The Hasidim

One winter day Kyle and I were walking to 4 Frères to buy a few things for dinner. It was a Saturday and it was quite cold. Suddenly a man dressed in the garb of a Hasidic Jew rushed out of his house and asked me to “fix his furnace”. Taken aback, I mumbled something about my incompetence in such matters. But he ushered both of us in and told us that his furnace was malfunctioning and he needed to turn on the auxiliary electrical heating.

Kyle was just visiting then from Vancouver. So she was totally mystified. But I suddenly understood. On their Sabbath the Hasidim must not touch anything mechanical. Not light switches, or stoves, or cars. The latter is the main reason they live within walking distance of their places of worship.

So round the house we went flicking switches as directed. You can imagine Kyle’s confusion about what was going on, until we left and I explained things to her!

These people remind me of the Christian group in which I was raised. They are quite separate from non-Hasidim. They have large families. And they work for each other. Also, it seems, that they are people of the Book. Quite literal in their interpretations of the sacred text. They also know how to stretch their own rules for convenience. Such as when they construct “erouvs”. This irritates some other citizens, particularly, I suspect, those with slight anti-semitic sentiments. We all try at times to justify our actions, so I simply find it amusing.

When Lotte Reiniger lived with us in the 1970s she would stand on the balcony and watch the Hasidim go to worship. It made her recall her home in Berlin in the 1930s. There were tears in her eyes.