I

rts& Entertairm.

ON THE BOOKSHE

A Life Apart From A Life Apart

Unchosen tells the stories of Jews on the fringes of Chasidic life.

Sandee Brawarsky
Special to the Jewish News

opular culture — from
Chaim Potok's The Chosen
and Sidney Lumet's A
Stranger Among Us to the docu-
mentary A Life Apart — has
offered a sneak peek inside the
Chasidic world, with a view that's
fascinating to many outsiders.
Hella Winston offers a rarely
seen view of Chasidic life in her
new book, aptly titled Unchosen:
The Hidden Lives of Hasidic
Rebels (Beacon Press; $23.95).
Many of the people she portrays
are themselves fascinated with
the outside world and, to the
extreme disapproval of their
Brooklyn, N.Y., communities,
have found ways, with different
levels of secrecy, to explore it.
In an interview, the author, a 37-
year old doctoral candidate in
sociology at the Graduate Center .
of the City University of New York,
says she began her research with
the idea of doing a study on the
inner lives of Chasidic women.

p

Her dissertation advisers encour-
aged her to focus on the women •
since no researchers had done that
before and she might have access
where male scholars did not.
After many inquiries over sev-
eral months, she made contact
with a. Satmar woman through a
doctor friend. This woman was
so thankfUl the doctor had
helped her husband that she
agreed to hoSt a dinner for
Winston, with several women
from her community.
Atthat dinner, the women
spoke enthusiastically about their
lives, their families, their faith
and their involvement in the
community. Their sincerity and
humility touched Winston, but
afterward, the host's daughter
arrived and she and her mother
— both religiously observant
women — spoke more openly
about the underside of their lives,
about the pressures to conform.
The author then decided to shift
her focus to stories like theirs and
those of others with more ques-
tions and doubts, those who have
taken bold steps outside of their
communities.

•

Internet Influence
Unchosen is based on her dis-
sertation, although the two are
very different works. This book
is full of stories but free of aca-
demic language and theory. It
. reads more like fine journalism
than a scholarly work. But
Winston does place her find-
ings in a larger context of
American life, raising ques-
tions about the role of bound-
aries and how these communi-
ties will navigate the future.
Her subjects are people who
don't quite belong any longer
in the Chasidic world in which
The author writes of young
they were raised; they come
Chasidim who sneak televisions
from Satmar, Bobov, Lubavitch
into their apartments in garbage
and-other communities.
bags, change clothes on the subway
Perhaps more than the D
to frequent bars in Manhattan and
train, which brings the
blog about their double lives online.
Chasidim into Manhattan from
Brooklyn, the Internet — for-
bidden in most homes — has
opened the larger world to
many Chasidim who have
investigated its offerings in

The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels

50

February 16 • 2006

secret. The people she interviews
are now living conflicted lives
that straddle their old and new
worlds.
Interestingly, many don't leave
altogether. Even as they rebel, they
remain connected, unable and also
unwilling to give up their families
and the culture they know.
Winston's subjects tell of facing
sexual abuse, unfortunate marital
choices, limited education, gaps
between the community's ideals_
and practice, theological qualms
and fear of community condem-
nation for being different. Many
are raised in an environment that:
demonizes the outside world and
its contaminations. •
In conversations, Winston never
made references to the Taliban or
to life in Saudi Arabia, but many
of her subjects did, comparing the
kind of surveillance, scrutiny and
even violence they face to that
applied in those societies.
Mostly, Winston, who studied
Yiddish for this project, met her
subjects through word-of-mouth.
Often, she'd interview people at
Starbucks, a comfortable public
place with kosher-certified bev-
erages and long hours, and
sometimes in bars.
Some subjects would arrive in
traditional Chasidic garb and
immediately make a quick
change in the bathroom, like the
woman who switched from a
modest skirt and long-sleeved
sweater into tight jeans and a
tank top, pulling off a blonde wig
to reveal black curls. One man
would carry his modern clothing
and change on the train — "a
kind of Chasidic Superman using
the subway like his own personal
phone booth:'

Open Conversations
The photo on the book jacket,
taken by the author, is a set-up
shot, but the subject and his pos-
sessions are real: A Chasidic man
walks over the Brooklyn Bridge
wearing a streimel, or traditional
hat, and bekeshe, a long black tai-
lored coat, with a plastic garbage
bag in one hand. Inside the bag,
unseen to the viewer, is a pair of
jeans and other casual attire.

Winston realizes, again and
again, that "clothing can do just
as much to obscure as it can to
reveal the person beneath it:'
Winston describeS her sub-
jects — she spoke to more than
60 people although far fewer
appear in the book — as
among the most open people
she has ever encountered.
The only subject Whose actual
name is used, Malkie Schwartz,
grew up in the Lubavitch com-
munity, the daughter of parents
who became attracted to
Chasidic life when they were in
their 20s.
Now in her 20s and full of
her own questions, she lives
outside of the community and
runs "a different kind of
•
Chabad House," as Winston
writes, a nonprofit organization
that offers support to people
from various Chasidic sects as
they explore their options. She
offers much-needed job counsel-
ing, English tutoring, help in fill-
ing out college applications and
much more.
Some will consider Winston's
findings controversial; they may
blame her outsider status for not
getting the full story. But she
acknowledges the limitations as
well as the advantages of that
status, and does manage to con-
vey the energy, intensity and
appeal of these communities as
well as their negative aspects, as
seen by those who seek to dis-
tance themselves.
That the subject of Chasidic
life is fascinating to outsiders is
made clear through the success
of a steady stream of books on
the subject, each taking a differ-
ent tack, including Lis Harris'
sympathetic portrait of the
Lubavitchers in Crown Heights,
Holy Days; Samuel- Heilman's
portrait of fervently Orthodox
Jews in Israel, Defenders of the
Faith; Robert Eisenberg's inter-
national travelogue, Boychiks in
the Hood; Stephen Bloom's tough
portrayal of a Chabad communi-
ty in a small town in Iowa,
Postville; Sue Fishkoff's recent
and more positive work on
Chabad, The Rebbe's Army; and

Hella Winston: Secrets from the
fervently Orthodox world.

Stephanie Wellen Levine's study
of Chasidic girls, Mystics,
Mavericks and Merrymakers.
Some of the authors of these
books grow increasingly interest-
ed and even pulled toward
Chasidic life. That was not the
case for Winston, although she
has very much enjoyed meeting
people in the community, attend-
ing weddings and experiencing
great hospitality.
She grew up in a secular home
on the Upper West Side, studied
religion at Barnard and has long
been interested.in the subject.
Her mother, who survived the
'Holocaust as a hidden child, had
some religious relatives they
would visit on occasion, but they .
were a nonobservant family. Now,
she makes an effort to keep up
with what is going on in many
corners of the religious world.
She has kept in touch with her
subjects, and several of them
attended a private publication
party for her book. Some, as she
explains, have done well in their
new lives outside of the commu-
nity; a few have enrolled in college
programs and have found ways to
stay in touch with their families.
The largest challenge though,
for those with limited English
and other skills, is finding work.
About the publication of the
book, she says,"They're excited
that people want to hear what
they have to say." Li

