I went out shopping for trinkets for the Hollydays’ “advent calendar I made for Rey, and stumbled into a deep dive into a Hasidic tribe. It has been novel for me to interact with them here in Rockland County, where they have made a firm stronghold, much to the horror of many of my neighbors who feel an existential threat from the “coming storm.” Indeed the extremely insular Hasidic community has values and agendas that run deeply counter to my Christian, secular an even more liberal Jewish neighbors. It was in a small but upscale shopping center in Spring Valley, where I was literally the one and only goy present.
I got very frightened stares, mothers gathered their children, and the counter girl whom I questioned about the pounce wheel I had come there to purchase, looked at me with horror and fled into the backroom, emerging shortly with an older man. He and I had an enjoyable and enlightening conversation about Hasidic fashion and fabric as the young woman followed our exchange intently. When took my purchase and turned to leave, I once again made eye contact with her, and saw that she was no longer terrified, but more bemused, offering a bit of a Mona Lisa smile to this fat but jolly and harmless old goy.
I realized that the stink eye I often get from similar young women I encounter at the Home Depot, comes not so much from any animus to me, but more from their fear. I recalled the “gathering storm” rhetoric, the relentless attacks and antisemitism they must face, and felt great compassion for them, trapped in a patriarchal tribe that asked so much of them, but offered them so little. As I continued to other of their shops, I wondered if my offering of smiles and greetings in return for their frightened glances might help break down the walls between our communities a little bit.
I had a friend comment that, years from now, when her granddaughter introduces her fiance for approval, her first question will be “who did your parents vote for in 2016?” This divide feels that essential to many of us, probably on either side.
And I am having trouble feeling any sort of compassion for these “deplorables.” Their unwavering support for an autocratic, despotic and oligarchic regime feels like an existential threat to the system our nation has so carefully and idealistically constructed over these couple of centuries. Far from perfect, as things necessarily always are, the ideals and the experiment that this union has represented have resonated among the vast majority of our kind around the world. Now so many are wondering if the perversions of that vision that these brothers and sisters have embraced can end us.
But unlike the puppet masters and propagandists who have sold their souls to pedal a toxic snake oil in exchange for fame, power and their 30 pieces of silver, most of these poor schlemiel’s only real fault is being too credulous. They have been sold a comforting fiction to sooth their frightened minds, just as the same salesmen have been whipping up their fear in a feedback loop of anger and righteousness. But perhaps we can reply to their fear and anger, not with the same of our own, but with compassion for the trap they have fallen into. Perhaps with our compassion rather than our scorn, they can work their way out of that trap, and rejoin us more constructively in our common task to form a more perfect union.
HOLLY DAYS 