I Barely Escaped My Hasidic Community. To Do So, I Had To Leave 6 Of My Kids Behind.

"By age 39, I was a mother of 10. And I had learned what kind of father my husband was."


Beatrice Weber
Huffpost
June 9, 2023


I stepped out the door of my marital home in Monsey, a Hasidic neighborhood in New York state, headed for the car where my youngest four children waited in the back seat, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Then, I was hit with regret. I’d left the other six children behind.

I was taking this drastic step to be a responsible mother, but worried that I was doing more harm than good by leaving.

“We are going to drive around for a little bit and then we will arrive at our cousin’s house right before the holiday starts.” I chirped as we passed over the suburb’s darkened back roads. I hoped my chatter hid the tension I felt inside. But my fingers were clenched as they grasped the steering wheel.

I hadn’t been certain that I would make it out safely with any of the children. Several months earlier, after years of marriage counseling that went nowhere, I had asked my devout husband of 22 years for a divorce. He responded firmly: “You can leave. But if you do, you will never see the children again.”

For many years, I had prided myself on being a good daughter, selfless mother and compliant wife in the Hasidic tradition. But now I knew that I had to get out.

When I was 16, I was sent to a Jewish seminary, where a rabbi was brought in to prepare me and others for our roles in marriage and motherhood. “The first thing you need to know is the importance of listening to your husbands,” he said. “Every husband needs that kind of respect. That is what will make you a good mother.”

He gestured emphatically, twisting his pointy dark beard in his hands as he stood on the small wooden podium, with over 100 teen girls seated on benches surrounding him in the dimly lit classroom.

He said that the Talmud states: “Who is a kosher woman? One who follows the will of her husband.” I listened intently to his words, taking it all in. I desperately wanted to be a good wife and mother.

When I was 18, I met my future husband for the first time — from across my family’s dining room table, as part of our arranged marriage process.

“When our children are younger, we will send them to more Hasidic schools,” he said. “And when they are older, we can send them to other types of yeshivas.” I nodded in agreement, acquiescing to his opinions immediately and letting him make the important decisions.

He knew best. After all, he was one of the top scholars in his yeshiva. In fact, his father had demanded a significant dowry before his parents would agree to have him meet with me. I was lucky.

The children came quickly.

The oldest, a girl, was born prematurely, barely eight months after we were married. The second, a son, followed closely behind, less than 11 months later. By the time I was 23 and my husband was 25, we were parents of four children. By age 39, I was a mother of 10.

And I had learned what kind of father my husband was.

“Come here,” I once heard him saying from another room. “Go sit under the table, and don’t move.” I heard a muffled cry as Daniel, my 4-year-old son, stumbled over his feet toward the coffee table and bent down, almost folding himself in half to fit himself underneath.

“Let him stay there for a few hours until he learns his lesson,” my husband insisted to me, as he headed toward his study. I tightened my lips and didn’t say a word. I kept quiet even though I knew that this wasn’t the way to treat a child.

Instead, I pushed my anger down until it was just a tiny little ball, barely noticeable in the tension of my tightly held stomach muscles. I then headed toward the kitchen and began cooking supper, blocking out the sound of Daniel’s crying with the whirring of the Magic Mill.

I would be a good wife and mother, I insisted to myself.

As the children got older, the atmosphere at home worsened. The large dining room table was set for Shabbat. It was draped in a handmade white tablecloth with beige tassels. A gold-trimmed china dinner plate sat at each of the 10 settings. At the head of the table, my husband’s setting, sat a silver goblet and two loaves of freshly baked challah covered in an embroidered cloth, which was especially designed for this purpose.

My seat was at the foot of the table, close to the kitchen door, so that I could both take care of the children and serve the five-course meal. I had gotten used to being quiet during Shabbat meals and serving the food instead of contributing to the conversation. That was what my husband wanted. That’s what the tradition wanted, too.

But this Friday night, a conversation that he was having with my oldest son caught my attention, and I sat upright as I began to share my thoughts. I had barely gotten the words out of my mouth when I saw my husband wave his hand dismissively.

“Don’t pay attention. It’s not relevant,” he said, still not meeting my eyes. “The Talmud says that women’s minds are flighty, and that is why they are forbidden to learn the Talmud.”

Filled with despair, I slumped back down in my chair. A tiny ember of rage flickered through me, but it was quickly extinguished. It was easier to be silent.

After years, I finally reached a breaking point. And against the will of my husband and parents, I started seeing a therapist. One of the first things I did when I started speaking up was to transfer Daniel, who was then 13, out of his current yeshiva, where corporal punishment was the norm, to one that had a gentler approach.

But the damage had been done.

By the time I realized that there was no way I could parent my children or care for myself within the marriage and had to leave, my older children had been made to turn against me. Those final few months in the marital home were excruciating, and I feared I would lose them all. I overheard the older children telling the younger ones not to listen to me.

The fact that I left with any of the children was a Passover miracle.

“Know this,” my therapist stated with conviction as I told her my fears and pain over leaving. “This is the first time in your life that you were really a mother.”

I gasped slightly, sitting up straight, my hands leaning on the soft handle of the dusty pink armchair. It was several days after I had left, and I had settled into a friend’s apartment near Monsey as I looked for a permanent place to live.

“But I left the others behind.” My voice wavered as my knees began to shudder involuntarily, the tips of my feet pointing into the shaggy carpet of the therapist’s office. “How can I ever forgive myself?

I had not only left without my 13-year-old son and five older children, but had also taken out an order of protection against my two eldest sons, as I was terrified that they would hurt me or take my younger children away. It was incredibly difficult, but I knew that I had to do it.

How else would I protect myself and the younger children? How would they learn that there were consequences to their behaviors if they continued to follow their father’s lead in bullying me?

As of last month, it has been nine years since I left the marriage. I have left the Hasidic community entirely and am now an outspoken advocate for change. My role as a mother has expanded.

My phone holds countless voicemails and text messages from my older children that fill me with pain. They compare me to a Nazi who wants to destroy the Jewish people. They tell me that they will never forgive me. They say that I will pay for my actions in “the world to come.”

Each time another news article is released about my advocacy work or I publish a piece of writing, I am deluged by another slew of texts. Sometimes I block the messages; it is just too much.

Other times I reply patiently, knowing that they come from a place of pain.

On social media, I am accused of abandoning my children, as I fight a 9-year-long custody battle to keep my younger ones with me. My older children had arranged marriages one after another, and I was not wanted at their weddings. And yet, the positive ramifications of my choice to step up as a real mother on that fateful Passover eve remain.

Today, I live with three of my children in a small Brooklyn apartment in New York City, where I watch them explore the world and discover career paths that would have been impossible for them before. I am thrilled when I hear how my older daughters, who are now mothers themselves, are living life boldly. One of them has started a business, and another one has graduated college with honors. They are leading the way for their own children and teaching me more about motherhood than I could have ever imagined.

