UNORTHODOX
By: Suri Davis
I don’t watch t.v. much. Foodnetwork, Animal Planet, PBS, and Jets, Mets, Islander games with my son. I don’t own a membership in Hulu or Netflix, nor am I on Instagram or Snapchat, but all I hear around town is about a new reality t.v. show entitled Unorthodox. As I sit here on Tisha B’av afternoon, thinking about unity in our community, I ponder.
I met a Five Towner who grew up in Boro Park and Flatbush. His Orthodox people would never eat at Ratner’s or Bernsteins, would never think of going to Grossinger’s or the Concord Hotel. My people did all of the above, and ate at Toddy’s when it still served its Sturgeon salad, which we knew to stay away from. When great local Rabbis went into unkosher establishments for their coffee, which obviously did not have Cholov Yisrael milk, and we ate at the Lower East Side bialy shop if we waited an hour after Shabbos was over. Yeah things change. So who was Orthodox and who wasn’t? We both were.
Labels and more labels. People want to set me up, and they ask what I am. I tell them proudly that I am Chabad Charedi. They never heard of this label…true because I made it up, it truly reflects my soul. There was Nachum ish Gamzu, and I’m Suri Al Tistakel B’kankan, and that’s fine.
I went to T.A.G. and went to Camp Avnet in Danskin matching short sets, and Camp Bnos Yehuda and Camp Morasha. I was in class with Rochmy Twerski, Tzirl Spiegel, Ivy Kreinberg/Chaya Kalazan, and we all played together as one, in fact most of us are now on a Whatsapp chat that spans literally around the world. We had a Zoom reunion this year with our old principals. We were a notable class, in that we were TAG’s first double class, they now have six classes per grade. We were the norm in the early Five Towns days. Some became doctors, lawyers, entrepeneurs in different fields and most enviously/notably mothers/wives. The only Chasidic looking man besides Rabbi Rubin was Rochmy Twerski’s father, Rabbi Dr. Aaron Twerski, who became dean of Hofstra Law School.
As I think about our pandemic era, we were all unorthodox, i.e., contrary to what is usual, traditional, or accepted (Webster). We didn’t go to shul, we didn’t sit shiva in person, we didn’t say kaddish for lost loved ones. Last year, I sat outside with a friend, saying Eichah together as we heard the waves crashing on the beach a half block away, and we mourned the loss of normal. We “made do,” as my mother would say. Yeshivahs shut, shules, shut, stores shut, we sat at home pondering as we do on Tisha B’av, all that we lost.
So this Julia Haart, who was once ritualistically Orthodox broke out the community in which she was raised. On the front page of yesterday’s NYTimes Arts section, she discusses her rise in the business world, which was so very bizarre, as to be openly Yad Hashem, finding funding from someone on a plane, another person at a restaurant, and yet another at a doctor’s office. The last question the NYTimes author asked Julia and her answer is as follows: Q: Did you think about what offering your version of Judaism would mean?” Answer: “My issues and the way that I was treated have nothing to do with Judaism. Judaism is about values and community and loving-kindness and beautiful things. I feel very proud to be a Jew. I believe in G-d. How could I not? This is a way to show people that there are all sorts of Jews.” From the mouth of babes.
That this article came out in the New York Times erev Tisha B’av is prophetic. You can be a Moshe Rabbeinu and hit the rock and lose your opportunity to arrive in Eretz Yisrael. You can be a sheltered Jew, who many label as off the derech/off the religious path, clearly each person has his/her own derech/path. In my humble opinion, not knowing Julia, nor having watched her show, she very remarkably and notably sanctified G-d’s name by summing up what Judaism truly is.
Every day in our prayers, we ask G-d to return our Judges to those of old, who were wise and pure, we are not those judges. We might determine with whom we want to interact, befriend or marry, but labelling is up to a person who knows her heart, not for humans to determine.
The pandemic revealed to us how our Orthodox norms were blasted apart, and we were forced to stay home and figure out other ways to define our orthodoxy. I’ve written before how I am part of a community chat where, at the beginning of the pandemic, the men were at a loss as to how to replace saying kaddish to honor a parent’s yahrtzeit. That Shabbos, the chat worked together to break up the book of tehilim/Psalms and say it in memory of the lost parent. It brought comfort to the mourner and was such a lovely community outreach to help a man honor his parent when the pandemic robbed him of his minyan. We have all been unorthodox this past year, and we dug deep to grow in religious practice in other ways…and many did.
Finally, a client cancelled last Monday, and I took the opportunity to pay a shiva visit to the Davidowitz family. I entered just as they were all watching the burial in Eretz Yisrael. When the burial was seemingly done, as people started to leave, Rozi’s family who were there started singing the most beautiful song to her, with words that I have loved for years. Ilan Ilan Bameh avarechichah, Tree Oh Tree how shall I bless you? G-d has blessed you with all, what more can we ask? That all your fruit be like you, i.e., all your offspring. Her family was singing that they wished they could all be as lovely and bright and energetic and funny as she. The family sitting in their home sang along with those on Har Menuchot. THAT was unorthodox, as unorthodox as Rozi was and perfectly magnificent, I have tears writing about it. [Do you see yad Hashem? I was not happy at the last-minute cancellation, do you see how HKBH blessed me to be there with them at that moment. G-d’s plan is always better.]
Retire labels. Retire judgment. Enhance bridge-building. Bring Moshiach.
Meaningful fast.
-Suri