockdown University… Jeremy said to me decades ago that when he lived in Mea She'arim people were either saints or thugs, something like that. He was right. He was right. I have never come across so many beautiful wonderful saintly people in Mea She'arim, and I have never come across such thugs and hypocrites, as well. This is the world, and Mea She'arim, in a way, is a microcosm of that. Interaction with Orthodox Mizrahi: unofficially, yes because, despite what people think, many people from Mea She'arim work and they increasingly work in the outside world. So they do come across some, but officially, no.
Q: “Where are the girls/women in these huge ?”
A: Upstairs behind the ladies’ galleries. They are there, and by the way, are a very important mechanism in Mea She'arim for a number of things. I briefly mentioned, last time, that one of the things that the are used for is for the girls to sit with the and to get the first look at the boys. The will say, “D'you like the look of him?” so all the boys in Toldos Aron, the unmarried men, are in one particular place in a . And that’s where they’ll stand for two to three hours, so the girls can get a really good look. And the will say, “What d'you think of him? And what d'you think of him?” Now, how do I know this? Because sometimes I took many people to these over the years. The Toldos Aron starts at around midnight on a Friday night and goes, maybe, up till before dawn or to 2:00-3:00 a.m. But I sometimes used to take women, and the women used to go in through the women’s entrance and up the women’s staircase. And they used to come out afterwards and used to tell me what had been discussed, and it was so fascinating. The men would be praying and would be singing and would be concentrating on the prayers, the spiritual aspect of the . They’d be singing to an ecstatic state. I strongly urge you to go to a next time you go to Mea She'arim. No harm will come to you. It’ll be a wonderful experience. It might be an uncomfortable experience. It might be an experience that will shatter what you feel Judaism is, but doesn’t matter. Go. See what you think yourself. But totally different for the women. I heard that the women… I was told reliably that the women will be talking very quietly. They’d be pointing this and that out. They were studying what was going on in the male section, again, not what you think.
Q: James: “How are the rebbes elected/chosen?”
A: They are not elected. It’s, in the time-honored version, what used to be the old Conservative party in Britain, that a rebbe emerges. Now, normally, the rebbe is the oldest son, but that’s not always the case now. Sometimes it might be the most suitable son, the son that is seen as being the most rebbish material, rebbe, not rubbish, rebbish material. In the old days, it was the oldest son. Now it’s different, and now, by the way, there are also fights as to who will be the rebbe, because now Hasidic groups are much wealthier and much more powerful than they used to be so there is now a tussle for control. So often, these lead to very, very bitter tussles.
Q: “Are you familiar with the book ‘Nine Quarters of Jerusalem’?”
A: Yes, it’s just out. But I haven’t read it yet. The book reviews are just in now. So I’m not familiar with it. I’ve read two or three of the reviews. So I can’t comment. If I can add, a wonderful book is “Nine Gates: The Chassidic Mysteries” by Jiri Langer and “Nine and a Half Mystics” by Herbert Weiner. That was a very influential book in my time. It’s somewhat dated now because “Nine and a Half Mystics” was written so long ago, but it’s still a very beautiful book. “Nine Gates: The Chassidic Mysteries”; all the nines for some reason; is a wonderful, wonderful, magical book.
Q: Jolanda: “I just don’t understand why they form their own groups? Why do they splinter instead of staying united and strong for financial/ritual customs?” Why?
A: Because we’re human, ha. I’m not defending it, nor am I attacking it. We’re human beings, and the Hasidim splintered right from the outset. Baal Shem Tov, once he died, you have the Maggid of Mezritch. And then, it splintered many, many times. This is the human condition, surely. Same in Islam. Same in Christianity. But what richness it brings. Jolanda, I don’t necessarily disagree with what you’re saying, but the other side is the richness, the mosaic of life. There’s another book for you: “A Jerusalem Mosaic.” I can’t remember the author. Fantastic book written in the 1960s or ‘70s. Google it. So it leads to the richness of life, as well.
Q: Maron: “What is the website?”
A: Nkuk, that’s the website of Neturei Karta. You can easily look it up: ww.nkuk.org. It might be ww.nkusa.org if U-K doesn’t work. That should work. It’s… Well, I’ll let you judge for yourself what you think it is.