All the children are watching: the ones who live with me and the ones who don’t. I know that every time I speak out publicly about an injustice or take action to empower my younger children, I am having a positive impact on them all. I am giving them permission to choose themselves.

I am teaching them that being a good mother is more than being an obedient wife and a subservient caregiver. Instead, being a good mother has meant trusting myself and making powerful choices, against all odds.

Beatrice Weber is a writer and advocate for Hasidic children. She is the executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education, or YAFFED. She is also an ordained interspiritual minister, speaker and coach. She was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community and had an arranged marriage with a rabbi before graduating high school.



https://www.huffpost.com/entry/escape-hasidic-community-arranged-marriage_n_64822515e4b04ee51a935a80

NY lawmakers move to ban corporal punishment in private schools following abuse allegations at yeshivas

Jacob Henry

Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NY Jewish Week
March 6, 2023

(New York Jewish Week) — A group of New York State Assembly members and state senators are proposing a ban on corporal punishment in schools in the wake of a lengthy New York Times investigation of yeshivas published last October that included several allegations of teachers hitting students.

Multiple bills were proposed in the senate and assembly last week to outlaw the practice, which is already banned in public schools but not explicitly within private schools. One bill deemed likely to garner the most support, according to the New York Times, defines corporal punishment and prohibits it across educational settings in the state. The bill’s lead sponsors are State Senator Julia Salazar and Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, both Democrats who represent the heavily Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg.

But after the Times published its coverage of the bill, Salazar found herself in a Twitter spat with Eliza Shapiro, one of the reporters who wrote the story and many of the articles in the paper’s monthslong investigative series on Hasidic schools. That, in turn, led to Orthodox activists disputing the claims of another Hasidic lawmaker, Simcha Eichenstein, on the social media platform.

The first installment of the Times’ investigative series, published in September, reported that yeshivas that had received a total of $1 billion in taxpayer funding over a period of four years were providing less than adequate schooling in secular subjects. The article also reported on 911 calls and interviews with alumni who said that some teachers in Hasidic schools regularly use corporal punishment in class.

Leading Hasidic groups claimed that the investigation encouraged antisemitism. In response to the article and its followups, Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella haredi Orthodox group, launched a campaign called “Know Us” to push back on the findings of the Times investigation.

The investigation, however, has spurred officials into action to address its claims. Last week, the Times story on the corporal punishment legislation said that it came in response to its reporting.

Salazar then wrote on Twitter that “the use of physical or violent methods to ostensibly discipline students has happened in many schools. I haven’t seen any evidence of it being a pattern in yeshivas.”

Shapiro, who co-wrote the investigation with Brian Rosenthal, replied by posting a statement by Salazar in which the state senator said the legislation was, in fact, a response to the Times investigation. Salazar then responded: “Reports – which must be addressed, hence the bill – are different from a pattern. I hear more about CP [corporal punishment] in other non-public schools.”

Eichenstein, who represents Borough Park, a large Hasidic enclave in Brooklyn, retweeted Salazar’s tweet, suggesting that the bill’s goal is “no corporal punishment at any school.”

“As a yeshiva parent/former student, I’m not familiar with the use of corporal punishment at yeshivas, nor would I tolerate it,” Eichenstein wrote. Echoing the claims of haredi groups, he added, “Sadly, @nytimes needs to continue its onslaught against Orthodox Jews & prop up their mudslinging.”

Eichenstein’s tweet led dozens of Hasidic people on Twitter to respond with stories of experiencing or hearing of corporal punishment while they were students at yeshivas. The stories ranged from someone having his braces smashed into his cheeks to someone being thrown against a blackboard to students being slapped or having chalk thrown at them.

“This is such a bald faced lie, Simcha, and you know it,” replied Asher Lovy, an abuse survivor and director of Za’akah, an organization that provides support to survivors of sexual abuse in the Orthodox community. “I was picked up and thrown against a blackboard by a rebbi in 2nd grade. In 3rd I was dragged by my arm across the floor and physically thrown out of a classroom, bumping desks and chairs along the way.”

Dave Katz, an alum of Yeshiva of Spring Valley, an Orthodox school in Rockland County, New York, replied, “I saw many kids get spanked, ears twisted, and other physical punishment, and I once got slapped so hard, my glasses flew down the hall.”

Eichenstein later posted another tweet saying: “I have not and will not cast doubt on anyone’s lived experience.”

Eichenstein added, “What I will not tolerate is this notion that corporal punishment is somehow accepted as a routine disciplinary tool in today’s era at yeshivas. That is an outright lie.”

Eichenstein told the New York Jewish Week on Monday that he had never experienced corporal punishment when he was a student at a yeshiva. He reiterated that he wasn’t disputing people’s personal stories.

“If you’re going to talk about something you saw that happened 30 years ago, clarify that it happened 30 years ago,” he said. “I can’t sit here and tell you that there may not be a singular instance a week from now. It could happen, we’re a very large system. But the idea that [corporal punishment] is an acceptable tool with no consequences is not true… If an educator raises their hand on a child, there should be zero tolerance. That educator should no longer be allowed in the building, let alone a classroom.”

https://www.jta.org/2023/03/06/ny/ny-lawmakers-move-to-ban-corporal-punishment-in-schools-and-spark-a-twitter-fight

How Public Money Goes to Support a Hasidic Village’s Private Schools

Created for a New York Hasidic group in 1989, the Kiryas Joel Village Union Free School District has directed millions of dollars to the community's network of private schools.

Jay Root

New York Times
February 20, 2023

For years, Kiryas Joel, a bustling village north of New York City, has run one of the most unusual public school districts in America.

The village is almost entirely populated by Hasidic Jews, and the district was created to serve just one group: Hasidic children with disabilities. Most other children attend the community's private religious schools, which stress the rigorous study of Jewish law and prayer but offer little instruction in secular subjects.

Created a little over 30 years ago, the unique public school system immediately drew concerns that a school district created for members of a single faith could never separate itself from their religious institutions.

Then, in 2009, New York auditors identified a glaring conflict of interest: Two of the school district's board members had voted to use tens of millions of tax dollars to lease a building from a private religious school organization that they also helped run.

Since then, the conflicts have grown, a New York Times examination has found, with millions in public education dollars continuing to flow into the same religious school organization and its affiliates.

Based on thousands of pages of public records, the review showed that the small public school district is now paying more than $2.4 million a year — about 5 percent of its annual budget — to companies affiliated with the private school organization, the United Talmudical Academy of Kiryas Joel, a nonprofit that wields enormous influence in the cloistered community in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

Founded in the 1970s in Orange County by members of the Satmar Hasidic group, Kiryas Joel now has more than 30,000 residents.

The U.T.A., as the organization is known, provides schooling for most of the children in Kiryas Joel, which was founded in the 1970s by a group of Hasidic Jews who had set out to form their own religious village. (Hasidim are distinct from‌‌ modern Orthodox Jews, and others who strictly follow religious law, because many of them do not integrate their lives with contemporary society, devoting themselves instead to preserving centuries-old traditions.)

