Chasidic Dress: A Guide For The Perplexed H Expert observers can identify a Chasid's sect by his hat, coat, or whether or not he wears white socks. No frozen poultry for this Chasid, who serves as a shochet, or ritual slaughterer. ow do you tell a Gerer Chasid from a Lubavitch? One simple way is in noticing how they dress. If, for example, the man wears his pants tucked into his socks, you can be fairly certain he is a Gerer. That's one of dozens of differences in dress and style, some more subtle than others, that help an observer identify one Chasidic sect from the next. Virtually all of these differences stem from customs dating back to Europe. If you're walking through the Mea Shearim section of Jerusalem, or Wil- liamsburg in Brooklyn, notice the dif- ferences in streimlach (hats) — some are rounded and made of mink, some are high, some are flat — and bekkeshehs (coats), most are black but some are brown with pinstripes. In Mea Shearim, those pinstriped coats indicate either followers of Reb Arele, a Neturai Karta sect best known for its in- tolerance of non-observant Jews and outspoken opposition to Zionism, or they are Karliner Chasidism, who are, by com- parisons, Zionists. During a recent visit to Mea Shearim, I approached a Chasid of Reb Arele and asked, in halting Yiddish, why his group wore the pinstriped coat. He answered, in Yiddish, that the Biblical Abraham wore such a coat. I asked him how he knew that to be true. He smiled and answered, "And how do you know he didn't?" So much for historical authenticity. Rabbi Yitzchak Lowenbraun of Baltimore, himself a Chasid, who claims he is able to identify a Chasid's sect from a block away, can go on at great length about the intricate differences among Chasidic garb, discussing velvet collars and cuffs, the significance of rounded lapels, and whether or not anyone but a rebbe would wear white socks during the week. I had been told that you can tell a Chasid's marital status by his socks. White socks indicate that you are married. Black socks mean you're single. All of which was fine until I spotted a middle- aged Chasid walking through the streets of the Old City in Jerusalem with light gray socks. I decided that he was either from a sect I hadn't heard of, or that, like too many of his non-Chasidic compatriots, he made the mistake when doing his laun- dry of mixing his blacks with his whites. Gary Rosenblatt THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 167