Q: “How does the”… Ooh, yes, “how does the instance of COVID compare with those less observant?”
A: COVID has been a massive challenge in the communities there. There’s a huge amount of research being done on it, very interesting research. If you google, “COVID and the Orthodox,” a huge amount of articles will come up. Look up the “Times of Israel” website. Loads of article about COVID in those communities, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff there. I won’t go into it 'cause there’s so much good stuff being written that you can have a look at yourself. The “Times of Israel” website is superb, and there’s loads of stuff about COVID, both the medical side of COVID with the Hasidim and also the anthropological side of COVID with Hasidim.
Q: “Was it difficult to get access to take photographs?”
A: Yes and no, but on the whole, I could more or less take what I wanted within reason, always asking permission.
Q: “How many children are allowed for claiming child allowances?”
A: I don’t know the answer to that question, sorry, Mike.
Q: Rosalind: “I can understand that belonging to a cult is somewhat clubby, but why do men all have to look exactly the same?”
A: Ah, because it’s control. It is social control. They want them to look exact the same, number one, so they will stand out if they leave; number two, to bring everyone closer together; number three, to keep outsiders out. So it serves all those three things, and they’re all equally as important.
Q: “How on earth do you recognise anyone?”
A: Oh, no problem, because the human mind is a remarkable thing. I think there’s loads of research. Lots of people in Western Europe sometimes can’t recognise some people in the East, but people in the East don’t have any problem recognising people in the East, because our minds adapt and we have different ways of recognising people. Oh, everybody looked completely different in Toldos Aron to me as soon as I got used to it.
Q: Elliot: “Why did the kibbutz style of living fade?”
A: Ooh, that’s a question to put to students of the Zionist state, the Zionist entity, “the Zionist experiment” as many people would say.
Q: “How many modern kibbutzim exist today?”
A: I do not know. That’s not my of expertise of knowledge.
Q: “Are we talking about pure communism or something else?”
A: Well, when it comes to the Toldos Aron Hasidim, it is a really interesting… It is very much like those original kibbutzim. There’s shared wealth. There’s shared utensils. There’s shared homes, so it really is remarkably close in many ways. And there’s no private property in that neighbourhood.
Q: Sharon: “We saw men’s laundry hanging. How and where do women’s and girls’ clothes get dried?”
A: Inside in drying machines. Simple as that.
Q: Ron Bick: “Do none of these people mind having their photo taken?”
A: If they do, I wouldn’t have taken them. At a distance, it’s not a problem. I always asked first if they were in any way close.
Q: “All these huge families, don’t little girls participate in seeing their great-grandfather?”
A: Yes.
Q: “All the children are in the photo are boys.”
A: Correct, I wasn’t allowed to take photograph of the women. That is absolutely spot on. The girls were in a separate room. The women dined in a separate room, in fact. Could I talk a bit about the women? I’ve said bits and pieces about them, but of course, I never spoke to the women or the girls. But I spoke to women that had spoken to the women. In fact, there was a woman, a non-Jewish woman, who lived in Jerusalem at the time I was there. She was Dutch, and she got incredible access to Toldos Aron, number one, because she was a woman and, number two, because she was non-Jewish. They gave her this amazing access. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name, but maybe if you google, “Dutch woman who got access to Toldos Aron,” that might throw up things. I must google her, actually, ‘cause I’d like to make contact with her again.
Q: Ron asks, “How often do members of these sects leave to enter the secular or non-Haredi community?”
A: Very few. There is an organisation called Gesher in Israel that caters for people leaving. It is growing, but it is few, and there is an equivalent organisation in London that also helps people leave those communities if they really are desperate to leave and they want to leave. And that’s done and is doing very, very interesting work in this country as well, but “often,” how d'you measure often. We’re talking about a minority. It’s a growing minority, but it’s very small because the costs of leaving are great. But this is another topic in itself.
Q: Brenda: “Would Rabbi Hirsch and Arafat have spoken through an interpreter or directly?”
A: They spoke through an interpreter.
Q: “If directly, what was their common language?”