The Kiryas Joel Village Union Free School District operates one school and one early childhood education center. Records show it has an annual budget of about $40 million, with about a quarter of that money coming from local property taxes.

Rather than pay for new construction, as state auditors said it should have done, the Kiryas Joel district has leased even more space from the U.T.A., which controls more than $325 million in assets, and an affiliate. It has also paid the U.T.A. and its affiliates for the use of classroom and parking lot space and a swimming pool.

Timeline: New York's Oversight of Hasidic Schools

State law requires all private schools to provide an education comparable to what is in public schools. In 2015, New York City's education department said it would investigate complaints about the quality of secular education in schools in the Hasidic Jewish community. Here's a timeline of the investigation:

July 2015: Graduates of Hasidic religious schools, known as yeshivas, wrote a complaint about the poor secular education they received. Then-Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration opened an investigation into the schools, but it soon stalled, plagued by delays and a lack of cooperation from the yeshivas.

November 2018: The state released updated rules outlining what nonpublic schools like yeshivas must teach and for how long – with consequences for schools that did not comply. Hasidic leaders sued, and the rules were thrown out in court in 2019.

December 2019: The city Department of Investigation found the de Blasio administration delayed a report on the schools. A few days later, the city finally released findings: only two of 28 yeshivas that officials visited were offering a basic secular education. The investigation has not concluded, and the city has done little to follow up.

Sept. 11, 2022: A New York Times investigation found scores of schools are systematically denying children a basic education, a violation of state law that has trapped generations of students in a cycle of joblessness and destitution. Even so, The Times found, these institutions have collected more than $1 billion from city, state and federal sources in the past four years alone.

Sept. 13, 2022: The State Board of Regents voted unanimously to approve rules that would force Hasidic yeshivas and other private schools to prove they are offering basic secular instruction. The vote came after four years of tumultuous debate about how the government should regulate the schools.

Oct. 6, 2022: The New York education commissioner ruled that a large boys' yeshiva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is violating state law by failing to provide a basic secular education. This is the first time the state has taken action against a Hasidic boys' school. New York City had earlier recommended the school be found in compliance with the law.

Oct. 24, 2022: The operators of the largest private Hasidic school in New York State admitted to diverting millions of dollars from government programs in a widespread fraud scheme, paying teachers off the books and receiving reimbursement for student meals that they never actually provided.

In addition, the district has used money from federal stimulus funding it received during the coronavirus pandemic to make millions of dollars in repairs to buildings owned by the U.T.A. and an affiliated nonprofit.

The decision to pay for the repairs was made by the public district's school board. But two of its members, Harry Polatsek and Simon Kepecs, also serve on the board of the U.T.A. — the same conflict that auditors flagged more than a decade earlier. Neither board member responded to requests for comment, but the district superintendent said that they did not have to recuse themselves because the leases would last longer than the repairs.

The district is also paying one son of Mr. Polatsek, the school board president, a six-figure salary to work as a teacher's aide and emergency medical technician. It has a multimillion-dollar contract for bus service with a company managed by another of his sons.

The district superintendent, Joel Petlin, said the school system was proud of the education it provided its students and that no district leader or board member had ever acted improperly.

The Kiryas Joel School District's superintendent, Joel Petlin, said that it had always followed the law and that its board members had acted with integrity.

"If you think our conflicts-of-interest policies and procedures need to be tightened or improved, and you think that is newsworthy, so be it," Mr. Petlin said. "But don't pretend that the Kiryas Joel Board of Education is directing or misappropriating federal and state dollars to private religious schools and organizations, because that is not true."

"In my opinion," he added, "that false narrative creates a misperception, and as a result, it directs cynicism, animus and violence towards the Jewish community."

Federal regulators have given the Kiryas Joel school system high marks over the years for the services it offers its students. And village leaders have said the school district is essential to accommodate Hasidic children with disabilities who cannot receive aid in the community's private schools and might become targets of ridicule in other nearby public schools.

But the money it sends to the U.T.A. and its affiliates has done more than just secure classroom space for the public school programs. It has supported private schools that provide thousands of boys with only cursory instruction in English and math, and barely any science or social studies, setting some back for life.

Representatives of the U.T.A. did not respond to several requests for comment.

Longtime opponents of the district said the conflicts of interest that have cropped up were the foreseeable consequences of forming a government agency for a single religious group.

"When you deal with small, sealed-off groups, these sorts of abuses do occur," said Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Committee, who opposed the district as co-director of the American Jewish Congress in the 1980s. "There's less of a check. And so it's not surprising that it developed this way."

Nearly 10,000 children in Kiryas Joel attend private Hasidic religious schools operated by the U.T.A.

The Kiryas Joel School District faced legal challenges almost from the moment that the village leaders began pushing for its creation.

In the 1980s, the leaders found a ready partner in George E. Pataki, the Republican assemblyman from Peekskill who would later become governor. Mr. Pataki co-sponsored a bill to create a breakaway school district for the village, and it was signed into law by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in 1989.

The new district drew swift condemnation. The leader of the New York State School Boards Association filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate it on the grounds that it represented an unlawful mixing of church and state, touching off legal battles that would span the 1990s and land in the U.S. Supreme Court — which ruled against the district in 1994.

But the Legislature passed more bills to create the district, and, eventually, opponents stopped fighting it.

When it was created more than 30 years ago, Kiryas Joel's school district drew concerns that a public school system established for members of a single faith could not disentangle itself from their religious institutions.

In 2009, auditors with the state comptroller's office found that the district had signed a 30-year lease with a subsidiary of the U.T.A. for the district's public school building, even though it would have been cheaper to borrow money and build a new school. (Mr. Petlin, the district superintendent, said the auditors underestimated the construction costs.)

The auditors also noted that Mr. Polatsek and Mr. Kepecs had failed to submit a required disclosure that they held seats on the boards of both the public school district and the U.T.A.

In 2011, the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Education concluded that the district had violated federal conflict-of-interest rules and misused funds for impoverished schoolchildren by tapping the money to pay the same lease the comptroller had flagged. The district was ordered to refund more than $276,000 and refrain from using that pot of federal money for future payments.

Since then, the board members have disclosed their ties to the U.T.A. every year. They have also vowed to abstain from votes involving the organization. But the official rebukes did not discourage the board from using public money to benefit the private school company in the years that followed, The Times found.

In 2009, state auditors cited the Kiryas Joel school board for leasing a building owned by a company controlled in part by two board members.

Records show that the business of the public school district and the private school organization has been intensely intermingled over the past five years.

Some of the spending that benefits the private schools, such as that for transportation, textbooks and remedial help for low-income children, is required by state and federal laws. But with other payments, the district appears to have gone out of its way to send funding to the U.T.A.

In many Hasidic private schools, girls receive more secular education than boys do.

