Gur vs. Gur

Shortly before the end of the High Holidays, a rumour that was in the air for a couple of months already was confirmed: the Gur/Ger hasidic sect, the largest in Israel and probably the only big one that remain united during its 160 years of existence, is splitting.

The Simcha Torah prayers this Monday, in Jerusalem, were held separately by the adepts of the current Gur Rebbe, the Admor Rav Yaakov Aryeh Alter and those of his cousin Rav Shaul Alter. Rav Shaul Alter succeeded to gather on his side around 250 families, that joined him in prayers in a shul in the North of Jerusalem. Gur is considered to count around 11,000 families, with followers outside Israel mostly in the USA (Brooklyn), London and Canada. 

The fifth rebbe, Yisrael Alter died childless, being succeeded by his brother, Rav Pinchas Menachem  Alter. The current Admor, the 8th rebbe, was born in 1939 and is ruling the dynasty since 1996. 

The conflict betwee the two is boiling for a considerable amount of time. Some might say that in fact it started as early as 10 years ago, when the Admor decided to introduce a new way of learning that in the end leaded to the closure of the Sfas Emes yeshiva whose head was Rav Shaul Alter, a position he took over from his father. The partial confirmation of the big split that was supposed to follow took place early this year, after Rav Shaul was not invited to the wedding of the Admor's grandson in Jerusalem. 

The split is official now, and the communication on behalf of the current Gur leadership outlined diplomatically that everything was done in order to avoid the situation, but to no avail. Now, that the holidays are over, those who followed Rav Shaul Alter are expected to be expelled from the main institutions of the sect, and among others, their children from the yeshiva and the other institutional organisations. The first step towards recognition of the new group will be the state approval for the creation of new institutions, such as schools, yeshivot, but most probably this will last. Gur remains a very powerful force among the Hasidic/ultra-orthodox political entities in Israel, particularly Agudas Israel party. 

Rav Shaul Alter is expected to visit soon the USA in order to get more support, both in terms of new followers and financially. There might be many more members of the Gur keen to join the dissenters, but they will rather wait the next steps and the settlement of the institutional and financial resources in order to avoid risking their status and the incumbent benefits. 

The Gur is considered alongside Toldot Aharon, one of the closest Hasidic sects, with its own bizarre rules regulating the relationships between (married) men and women, and a strict control of the rebbe over the hasid's personal life. Inside testimonies are rare, and when it happens they have a deeply dramatic turn, as it was the case of Esty Weinstein, a former Gur who committed suicide in 2016 following the forced separation from her children, leaving behind a memoir about her struggles within the sect. 

The everyday life of a Gur couple is regulated by takanot - Ordinances on Holiness  - which recommend, among others, very limited sexual relationship (preferably only once a month, after leil tevilah - immersion of the woman in the mikve at the end of the period), minimal contact during the intercourse or requirement to the man to remain partially dressed when having intimate relationship with his wife. Such stringencies create a relatively problematic issue for matchmaking representatives of the Gur hasidim outside the sect. I remember how a couple of years ago, a friend of mine was about to marry a Gur, until she found out about the takanot and run as far as possible from the match.

What exactly the new group will bring, including in this very personal and intimate respect, remains to be known. The time and the next moves on both sides will show in the next weeks and months. 

Kissing Girls on Shabbat by Dr. Sara Glass

If you read a certain amount of books, more than the average anyway, on a specific topic or belonging to a well-defined genre, sooner or later you will become satiated with the topic. There is a certain pattern repeated over and over again, with only personal details filled in. Take, for instance, the case of the off the derech memoirs, out of which I´ve read a good bunch of in the last years, as the genre is becoming more and more popularity.

You have the person who does not fit in, the oppressive religious conformity that cannot be tolerated any more, following an illumination-kind of acknowledging the absurdity of some or all religious tenets. Afterwards, there is the fight or the loneliness, faced with the lack of skills for economic survival and very often the struggle to keep the children or the broken heart for not being able to keep them.

However, despite the overall predictability, I will not give up reading those memoirs, because the more repetitive they are, the clearer the certain trends within religious communities - I read in general memoirs of getting out of faith: there is a new generation that may find different ways of positioning towards religion and willingly or not, even the most closed groups will be suprepticiously changed one day.

