“[T]o most Americans who encounter [chassidim]…they remain an enigma, a curiosity certainly but nevertheless a puzzle,” writes New York Times reporter Joseph Berger in his recently-published The Pious Ones (Harper Perennial).
Berger wants to lift the veil.
With an exceedingly high birthrate, chassidim “are mushrooming in numbers and becoming a more undeniable part of the Jewish landscape, and Americans, both Jewish and gentile, will have to learn to deal with them. Understanding who they are and why may be a sensible way to start.” Berger hopes his book will contribute to this effort.
His previous works include The World in a City and Displaced Persons: Growing Up American after the Holocaust. Berger has worked for The New York Times as an editor and reporter since 1984.
The Jewish Press: What about chassidim strikes you as most interesting?
Berger: I find the intensity with which they go about typical Jewish observance fascinating.
For example, rabbis will tell you that if you’re sick and frail, not only don’t you have to fast on Yom Kippur, you shouldn’t fast because pikuach nefesh trumps fasting. But chassidim will go the extra mile. If you go to Boro Park on Yom Kippur, you’ll see virtual hospital wards in the basements of several synagogues where people are getting nourishment through IV drips. They’ve set it up that way because they want to feel like they’re getting nourishment without literally eating.
I was also fascinated by the intensity I saw just before Passover. A chassidic guide of mine took me into one of the large kosher supermarkets and showed me two aisles of root vegetables – carrots, beets, parsley, etc. He said one is washed and one is unwashed. The unwashed vegetables had soil clinging to them, and he told me that people like seeing crumbs of earth on a vegetable because when they wash it they know that there’s no chametz on it. With washed vegetables they’re not 100 percent certain there’s no chametz.
That kind of intensity fascinated me.
Many Jews – even ultra-Orthodox Jews – would find such behavior unusual, to say the least.
That’s true, but don’t forget that chassidism by its very founding was all about fervor and ardor in the observance of the mitzvot.
You seem to admire their zeal.
It’s not an admiration. It is simply a kind of journalist fascination. It stands out, it’s different from more traditional Orthodoxy.
And by the way, as a kid I grew up in the yeshiva world. I went to Manhattan Day School. That probably also explains my interest in chassidim. My mother grew up in a chassidic summer resort area called Otwock right outside of Warsaw, and a lot of chassidic dynasties used to go there for the summer because of the crisp fresh air. My mother worked for the Gerrer Rebbe’s wife as a helper, and she met many chassidim and was kind of charmed by them.
So you grew up in an Orthodox family?
Well, I grew up in an Orthodox world. My father was an immigrant to this country and he couldn’t quite observe all the mitzvos. You wouldn’t call him quite Orthodox, but yes, I went to an Orthodox yeshiva until the 9th grade. I even went to Yeshiva University High School for one year. Then I got to Bronx Science and that changed things.
You devote the first two chapters of your book to Yitta Schwartz, a Satmar woman who died in 2010 at age 93 with 2,000 living descendants. What inspired you to spend 40 pages on this one woman?
I wrote about her for two reasons. Obviously, just the sheer unusual nature of having 2,000 living descendants is by itself impressive. It’s an emblem of chassidic fecundity and explains why chassidim are becoming a larger share of the Jewish population in the United States.
But Yitta Schwartz’s story also matched the arc of chassidic life [over the last 100 years]. She grew up in Hungary, ended up in Auschwitz, lost children during the Holocaust, but then was determined to go on, and had more children after the war here in the United States.
The chassidic world, too, was shrunken by the Holocaust with some of the sects barely having enough followers to go on. Yitta Schwartz’s daughter told me that when the family first came to Brooklyn they could fit the parents of the entire Satmar school in their living room. I’m sure she exaggerated a little bit, but that’s how small the Satmars were. Now, there are probably over 100,000 Satmar chassidim in the United States alone.
Some readers might be confused by your portrayal of chassidim: In some chapters, chassidim come across as super kind, super devout, while in others they come across as quite the opposite. Which are they in your estimation?
They are very human, and there is as large a range and diversity of personalities and goodness as there is in any other human community. My book goes into the more controversial or even scandalous situations that chassidim have been involved in.
But it’s also important to note that there’s no indication that their behavior is any more scandalous or deceitful than any other human group. What happens is, because they’re chassidim – literally, “the pious ones” – the public is more stunned because it smacks of hypocrisy.
In writing this book, and in putting together the many articles about chassidim that you’ve written for The New York Times over the years, were you ever seized by the age-old Jewish gut reaction that it’s best not to air the community’s dirty laundry before the world?
My job as a journalist is to tell the story, and I make sure to let everyone have a chance to comment on anything that’s been said. If there’s an indictment for a crime, I make sure that I speak to either the person charged or his or her lawyer.
The consequences of publication are what they are. My job is to report.
But in addition to being a reporter, you’re also Jewish. In theory, you could have told your editor, “Look, I don’t think this religious beat is for me…”
If I did that, I would not be a New York Times journalist. I tell the story as it is.
You were among a number of Times reporters and editors who recently accepted a buyout from the paper. So when are you officially leaving?
I’m going to be a reporter for The New York Times until December 19. Essentially I’m at a stage of life where I’ve got to start thinking about retirement and this came along and I’m very fortunate to be able to retire with a nice package of money. I might have put off retirement for another year or two, but this way I don’t have to.
I’ve had a wonderful career at the Times. The Times has been very good to me, and I look forward to writing freelance articles for [the paper] on a frequent basis…. I also hope to teach courses on how immigration has shaped New York. I may even write another book.
But I’m going to terribly miss the Times.