To track the more than $2.4 million flowing to the private school system and its affiliates, The Times reviewed thousands of pages of school board meeting minutes and other documents and found:

• The payments include about $1.4 million for leasing buildings; $640,000 for operating a universal pre-K program; $330,000 to rent classrooms in the private boys' and girls' schools; and $19,000 to run a breakfast and lunch program, records show. About another $400,000 flows to the U.T.A. from district contractors.
• The district sent still more money to the U.T.A. after receiving more than twice its annual budget — some $95.3 million — in federal pandemic relief funds, qualifying for that sum based on the large numbers of low-income children in the village, including those in private schools.
• Among the expenses the district planned to cover with pandemic funds were about $2 million in lease payments over a 15-month period — transactions similar to the ones the federal auditors had flagged as inappropriate when made with federal dollars meant for impoverished students. (The rules governing stimulus spending are looser, and the rent payments were permissible.)
• Records show the district also used the federal money to pay for utilities, classroom furniture and photocopiers at the U.T.A. About 99 percent of the first $8.8 million the district received from the stimulus was used in the U.T.A. and other private schools, an internal memo shows.
• The district also told the state it planned to spend as much as $108,000 in federal stimulus money over the next three years to rent a pool from the U.T.A. at a rate of $200 an hour.

"We were given so much," the district's deputy superintendent, Josh Kamensky, said of the federal pandemic funds at an October board meeting. "It's really hard to spend all that money."

Through it all, Mr. Polatsek and Mr. Kepecs have maintained their seats on the school district and U.T.A. boards — and helped run an affiliated organization that does still more business with the district.

Two community leaders, Harry Polatsek, right, and Simon Kepecs, center, continue to sit on the boards of both the public school district and the religious organization that runs the community's private schools.

On a Thursday in October, a Times reporter attending a district school board meeting watched as both men voted to spend about $5 million in federal stimulus money to replace the heating and cooling system at an early childhood education center owned by the U.T.A.-affiliated company, which Mr. Kepecs and Mr. Polatsek co-founded. Both men still sit on its board, records show.

After The Times inquired about the board members' ties to the education center, Mr. Kepecs and Mr. Polatsek publicly disclosed their roles at the nonprofit, acknowledging a potential conflict of interest and pledging to abstain from future votes related to leases or contracts with the organization. In January, they recused themselves from a new vote related to the heating and cooling repairs.

The district has also been generous with employee salaries and benefits. Among the workers on its payroll is Aron Polatsek, the board president's son, who earns $178,000 a year as a "teacher aide/E.M.T.," records show. Mr. Petlin said the salary was justified because Aron Polatsek performs additional duties as a parent liaison and had worked at the district for more than 20 years.

The school system has also awarded a $4.6 million contract to a village bus company, Focus in Chinuch, managed by another son of Mr. Polatsek, Joel. That company, in turn, has donated about $300,000 a year to the U.T.A. over a recent four-year period "to promote religious education," tax documents show.

Records show Mr. Polatsek abstained from the vote on the bus contract renewal in 2020. A representative of the bus company said Joel Polatsek worked as an operations manager at the firm and had no independent decision-making authority.

Mr. Petlin, the superintendent, said any questions about board members' relatives were "misguided."

"Our leases and contracts are based upon our needs for space and for the services that we are mandated to provide," Mr. Petlin said. "Hiring and promotions at the Kiryas Joel School District are based upon merit, not by someone's last name."

Mr. Petlin, the superintendent, said the Kiryas Joel public school system cared deeply about its students and took pride in serving them.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 21, 2023, Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Hasidic Schools, Tax Dollars And Conflicts of Interest


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/nyregion/kiryas-joel-hasidic-school-district.html

ICSA Annual Conference: Going Off The Derech – leaving Jewish Ultra Orthodoxy.

ICSA Annual Conference: Going Off The Derech – leaving Jewish Ultra Orthodoxy.

Lea Lavy; Saturday, June 25, 2022; 2:00 PM-2:50 PM – online

People born into strict religions who decide to leave them remain in an in-between state even years later because of the internalization of the totalizing institutions in which they were raised. While converts into strict religious groups have considerable institutional support, the same is not true for those who transition into secular society. They are frequently stigmatized, rejected, and publicly humiliated by their former friends and communities. I argue that efforts required by former Ultra Orthodox Jews to adjust to a secular Jewish lifestyle, with no guidance to help them navigate the unfamiliar territories, are enormous. The lack of previous experience in autonomous thought, as they come from communities that demand blind following, further exacerbates the difficulty. For many, the Hasidic way of life with its all-encompassing support net are a source of comfort. Many of those leaving ultra-orthodox life have suffered violence, sexual abuse or have difficulties remaining in an ultra-Orthodox society because of their sexual identity. The aspiration to leave often results from a traumatic event or rejection the lead to religious doubts and aversion to ultra-Orthodox society. Some have spent a long time on the fringes of their community. Mental health is often also affected, as a result of the harm caused before leaving or as an accompanying factor to rejection from the ultra-Orthodox society. However, leaving means giving up everything familiar, and a close, enveloping community where one is never alone, with little sense of what could replace it. It is therefore crucial to examine the entirety of one’s account and creatively develop the supports needed as to navigate the complexities of role and identity change as these people transition from, within, back to, and out of Orthodoxies without the limiting implications that tend to be associated with deconversion.

• Conference Information
• Agenda
• Conference Registration

Lea Lavy, University of Alberta
Lea Lavy is a Doctoral student at the University of Alberta, under the supervision of Dr. Stephen Kent. Mrs. Lavy holds an MBA in Educational management. From Israel to Nigeria, the United States, Mexico and Canada, Mrs. Lavy has spent the past 30 years teaching students of all ages and levels. The inspiration for her research came while teaching in an ultra orthodox school in Edmonton, Alberta. Having a unique insight into the ultra-Orthodox community as a non-orthodox Jew, made her consider different aspects of Judaism, the role(s) that society and leaders (Rabbis), and subsequently, religion, play in the life of individuals participants. Mrs. Lavy’s research explores ancient customs, devotional religious practices, and religious norms that lead to fanaticism and sectism, bring the practice of listening to the Rabbi to the extreme. The purpose of her research is to raise awareness to issues of abuse within the Orthodox Jewish community as well as abuses that may result from religious affiliations.

Leaving Hasidic Judaism ~ with PESACH EISEN

Talk Beliefs

March 19, 2022

For PESACH EISEN, life within an insular, Hasidic Jewish community was a continuous treadmill of ritual and repetition. From his Bar Mitzvah onwards, he struggled with desires to live up to expectations of perfection that collided with a desire to be free. MARK from Talk Beliefs chats to Pesach about his early life, his years in a Yeshiva (high school) in Israel, and his drifting into rebellion. Once a pariah in his own community, he now strives daily to help others who have also walked away from orthodoxy . LINKS FOR PESACH EISEN: TWITTER: @pesachology https://twitter.com/pesachology

INSTA: @pesachology https://www.instagram.com/pesachology/

LINKTREE: https://linktr.ee/pesacheisen

HELPFUL LINKS: FOOTSTEPS: https://footstepsorg.org/

"Off the Derech" Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/offthederech KindEar Hotline: https://www.kindear.org/

Freidom: http://freidom.org/

Meet the sociologist who left his Chabad community and wrote a pathbreaking study of ex-Hasidim

Jordan Kutzik
Forward
May 13, 2021

When Schneur Zalman Newfield studied at Chabad yeshivas, everyone thought he was a pious young man who had little knowledge of the outside world. They couldn’t have imagined that Newfield had secretly assembled a stash of contraband books - modern Yiddish literature, science and history texts and even Russian novels - which he feared would lead to his expulsion.

