Hasidism sells in America, but not in the good way. After TV-shows and pathetic articles explaining to a shocked audience the duties of going every month to the mikwe, something new is on the market: an show that starts with a discussion about the eruv and ends up with casual discussion about porn. Nothing wrong with discussing such issues - the last one, I mean - but not by exploiting the innocence of a guy you 'met' on Craiglist at 'platonic love' section.
Part of her 'installation' about faith, Annie Berman got in touch with Hasidic 25-year old married mad, with whom she talks about eruv, her love life failures and daily religious life. The guy, speaking good English, in full innocence, is opening his heart to her, but for the sake of the art installation, the context and probably the social context of the guy doesn't matter. It's more important to exploit the conversation till it leads at the yellow media level, when he's mentioning sex and other things that for the outside world might look so exotic.
What bothered me the most was to hear the tonality of the voices of the two participants at the dialogue: she, with the arrogance of self-assumed intellectual superiority and condescension versus the innocent guy, lacking a proper contact with the non-Jewish world but still ready to clarify and help and share his thoughts with someone out of too much loneliness, maybe.
I have no idea if this discussion brought any high audience or clarified the author's - calling a journalist someone who promise a recorded conversation on one topic and ends up in a completely different direction is abusive - curiosity or big life questions. But for sure, the approach is not professional and lack a proper honesty of a human being approaching other fellow human.
It might sound pathetic for the illuminated minds, but sharing such normal feelings like compassion, love and respect are the chore of the daily normal human interaction, Hasidic or not.
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