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Inner World

Continued from Page 26

to about 60 sects. Among the branches,
three dominate: the Lubavitch, whose
25,000 followers inhabit the Crown Heights
section; Satmar, about as large as the
Lubavitch in Williamsburg; and Bobover,
15,000 of whom occupy Borough Park.
Differences in appearance, group
character and religious emphasis among
the many sects are often in the eye of the
beholder, and sufficiently subtle to con-
found even the veteran insider.
One group adopts the shtrymels or fur-
trimmed hats, long payis (earlocks) and
knickers. Another may opt for a modish
fedora, relatively clean temples and con-
ventional trousers. As for women, beyond
the shaitels (wigs) or scarves, long skirts
and thick stockings, female Chasidim ex-
press a keen taste for designer fashion. One
group may have a reputation for sweetness
of collective personality, another for its
nigun (melody)-making traditions, another
for its prowess at charitable institution-
building.
Although definitive statistical data is
hard to come by, per capita Chasidic in-
come would probably fall somewhere
within lower middle class standards, a
state made economically more difficult by
the sect's religiously mandated large
families, and eased by a pervasive support
infrastructure (yeshiva scholarships, for in-
stance, as well as a shrewd knowledge of
how to take advantage of the aid offered
by government service agencies).
There are successful Chasidic business-
men, but Chasidic professionals — doctors,
lawyers, etc. — are extremely rare.
In terms of parnasah (sustenance),
diamonds are still among a Chasid's best
friends, as witness any midday throng
along West 47th Street, Manhattan's
historic diamond center. There are, as well,
the expected merchants, shopkeepers,
teachers and accountants inside the
neighborhoods, but high tech doesn't scare
these hard core traditionalists. Over the
past two decades, Chasidim have adapted
with exceptional alacrity to the burgeon-
ing computer-services marketplace.
They were, for instance, pioneers in the
"cold type" industry that revolutionized
printing. And they're also known to New
York's most dedicated camera devotees as
the likeliest source for bargain basement
discounts, as is the case with the Satmar-
owned 47th Street Photo, a cramped and
always jostling sales cubicle up a shabby
flight of stairs in Manhattan's midtown.
At the same time, many of the more
scholastically gifted young Chasidim do
not work for a living at all, engaging in a
kind of extended postgraduate Torah study
program while being supported by the
community, as they would have in the Old
World. In modern day counterpoint, the
working Chasidic mother is not an aberra-
tion, even if the percentages differ from
those of the wider feminine world.

28

FRIDAY, SEPTEMB ER 2,

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At a fruit stand: many Chasidim came to America from Europe after the Holocaust.

Chasidim work to live, but they live for
God. Many of their religious standards and
rituals insure their separation from the rest
of klal Yisroel by a device as basic as a
shachita (ritual slaughter) knife whose
design differs from that of any non-
Chasidic cutlery, thus necessitating a
unique standard of kashrus, the bedrock of
everyday Jewish life.
Chasidim break from their workday
schedules for the three daily prayer ser-
vices, and a Chasid dovening mincha (the
afternoon prayer) on a crowded rush hour
subway is a routine sight in New York.
Among the most observant groups like the
Satmar, little girls don't ride bikes, women
always ride in a car's back seat, and televi-

sions and radios are banned from the home
on pain of the offender's later exclusion
from the community cemetery.
This is Chasidism's forbidding, and more
or less public face. But beneath this
ferociously ascetic submission to God's
will lies the sometimes tremulous,
sometimes savage soul of the ecstatic. One
popular view holds that the anti-dogmatic
spontaneity of Chasidism's early years has
given way to a more hardened, codified
routine. But the revolutionary tenets
established by the Baal Shem Toy and his
followers retain a deep, unshakable grip on
Chasidic life.

Articles Of Faith

Hisbadidus, the practice of speaking ex-