The scenario might sound like something you’d read in the memoirs of a Jewish intellectual raised before the Russian revolution. But Schneur Zalman Newfield is still in his 30s. Born in Brooklyn in 1982 and brought up in the Lubavitch bastion of Crown Heights, today he is an assistant professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College who specializes in the sociology of religious communities. His monograph, “Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism,” is the first sizable scholarly study of ex-Hasidic Jews by someone who has left a Hasidic community.

Like many Lubavitch Hasidim, Newfield’s parents are baalei-tshuva or Jews who became religious later in life. His father, Shlomo, is a dermatologist who graduated from Columbia and earned his medical degree from Harvard. His mother, Basha, went to Queens College. Despite his parents’ academic backgrounds, they sent him to religious schools and yeshivas where no secular studies were taught. Although he spoke English at home, he could read only Yiddish and Hebrew.

A trip to the post office would launch a sequence of events that altered Newfield’s path in life. When he was 14, his father took him to apply for a passport. As he was unable to read or write in English, Newfield’s father filled out the paperwork for him, but the post office worker wouldn’t allow someone else to sign it. Newfield’s father showed him how to write his name and had him practice several times until he could do it himself. Realizing he was limited by his illiteracy in English, Newfield decided to learn how to read and write in his mother tongue.

His uncle, Jeff Janus, to whom he would later dedicate his book, “Degrees of Separation,” tutored him in writing and gave him elementary English primers. Within a few years, Newfield graduated to more sophisticated material, devouring classics such as Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” and what he described to me only half-jokingly as “goyishe bikher” (gentile books) - masterworks of Yiddish literature by Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

“The more secular literature and history I read, the more interested I became in learning further,” Newfield said. “I had a thirst to learn about the outside world and others’ beliefs.”

Before Newfield was 23, he had seen more of the world than most Americans. Besides attending yeshivas in Miami, Chicago, Morristown (New Jersey), Crown Heights and Buenos Aires, he had spent a summer as a shaliach, or religious emissary, in Singapore and visited Russia, Paraguay, Australia and Vietnam.

“But I was always in spaces where the ‘Lubavitch bubble’ was dominant,” he noted.

Like most of the 74 ex-Hasidim Newfield interviewed, no one event led him to leave his community. Ideas he encountered in books played a role, as did the death of the movement’s charismatic Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whom Lubavitchers saw as a likely Messiah. In Singapore he befriended Rabbi Dr. Rachel Safman, a professor of sociology who stirred his interest in the social sciences. After earning his GED at 21, Newfield attended Brooklyn College and earned a PhD from NYU. Reading sociological studies of “religious exiters,” Newfield notes in “Degrees of Separation,” “stopped me in my tracks and ultimately led to this book.”

In “Degrees of Separation,” which compares the experiences of Lubavitch and Satmar “exiters,” Newfield argues that even when those raised Hasidic leave the community physically, mentally they can never make a complete break from it. The values, beliefs and habits with which they were raised continue to color every aspect of their lives, from how they understand human relations to mundane actions like how they tie their shoes. Newfield notes that ultimately ex-Hasidim live in an “in-between state” even years after leaving.

Coming from the community he was studying presented Newfield with both advantages and challenges. Newfield’s fluency in Yiddish and familiarity with Hasidic life proved invaluable for his research. However, he had to be careful not to project his own experiences onto his interviewees. In some cases, his Chabad background may have made his Lubavitch informants hesitant to divulge certain sensitive details, especially those involving sexual abuse.

One striking aspect of Newfield’s research is his examination of the different measures the Satmar and Lubavitch communities take to prevent members from leaving. While Satmar Hasidim aim to isolate themselves, building exclusively Satmar towns like Kiryas Joel, Lubavitch Hasidim live in what Newfield terms the “Lubavitch bubble” or “Global Lubavitch.” Far from being insular, they have regular contact with less religious Jews because of the community’s outreach work. That doesn’t mean, however, that Lubavitch Hasidim necessarily accept a child’s decision to leave the community.

One informant, Dina, the daughter of Chabad emissaries, told Newfield that her parents are accepting of all Jews, secular or religious. Yet, her own decision to leave the community was beyond the pale for them.

Newfield explained that the contradiction stems from the fact that a non-Lubavitch Jew who visits Crown Heights or Chabad outposts elsewhere is thought of as “a child who was born among the gentiles.” Therefore he can’t be blamed for not knowing better.

“But if an ‘eygene’, an ‘undzere’ [both terms mean roughly ‘one of our own’], wants to leave, it’s a real problem,” Newfield said. “How can it be that people who saw the light, who know the beauty and warmth of the Hasidic lifestyle, how can they decide that they want to live a non-Orthodox lifestyle? It’s an existential threat and they have to be isolated and handled in some way so as not to contaminate the community.”

No matter how harsh the response to Lubavitch “exiters,” it’s often mild compared to what Satmar “exiters” face.

“The threat of kicking children out of a Lubavitch yeshiva because of the parents’ violations is unheard of,” Newfield said. Satmar Hasidim, however, do try to curb their neighbors’ behaviors with the threat of expulsion. A woman who begins wearing less conservative clothing or a man who trims his beard too much may be warned that if they don’t change their ways their children will be expelled from the community’s religious schools.

“The schools work in cahoots,” Newfield said. “If the kids are kicked out of one school, other schools won’t accept them. If the parents want their kids to go to Hasidic schools, they will have to move. It’s a way of kicking a family out of the community even if it’s not articulated that way.”

In divorce cases, the community frequently raises hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure that “exiters” don’t get full custody of their children.

The mother of one of his subjects, Mrs. Grossbaum, told Newfield that the community is not “democratic” enough to accept a mother’s decision to leave the community and take her child with her. If such a case ends up in court, Mrs. Grossbaum said, a secular judge won’t accept the explanation that the father and his community are fighting for the child’s future. Instead, Grossbaum added, the best option for the community is for someone to testify that the “exiter” has mental-health issues and the children therefore cannot live with her.

For many community members, this isn’t perjury—leaving the community is considered a sign of mental illness. And if an “exiter” is deemed sane, it’s often assumed he comes from a broken home or has suffered sexual abuse. While five of Newfield’s subjects did report having been sexually abused, most did not cite it as their primary reason for leaving.

Despite the retaliation some community leavers face, Newfield told me that nearly all of the 74 ex-Hasidim he interviewed remain in contact with their families.