A: It was an interpreter. I can tell you that now, but Rabbi Hirsch did speak fluent English. He was American-born, actually, Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, but others don’t speak English who are in Neturei Karta, so it would be interpreters.
Q: Rosalind: “If they do only marry within their own circles, isn’t liable to lead to medical problems?”
A: Yes, but they also take medical advice and take the tests that they need to take so that they are not marrying too closely. They are aware that this is a potential problem.
Q: “Why is it they live in Israel if they’re so against it?”
A: “Because,” their answer would be, “we live in the land of Israel that predates the state of Israel. We arrived as a sect way before there was a state.” And “therefore, we live in the land of Israel that the state then hijacked” would be their line.
Right, ah, Lorna, thank you, yes, Bukharan , and indeed, the Bukharim Quarter was a subquarter of Mea She'arim. It’s still called the Bukharim Quarter, but there’s very few Bukharans left.
Q: “Do you ever feel torn between two cultures, that of Bloomsbury versus that of Hasidic Jerusalem?”
A: No, I fit very happily in both, but I choose to live in the Bloomsbury one. The Jiri Langer book “Nine Gates: The Chassidic Mysteries” talks of Jiri Langer, who couldn’t cope with going from one to the other, and he eventually committed suicide. Read the book. He couldn’t cope with being pulled from one existence to another. I love part of that.
“Hi, I think the family with the Santa Claus are dressed as Snow White and the dwarves.” Good point. Yes, you might well be right. Thank you for that. Yep, maybe I’ve misinterpreted it all these times.
Q: Okay, Rosie: “With such large families, how can they afford food and housing?”
A: With great difficulty. Those that are wealthy in the community will fund those that’re not. They will pour all their money back into helping their own, a charity largesse.
Q: Gwen: “What type of work do the men do?”
A: Could be anything. If they’re working outside the community, they’ll need permission from the rebbe to go, but they could be accountants. A lot of them are very good at accountancy, very good at computing, very good at business, so it could be any of those things.
Q: And Barbara: “Some of them were saved by moving to Israel. Why don’t they see the necessity of Jewish Israel?”
A By all means, let me forward you my article if you can email me, and I’ll send that. Not enough time to go into that now, although I think I’ve touched upon some things that might partially give you an answer to that.
Teddy: “They gladly take the money that supports them from go.” Well, it depends which sect you’re talking about. Some of them refuse the money. Some of them, quite right, they do take the money. You’re right. It depends. It depends who we’re talking about there.
Q: “Are there generic consequences from excesses of inbreeding in some of these communities?”
A: There are articles about that as well, and there can be if they’re not careful. They do try to take very great care. They’re aware of the issues.
Q: “Is Mea She'arif purely residential? Are there businesses within?”
A: I’m not sure what you’re referring to with Mea She'arif. I’m sorry.
Q: “Is Chabad also Hasidic?”
A: It is. It’s one of the oldest Hasidic groups, established by the Alter Rebbe, the old rebbe, second-generation Hasidim. Goes right back to… What is it? 1790s, very early 1800s, yes. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. Jackie:
Q: “If the Toldos Aron are such a close set, presumably there is a lot of marriage between relatives.”
A: Yes, and I think I’ve partly answered that. Hopefully, I have to your satisfaction.
Q: “Would you have Jews, Christians, and Muslims at your home at the same time?”
A: Yes, I did, and my home in Jerusalem had Friday nights when they were all there. These were magical and wonderfully, at times, bizarre, but they were also, at times, beautiful evenings.
Q: “How do you spell the name of the sect you were telling us about?”
A: Toldos Aron, which means the generation of , T-O-L-D-O-S Aron, A-R-O-N.
Q: “Are there cases of sexual harassment among the Hasidim?”
A: Yes, much discussed and much publicised. Look that up in “Times of Israel,” as well. There’s quite a bit about that. There are cases. How widespread is another bleak question.
Q: “How did the blondness arrive?”
A: I’ve seen various theories about it, and I haven’t seen a definitive answer. Can’t give you a definitive answer for that.
Q: “I’m surprised at the relationship with the Palestine leadership. How common is this?”
A: It’s common amongst Toldos Aron leaders, but as I mentioned before, Most of the people aren’t really interested in politics. They’re interested in feeding their families and bringing up their families and working.