Take, for instance, the Gur Hasidim, who are practicing very strict marital relationships, considered by many as oppressive: not using the given name for the wife, separate walking ways, discourage of any closeness between spouses unless for procreation. Being born a Gur in America, experiencing queerness from an early age, Dr. Sara Glass succeeded to write her own story: becoming independent, cutting the dependency ties with the community while keeping her precious children.

Manipulated into religion by the sake of her children and the religious background of her family - ´A kosher woman does the will of her husband´ -, she had to play the appearances, even after her divorce, otherwise she may have lose them. The power of the batei din - the religious tribunal deciding, among other, in issues of divorce and child custody - may overcome that of the secular authorities, especially when the woman does not have the proper knowledge and advice for checking the content of the documents she is signing. You are not represented by a lawyer in the front of the religious courts thus the risk of being completely unaware of the legal consequences of the documents signed. Religious communities are tied by trust, obviously, why do someone may need a lawyer anyway?

Kissing Girls on Shabbat that I had the chance to have access to in audiobook format, read by the author, focus less on how bad, backwarded and generally disgusting the community is - as it is the case in at least one such memoir - but on her own story. Her own work to achieve the best version of herself, the engagement trying to help people in a similar situation, her doubts and obsessive fears of being taken away her children. Also, more importantly, the importance of actively being involved in helping distressed people, unable to get over by themselves of their mental health struggle, overcoming generational or recent family trauma. 

It is love not hate or revenge that motivates her life. At 24, she was the mother of two children, at 32 she came out, and established her career as a therapist while being together with her children. Education gives power, including to gently overcome one own´s struggles.

Kissing Girls on Shabbat - whose collage-like cover is also worth mentioning - is a moving testimony of those strengths.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Book Review: Jephte´s Daughter by Naomi Ragen

In the Book of Judges, Jephtah (or Yiftah) led successfully the Israelites against Ammonites. In exchange, he made a vow to Gd to sacrifice whatever would come out of the door of his house first. It was his only daughter who showed up but unrelented, he went on with his vow. What a foolish character? What a crazy vow to make and keep, and how contrary to the Akeida of Yitzak when Gd stopped Avraham from killing his only son, whose faith he wanted to test himself. 

Jephte´s Daughter by Naomi Ragen was written at the end of the 1980s. Issues like the way in which women are treated sometimes by extreme men blind to see the many stumbling blocks they built around the Torah, are more stringent than ever. The erasure of women from the public realm is unfortunately a widespread behavior within the Orthodox communities in Israel and abroad, and it jeopardize the essence of Judaism.

The rich scion of a prestigious Hasidic dynasty arrives in Jerusalem from America in a glamorous style - old Sadagura style - to find a husband for her only daughter. All his relatives died in the Shoah and the husband of her daughter is expected to lead further his prestigious dynasty. Himself, he is rather busy with his businesses but is looking for a brilliant talmid of his generation, to head his heritage further. Isaac Meyer Harshen seems to be the right choice and although Batsheva started to have doubts about his real nature, they moved on with the wedding, for reasons of preserving the future. 

Once she moved to Jerusalem, in the ultra-orthodox headquarters of Mea Shearim, in the house his father bought, fully equipped, allowing them to have a relatively carefree life, that Isaac is learning daily in the Kollel, the things are getting worse and worse. Physical intimacy is considered a painful duty, her books of English literature are burned, she is constantly beaten, including during her pregnancy, she has to give up her right of using the common bank account and the modesty dress code is close to rags. Although such an interaction between husband and wife does not represent the way in which observant Jews are treating their wives, such cases, especially among the Gur Hasidim, may be possible. 

But he had just acted the way he thought he was expected to´. Isaac is an interesting character, in his stone heart way of behaving. He is far from being a scholar, was bullied and beat in school himself and is emotionally limited to understand life, no matter how much Torah studies. Clearly, Torah was not meant to be a rigid way of learning, but its study beautifies life. On the other hand, there is the community pressure, the ´fishbowl effect´, when people refuse to think by themselves as they are under a tremendous pressure from outside to behave in ways that the frum society expect them to. 