“There’s a widespread misconception that Hasidim excommunicate or shun those who leave and cut off all communication,” Newfield said. “That’s not the case at all. Most families maintain ties.”

Newfield himself is close with his parents and siblings.
Authors
Jordan Kutzik

Jordan Kutzik is the deputy editor of the Yiddish Forward. Contact him at kutzik@forward.com.



https://forward.com/culture/469508/meet-the-sociologist-who-left-his-chabad-community-and-wrote-a/

CultNEWS101 Articles: 5/5/2021

Return to Eden, Scientology, Hasidic, Yoel Roth, Legal, Troubled Teen Industry, Red Rock Canyon School, Casa by the Sea, Sequel's Lava Heights Academy, Diamond Ranch Academy

The Jakarta Post: Lia Aminuddin: Return to Eden

"The Queen of Heaven shall not surround herself with bad familiars. As the spouse of Gabriel, God's messenger, she had to live among the reincarnations of holy spirits. Lia Eden distributed this honorable title with divine impunity.

Her eldest son was dubbed the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The novelist Danarto, a prominent member of her group, was called the reincarnation of the Buddha, while his wife was called the reincarnation of the Goddess Kwan Im. But what if someone is married to another who is not the reincarnation of their divine spouse from their past life?

This was the conundrum facing Tri Sugiati, a successful statistician who worked for a government agency. Known to her friends as an intellectual with a burning desire for spiritual renewal, she joined Lia Eden's religious movement and quickly became a devoted follower.

To Lia, Sugiati was the reincarnation of Khadijah, the prophet Muhammad's first wife. Meanwhile, Abdul Rachman, a former student activist and Lia's right-hand man, was the prophet Muhammad reincarnate. The only issue was that Sugiati was married with children. "So, Mother Lia told her to divorce her husband and get married to Abdul instead," recalled Syaefudin Simon, a journalist who was a member of Lia's community from 1997 to 2002. "The crazy thing is, she did it."

Sugiati is far from alone. "This sort of incident happens all the time," Simon said ruefully. "Families were torn apart, livelihoods ruined and parents abandoned their children. But what can you do? Gabriel commands it through Mother Lia. So they shall obey."

As she asserted control within her organization, Lia and her disciples began building a more public profile. Her strange rituals, characteristic white robe and assertion that she was Gabriel's earthly vessel attracted ridicule and indignation. Salamullah, her religious movement, moved away from the fringe and into the mainstream discourse."

The Hollywood Reporter: "The Means of Getting Someone in the Door": An Inside Look at Scientology's Lavish Production Facilities and Actor Recruitment Strategy

"Ex-members offer a rare look at the organization's multiple studios and allege that Scientology used the audition process to recruit outside actors: 'It's an in-house film and no one's going to see it.'"

PIX11: Hasidic parents say Brooklyn rabbi recruits underage teen brides

"Yitzchak Kaplan, a bus driver near Jerusalem, flew to New York from Israel in mid-March, hoping to bring home a third teenage daughter who's become a follower of charismatic Hasidic rabbi, Yoel Roth.

Kaplan's son, Moshe, said two of his older sisters had already married into Rabbi Roth's Breslev sect.

"We have two sisters here, and now, this is the third," Moshe Kaplan told PIX11 News. "We have two sisters in this cult!"

We asked Moshe Kaplan why he called the rabbi's group a cult.

"All the decisions, from all the people in this community here, he makes all the decisions," Kaplan alleged outside the rabbi's Skillman Street base in Williamsburg, shortly after a wedding was held under a chuppah on the sidewalk.

Moshe Kaplan said the third sister, 17, had recently arrived in New York and was engaged to one of Roth's followers.

Rabbi Roth oversees a school on Skillman Street called Yeshiva Tiferes Hatorah and leads the Breslev Center, tweeting videos with daily inspirations.

But a recent complaint about a 15-year-old bride allegedly marrying a 21-year-old groom spurred the NYPD and Administration for Children's Services to take a look at Roth's religious organization."

Dixie Sun News: Current, former DSU employees previously employed at controversial troubled youth facilities

" ... Utah is a hub for troubled youth facilities that have had little oversight from government officials until recently. People who attended these facilities are increasingly bringing their experiences to light, especially since Paris Hilton shared her own experiences from her time at the Provo Canyon School.

The troubled youth facilities where the three DSU employees previously worked include Red Rock Canyon School, Casa by the Sea, Sequel's Lava Heights Academy, and Diamond Ranch Academy.

Red Rock Canyon School and Casa by the Sea were shut down and investigated regarding allegations of physical and sexual assault against minors. Sequel, a for-profit company that oversees a variety of youth facilities in Utah and the country at large, has also been the subject of several scandals. Diamond Ranch Academy has seen lawsuits citing abuse of minors, including a 2017 case where a therapist was accused of sexual assault against a minor.

A TikTok video created by Jessica Fuller, who attended Lava Heights Academy, to help her search for potential abuse survivors mentions former DSU employees Brian Pace and Dace Goulding regarding Pace's time as executive director at Red Rock Canyon School and Goulding's time as program director at Casa By the Sea. The video also mentions assistant psychology professor Nathan Meng regarding his time as a therapist at Lava Heights Academy, Diamond Ranch Academy, and Aspen Achievement Academy."

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Lag Ba'omer: What's Toldot Aharon, hassidic sect whose members were killed?

It is perhaps the most insular, well-organized and cohesive of the groups that make up Israel’s haredi community.

JERUSALEM POST STAFF
APRIL 30, 2021

Many of the dead and injured at the Lag Ba'omer stampede on Mount Meron Thursday night were from the insular Toldot Aharon Hassidic sect, which is based in Jerusalem. The stampede took place during the lighting of the bonfire by the current Rebbe (spiritual leader).

It is perhaps the most insular, well-organized and cohesive of the groups that make up Israel’s haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community; any type of intervention in its domestic affairs is tantamount to a total usurping of the community's belief system.

The hassidic sect was established in Jerusalem by Rabbi Aharon Roth in 1928 as an offshoot of Satmar, a hassidic movement that originated in Germany. In 1942 shortly before Nazi Germany invaded Hungary, Roth and his followers fled Europe for Mandatory Palestine.

Today, Toldot Aharon hassidim live in the heart of Jerusalem despite their staunch opposition to Zionism. They have developed extensive social and cultural barriers to protect their community from the bustling secularism of Jaffa Road and Ben-Yehuda Street, located less than a kilometer away.

Roth, who died in 1947, started the tradition, which continues to this day, that every male member of the sect signs a contract obligating him and his family to abide by the strict dictates of Toldot Aharon.

Clothing, customs – even how the hassidim spend their spare time – is carefully regulated. Cohesion is as tight as super glue. In contrast, the outside world – especially anything affiliated with Zionism – is described as dark and evil.

Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli of Bar-Ilan University's Department of Sociology and Anthropology, who is an expert on the Toldot Aharon hassidim and is the source for the information here about them, explained in 2009 that the hassidim do not view themselves as individuals.