Q: “Can you comment on the relationship with the rebbe, in particular when seeing a decision on what appears a day-to-day problem?”
A: Well, it depends. Some Hasidim are more reliant upon their rebbes than other. In Toldos Aron, they don’t go to their rebbe with every single problem. In some other groups, like Lubavitch, they really consulted their rebbe every wise: on business questions, on making deals, on travel. The Lubavitch rebbe was heavily petitioned and questioned on minutiae of life of some Hasidim, but I have to say that every Hasid in every group… It’s much more subtle than people think from the outside. Every Hasid leads their Hasidic life in the way as they see fit, to a certain extent. Some will go to their rebbe for every single question: “Should I buy this suit? Or that suit?” Some will never consult their rebbe. It depends on the rebbe itself. It’s subtle, it’s nuanced, and it’s different between each sect and within each sect. But the is a central point where the Hasidic men will come together and that brotherhood, that intimacy. Now, here’s a good example. Some men in the will think there is something spiritual and magical and miraculous going on in a . Others will say, “Well, it’s just a nice time to get together and have a good old singsong.” Others will see it as an opportunity to have first sight of the . So d'you get my meaning? That every ritual in the Hasidism is seen and interpreted in different ways by different Hasidim.
Q: “Did they ever question you being a single man?”
A; No because they didn’t care. The Toldos Aron Hasidim, unlike, for example, Lubavitch, who might want to marry me off, unlike other Jews that would want to influence me to become religious, the very close nature of Satmar and Toldos Aron meant that, in a sense, I could have a more honest relationship with them than I could with other Hasidim, because of how extreme they are. They’re so closed they weren’t interested. They didn’t want me to join their sect. They didn’t want to invite me to become a Toldos Aron or Satmar Hasid. They don’t care about saving my soul. That meant, ironically, I could have a more open and honest relationship because they knew that I knew that they weren’t out to convert me to become one of them. So if they knew that and if they knew that I knew that and if I knew that they knew that, if you get my meaning, I could simply ask whatever questions I wanted, and they would give me whatever answers I wanted. It’s a unexpected twist to it.
Q: “When the girls and boys are separated, brothers and sisters live in a home with just girls and boys. Does a woman and man live with them?”
A: Yes, the head of the households, the man and the woman, will live there, but remember they’re pretty much separate, and they’ll dine separately, as well.
Q: “Are there medically qualified members of the group?”
A: There are quite a high amount of doctors, but if they want to study medicine, they do have to get permission from the rebbe because they need to go to university. And the conditions are always the same: you go, you study, you don’t go into any of the social events, and you come back straight home after you’ve finished your courses. That’s always the condition.
Q: “If they’re averse to an Israeli state, why are they comfortable with the new Arab state?”
A: Again, if I can refer you to my article, if you’re interested, throw me an email, and I’ll send that to you. That might give you a partial answer. I hope it will. Martin:
Q: “Do many go into profession in medicine.”
A: Yes, they do.
Q: “When you are amongst them, how d'you dress?”
A: I would tend to dress in a black suit and a black hat, although I did also have the golden coat, and I did also have the as you saw in my second picture today.
Q: Okay, and “what is the difference between Hasidim and Chabad?”
A: Well, Chabad are a sect of Hasidim. Chabad stands for ; it’s an acrostic; which are mystical words to do with… It’s an acronym I should say: . So Chabad is a type of Hasidim just as Toldos Aron are a type of Hasidim.
Q: “Do belong to the health care and accept funding for health care? Which the children born and planned home deliveries?”
A: There are quite a lot of home deliveries, yes. I don’t know the answer. Yes, I do know the answer to . They try to set up their own and pay their own money, but some of them do pay into… Most of them do pay into a state , and they pay that way, yes. Oh, and there was an answer, but that’s gone.
That seems to be all the questions. I thank you very, very much for all those questions and your interest. 7th and the 14th of April are on to Islamic sects of Jerusalem where I’ll be hanging human beings and sects onto the physical Jerusalem that I mentioned last time. Wishing you all a good evening. Thank you all. I’m wishing you a good few weeks ahead.
Thank you.