Batsheva´s drama is being torn between her obligations towards her parents and her religious duties. A brilliant mind herself, she is forced to submit to the instable husband. Once becoming a mother, she sees better what the future can be for her son and what knowledge he can acquire from such a father and his surrounding society - especially the cheder where pupils are encouraged to improve their learning through beatings.

Her radical decision to leave everything behind and move to London was not a break-up from Gd. She is keeping the mitzvot, eats kosher and abstain from any physical intimacy with a man, as she is not divorced yet. Her gentle return to herself is an example how a woman can keep being observant in dignity, while fully accomplishing her human potential. ´Tomorrow, she thought, and for the first time in many years, her days stretched out before her as her own book of clean blank pages full of endless, delightful possibilities´. 

Naomi Ragen succeded to manage a big range of characters, in a dramatic yet harmonious way. The non-Jewish characters of the book do represent a variety of typologies, from the anti-Semites to the simple neutral persons or her good friend Elizabeth who, besides being by principle against Batscheva´s strict upbringing, acts as a matchmaker from heaven. 

From the literally points of view, the book has so many surprising twists, until the very last page. As an avid reader of Naomi Ragen´s books - more to come in the next weeks and months - I´ve always found some interesting and relatable aspects about Jewish life and practice to think about. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

An Immodest Story

 

I am always keen to read memoirs, but also novels, featuring individuals, particularly women, who went OTD - out of the Orthodox Jewish path. With more individuals with a strict religious background having access to education and social media, the number of such work exponentially increased in the last decade. Although some may say that no one shows too much interest in portraying ´normal´ happy Jewish Orthodox families - partly truth as well, but do the happy Jewish Orthodox women do have the time and resources to dedicate to such projects (except some women rather belonging to the ´modern Orthodox´ version like Chabad)?

I am particularly interested in stories focused on the conflict between worlds, about the tension the character who left behind a stable world succeeds - or not - to swim through the challenging waves of the modern lives. Despite the patterns that are common to everyone, there are so many nuances that are part of the individual story of each and every one of us, as human beings.

Immodest is the second book by the Israeli author L.E.Einat - Einat Lifshitz Shem Tov.  She is based in Israel and has a BA in History, with masters in guidance and counseling. 

The book tells the story of Perele, a rebelious girl growing up in a big Orthodox family, married against her will with an aggressive man at a very young age, who will get a divorce against the opposition of her community leaving behind not only the abusive marriage, but her strict practice as well. The story has some interesting characters - her mother for example, able to overcome the limits internalised about marriage and women role by her community and makes a step towards accepting her daughter, as well as her mother-in-law, who ends up testifying by her own will in court against her own violent son, although her husband supported him. Perele herself is a well defined character, although she is missing a lot of details that would have make her more relatable, including her everyday Orthodox practice, besides the modesty rules - like, for instance, the fact that there are no details about her own relationship with religion, the ways in which she fills her day as a Jewish Orthodox woman.

The book also approaches the issue of sexual abuse within family, a vague reminder of the excellent and mindblowing Hush. However, this subplot does not necessarily adds on to the main story, being rather presented as a consequence of the lack of sexual education within the community.

What for me was very difficult to grasp for a long time within the story was: 1. Where exactly the story takes place and 2. What Hasidic group it is all about. 

As in the case of Perele´s own story, there are scarce details regarding the location of the story. For many pages into the book, the surroundings are so neutral that they can be in NYC, Marais or Stanford Hills. We are told somewhere that in fact it is happening in Israel, and I may figure out by myself that it could be Bnei Brak - also as it is close from the beach. 

As for the Hasidic group, the riddle is solved somewhere in the second half, as Perele is starting to share her experience with sexuality and the ways in which ´her group´ dismisses any mixture between genders and considers sexuality as a tool for procreation - and no, not all Hasidic groups think the same. Without being mentioned, it´s clear that we have to do with the very strict and cultish-like habits of the Gur Hasidim that do have an important number of followers in Bnei Brak. 

Another discrepancy for me, but maybe less important anyway, is the cover, which shows a woman that one will rather meet in Gush Etzion that in Bnei Brak where she will be for sure considered very modern. 

However, for anyone who wants to read about a story of survival through love and resilience, Immodest is a catching read. Those who went already to such a dramatic family break-up it´s a reminder of all the wounds that will never heal, but also about the chances that open up, once the walled world was left far behind.

Rating: 3 stars