In his study The holy contract: The Social Contract of the Toldos Aharon Hasidic group, Guzmen-Carmieli, along with Asaf Sharabi, wrote about the core texts of the Toldot Aharon community. One of the central books that the community follows was written by Roth and is called Sefer Takkanot ve-Hadrachot (The Book of Regulations and Guidance). He wrote the book toward the end of his life; it contains many of his stringent and mystical beliefs which are followed in the community until this day.

"Members of Toldot Aharon do not see themselves first and foremost as individuals. Rather, they see themselves as one organic entity," said Guzmen-Carmeli. "No one would ever think of involving outsiders in internal issues of the community, let alone representatives of the Zionist entity, which is perceived as an apostate body inimical to the sect's belief system."

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/what-is-toldot-aharon-hassidic-sect-whose-members-were-killed-at-meron-666808

How a Catholic Photographer Penetrated a Hidden Hasidic World

Agnieszka Traczewska has devoted the past few years to photographing ultra-Orthodox communities worldwide. In an interview, the Polish artist describes working in a world closed to outsiders and women.

Naama Riba
Harretz
April 13, 2021

Purchase

When you talk with Polish photographer and producer Agnieszka Traczewska, you get the feeling that she’s an inseparable part of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish world – even though she’s Catholic.

My conversations with her, like the text that accompanies the photographs in her new book, “A Rekindled World,” are peppered with Jewish vocabulary. She knows when to say “chagim” (holidays), “Shabbat shalom” (good Sabbath), “tzni’ut” (modesty), Hasidim, “baruch Hashem” (thank God) and even “refuah shlemah” (best wishes for a full recovery).

Traczewska, who has held some 40 solo exhibitions around the world – including in the United States, Germany, Australia, Brazil and Canada – also easily reels off names of ultra-Orthodox towns and neighborhoods in Israel, from the city of Bnei Brak to Jerusalem’s Mea She’arim neighborhood.

For her previous book, “Returns,” which was published in 2019, Traczewska primarily photographed ultra-Orthodox Jews praying at the graves of holy men in Poland. Her new book is a summation of 12 years of journeying through Hasidic communities in several countries: Israel, the U.S., Canada, Belgium, Britain and Brazil.

In an interview with Haaretz that took place over several digital platforms, she says that no one has made the effort to trace where Hasidism has moved from Eastern Europe. She traveled across three continents in an effort to create a portrait of renewed Hasidic life.

Traczewska finished her journey when the coronavirus erupted. The final photographs in the books are from the early days of the pandemic in Europe. In her photos, she focused on Hasidic dynasties that originated in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, especially dynasties that originated in Poland, Hungary and Romania.

She says the secular public sometimes sees all ultra-Orthodox people as an undifferentiated mass, but the reality is very different.

“All Hasidic communities differ with their customs, habits, level of orthodoxy. At once the most surprising was that the Black and White crowd of people, who looked so similar to outsiders, is in fact so complex and various. [There are] endless lessons to learn.”

Thanks to her learning process, she says 95 percent of her closest friends are now Hasidim from around the world, including many in Israel.

“Asked about my second home, I always say ‘Mea She’arim,’ and this is an authentic, honest feeling of belonging to people I met and know there,” says Traczewska. “They [showed me] unprecedented hospitality and trust. Over years they shared with me so many strictly private moments and occasions that not having my own family, I had a total illusion we belonged somehow. You may think, ‘against all odds.’ And that’s true – they are some obstacles, but there are also some similarities between us, which often led to an automatic understanding and feeling of mutual comfort.”

How did you first begin acquainting yourself with each community?

“In every close community, the most effective way to get to know new people is to have somebody who can give a recommendation. In the most distant geographic locations, when it came to the Hasidic community, there was always somebody with whom I had common friends or I knew part of his family from somewhere else. It doesn’t mean I still don’t need to earn their trust, but at least the introduction makes dialogue possible. 

“Although we speak about hundreds of thousands, this is a small world, shtetl-like. People know each other and trust only those who belong. Hasidim remember painful lessons of being closer to outsiders who failed [them]. They don’t want to make another mistake.”

A moral obligation

The photographs in Traczewska’s new book show a glorious ultra-Orthodox world that’s very different from the image the community has inside Israel. In these photos, even poverty looks happy, complex, rich and full of life.

Many of the photographs depict customs and mitzvot, or religious commandments, and show masses of congregating Hasidim. She photographed the festivities during the Lag Ba’omer holiday at Mount Meron in northern Israel. One picture taken in New York, looking out at Manhattan from Brooklyn, shows Hasidim performing the tashlich ceremony on Rosh Hashanah. Another, from New York’s Borough Park neighborhood, shows one of the leaders of the Bobov sect, Rabbi Ben Zion Aryeh Leibish Halberstam, flanked by his Hasidim during the Havdalah ceremony marking the end of Shabbat.

Some of the photos are of major events, like the wedding of the son of the Satmar rebbe, Aaron Teitelbaum, in Petah Tikva. A photograph of the Purim celebrations in Mea She’arim shows a group of children in costume as two of them pretend to smoke a cigarette.

Still others document the daily lives of Hasidim. A photo from Bnei Brak taken a few minutes before the start of Shabbat clearly shows how crowded the city is, yet the street is empty of cars and children walk in the middle of it in their best clothes. A photo from Safed shows a baby being bathed in the kitchen sink.

“There are many Hasidim who made my journey meaningful,” she says. “One of the most important couple of Bobov Hasidim whom I met during Tzadik Shlomo Halberstam’s yahrzeit [memorial service] at the cemetery in Bobowa, Poland, are Naomi and Duvid Singers from Borough Park. With roots in Poland and Hungary, [and] long experience in preservation of Jewish heritage projects in Poland, they understood my reasons for portraying places connected with the Great Tzadikim tradition.”

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, “I had the enormous privilege, also thanks to some Hasidic supporters, to meet all the most important Hasidic leaders living there. With one of the rebbes, after an hour of our conversation about Jewish tradition, Great Tzadikim, places and occasions I [had participated in], I started to say goodbye. When he asked me about my trip back and he heard I will travel on Friday, I saw his fear that I may not reach my destination before Shabbos.

“That was a moment when I understood he didn’t realize I wasn’t Jewish, so I told him. He was in shock. Giving me bracha [blessing], in contrast to Hasidic tradition, he ended with, ‘and when you will be ready, please know that the Jewish people invite you.’

“Both of us were moved. Me particularly, as I felt I didn’t disappoint those who put their recommendations in my pocket.”

Traczewska doesn’t view her work as a documentation. “It would suggest that I made some kind of scientific research,” she explains. “I’m not an ethnographer or anthropologist, so documentation wasn’t my aspiration. I didn’t treat Hasidim as objects to test. The artistic approach was important. My intentions were more of a sentimental and historical nature. I tried to record people who have a fascinating history, belonging to the same land I happened to live in.”

She adds that Poland’s communist government tried to erase these people’s history after World War II, and when she learned of this, “I found it mind-blowing and outrageous. My disagreement with propaganda that erased Jewish presence from Polish history was an inspiration and somehow even a moral obligation to make the Hasidic chapter of Polish story visible.”

How did you get close to your subjects?

“When two people meet, even when they can’t talk to each other directly, they obviously have the ability to communicate. Traveling to Hasidic sites, I’m always dressed with tznius in order to signal that I understand and respect the rules. Of course I’m still different, obviously not Jewish, not speaking Hebrew or Yiddish, but at least it was clear to them that I’m not a direct threat. I arrived at a yahrzeit at the graves of Great Tzadikim or at events on chagim with a camera, which gave a clear explanation of what I was looking for.” 

Did anyone object to being photographed?

“I never violated somebody’s free will to participate in my projects. For example, taking pictures of Hasidic groups, when I feel that somebody truly objects, I don’t include him in the frame. Keeping and respecting rules was my first rule. Without my gentle touch I would have angry faces, no different from the ones I see in many pictures of Hasidim available in the media. My characters are always praised for being beautiful. Are all of them so pretty? For sure not, but the fact is they let me show their human side, full of warmth, generosity, intimacy, which no doubt isn’t too common in Hasidic photography. It’s a glimpse that was possible because people feel comfortable with me.”

A patriarchal world

Judging by her photographs, Traczewska managed to totally involve herself in the Hasidic world, but she notes that some places are closed to a female photographer because they are for men only. “But over time I understood that this challenge might be eventually overcome thanks to helping hands, important friends or recommendations,” she says. “Of course it doesn’t mean I can be present at any occasion I want in a major place which would be perfect for photography, but still, there are some other angles, some other floors with windows, corridors etc., where I can still make pictures I’m satisfied with. 

“For example, on the cover of my new book there is a scene of a Purim tish [Hasidic celebration] celebrated in a synagogue in Beit Shemesh. It was made from the women’s section, through thick brown glass, in a terrible crowd which almost prevented me from seeing anything. But still, eventually I created an illusion that the viewer is inside the scene, which seems so dynamic that it looks as though it’s taken straight from a Shakespearean drama.” 

There are almost no women in the book.

“For me, the most important fact is that in spite of Hasidic tradition and a serious ban against showing women, in ‘A Rekindled World’ there is a wide choice of female portraits. Decent close-ups in a pretty intimate, indoor setting, which is so against custom that of course when I was working on the book I could seriously worry [about including them]. I was afraid the whole book will be rejected by Hasidim en bloc. 

“Fortunately, now observing the enthusiastic feedback of Hasidim I know, it didn’t happen. Hasidim now write to me that they are proud to see their wives or mothers in my pictures. I truly tried to do justice to not only how they look, but mostly who they were, what philosophy and hardship they represented. I think that was appreciated.”

At the same time she adds, “However, we need to understand that the Hasidic world is a totally patriarchal system, and most of the ceremonies exclude women, so if somebody really would like to count men and women in ‘A Rekindled World,’ there is no way for it to reflect equality. Men are winners when it comes to public recognition.” 

What is your opinion of the Hasidic lifestyle?

“Hasidic life embraces a wide spectrum of aspects, almost impossible to be discussed in a few sentences only. Hasidism varies not only because they represent various Hasidic dynasties with differences in customs, rules and mentality. They vary because they live in various parts of the world with different standards of living. It’s very difficult to compare, for example, between Hasidim living in the U.S. and Israel. It’s very helpful to enter the Hasidic world without prejudices and stereotypes.”

And yet, is there anything that seems overly strict to you? 

“What was difficult for me? The fact that individuality is almost unknown in the Hasidic world. As I’m very individualistic – self-employed, self-made, traveling alone, doing authors’ projects only – I’ve always regarded the freedom to make my own decisions as the key gift. 

“Hasidim are taught that the community gives security and support. A Hasid lives in a constant cycle of occasions which connects him to other fellow Hasidim. They look and behave almost the same. They go through the same stages of life with almost no exceptions and most often it provides them with authentic joy and comfort. Individuality is not wanted, as somebody  who stands out may create a threat to identity and the maintenance of tradition, values and rules. 

“That was an important step in understanding the Hasidic world, when I realized that my ambitions or aspirations as an outsider don’t have a lot in common with Hasidim, or let’s be frank – nothing at all. To understand them I needed to learn about their motivation, to develop empathy, to do justice in the way I will present them.”

What are you more interested in photographing, everyday life or religious ceremonies?

“Both occasions are different but both are equally important in intense Hasidic everyday life. In a way it’s one of the most fascinating factors of the phenomenon of living side by side with others within a community: There is an endless chain of occasions to meet, talk, go through something together. On the same day people live their ordinary life, sending children to school, working, participating in some family occasions and ending the day with being a part of a massive celebration of the entire community. When I used to stay with Hasidic families, I was totally hypnotized by how much is happening all around, day by day, and it’s all about family and others.

“There’s no problem with being bored or lonely. The wave of constant socializing and celebrating happy occasions, or those that require compassion and support for others, creates a perfect symbol of the cycle of life. 

“Most of the Hasidim I know come from families of Holocaust survivors. However, the Shoah is not a subject they discuss with me often or freely. My friends like to talk about their origins in Poland or Eastern Europe. They know their genealogy well, they are interested in documents, archives where they can learn more. 

“But not too many talk directly about the cruelty of World War II and the horrible things which happened to them or their families. Maybe it’s too painful to be discussed. Or maybe they feel it may create some evil memories and can lead to animosities between us? They just say – ‘My father was the only one who survived of 200 members of his family sent to Auschwitz.’ And there is no need to say anything more. I’m from Poland and I understand the rest.” 

The last pictures she took outside of Poland were in January 2020 in the United States, a moment before the outbreak of COVID-19 all over the world. The new book includes scenes from a synagogue in Krakow in the first days of the pandemic. As opposed to most of the photos in the book, here there are isolated worshipers in a large space that looks abandoned. The book also includes two texts related to the coronavirus, one by Chaim Yaakov Zilberberg – who served as a envoy of the Gur Hasidim in Krakow and was asked to pray in the cemetery for the recovery of coronavirus patients – and a second by Giti and Dov Aharon Yosef Robinson of the Bratslav Hasidim in New York, who discuss the period when Dov Aharon was ill with the virus, until his recovery.

There has been a lot of criticism of the ultra-Orthodox over the past year, both in Israel and in the U.S., for not observing social distancing rules. In the book you try to moderate the criticism.

“That’s not really an issue I can discuss. I spent the entire pandemic in Poland, totally trapped, so everything I know comes from the media rather that firsthand observation. No doubt, my aspiration was to show the ‘human side’ of Hasidism. In the media they’re often shown anonymously, without doing justice to their personal stories, values. The way I show their life – in maximum close-up, with Hasidic texts honestly expressing the way they regard the world – helps a lot in creating empathy and in understanding their differences.”

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-polish-photographer-obsessed-with-the-hidden-hasidic-world-1.9704964