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Hassidim In the Heartland
Aug. 13th, 2009 12:11 pmJump: Monona, IA → Fayette, IA – Cardinal Park: 40 miles
RIGHT out of the back of the lot…arrows back to RIGHT on HWY 52 NORTH
At Postville, LEFT onto HWY 18 WEST to West Union
LEFT onto HWY 150 SOUTH to Fayette… arrows to lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm
I heard on NPR this morning that the recession is over. This despite the fact that foreclosure rates are soaring, retail sales down, jobless claims up.
Claims the recession is over always make me feel terrible. My life is in fucking shambles. I was destroyed. I don’t see how I ever get it back, work my way up to anything other than a marginal lifestyle ever again.
There is some dignity, some honor, to being the canary in the coal mine in this situation, kind of the early adaptor – we are all going down, I just happened to fall first. But what if I’m just one of those birds that got blown off course in a hurricane? And then the winds stop and everyone else gets to go on living in the beautiful, familiar, tropical world. But I’m circling somewhere far up north, and the views that I contemplate – dizzying plunges to glaciers, cliffs, arid plains – are of landscapes where I can’t survive.
It’s humiliating. It’s horrifying.
###
In other news, bunch of Hassidim showed up at last night’s performances – men in the traditional long black coats, hats, white shirts, beards; the older women in head scarves, the younger women in ill-fitting sheitels.
I was shocked to see them – xenophobia is an actual tenet of the Hassidic brand of Judaism (Anyone who eats with a gentile at table, worships idols and eats sacrifices to the dead.) In fact, one wouldn’t be too far off the mark to call the whole religion, with its peculiar Talmudic obssessiveness, institutionalized Aspergers. What the hell were they doing under the Big Top, mingling with Gentiles, staring up at Chantal’s see-you-next-Tuesday?
Exodus from Crown Heights to the promised land of Iowa began in the mid-eighties when a Hassidic rabbi bought a defunct slaughterhouse in Postville, eight miles away. Agriprocessors became the largest kosher meat processor in the world.
Locals were initially inclined to view the Hassid as just another flavor of Amish. Eventually they grew to hate them. Hassidim don’t mix. They balk at paying taxes. They’re ruthless businessmen – think John D. Rockefeller with forelocks. Think Taliban of modern Judaism.
Butchers in Iowa used to earn $25/hr. The new owners of the meat packing plant were union busters; once the wage for slaughtering animals dipped below eight bucks, the only people they could find to take the job were illegal aliens, most of them from Central America.
Following a much-publicized raid by ICE in May 2008, Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy and the Reb moved back to Crown Heights.
The raid became something of a cause celebré among both Jewish and immigration activists. You’re anti-Semitic! You don’t like Mexicans! By all accounts, though, Agriprocessors’ owners if not precisely corrupt had certainly allowed their disdain for the Gentile world to entice them into some pretty shady business practices. There were also rumors that a meth factory operated out of the plant; at any rate Steve Bloom, author of a moderately famous book about the Postman Hassid, saw speed and firearms sold openly there.
About 300 Orthodox Jews remained – men who’d taken management positions with Agriprocessors, and their families.
I parked myself behind two families to spy on them. Really, I wanted them to use their divinely inspired Jew-dar to sense that I was one of them, invite me to Shabbat dinner, feed me a really good corned beef sandwich and some matzo ball soup. I’m dying for some matzo ball soup. Alas, it wasn’t to be. The only interaction I had with the Hassidim was when the well-spoken young woman in a sheitel who’d hid her eyes behind her hands throughout Chantal’s act asked, “So the tight rope walker – is it a woman or a man please?”
What do they do in Iowa now, I wonder?
RIGHT out of the back of the lot…arrows back to RIGHT on HWY 52 NORTH
At Postville, LEFT onto HWY 18 WEST to West Union
LEFT onto HWY 150 SOUTH to Fayette… arrows to lot
Shows at 5pm/7:30pm
I heard on NPR this morning that the recession is over. This despite the fact that foreclosure rates are soaring, retail sales down, jobless claims up.
Claims the recession is over always make me feel terrible. My life is in fucking shambles. I was destroyed. I don’t see how I ever get it back, work my way up to anything other than a marginal lifestyle ever again.
There is some dignity, some honor, to being the canary in the coal mine in this situation, kind of the early adaptor – we are all going down, I just happened to fall first. But what if I’m just one of those birds that got blown off course in a hurricane? And then the winds stop and everyone else gets to go on living in the beautiful, familiar, tropical world. But I’m circling somewhere far up north, and the views that I contemplate – dizzying plunges to glaciers, cliffs, arid plains – are of landscapes where I can’t survive.
It’s humiliating. It’s horrifying.
In other news, bunch of Hassidim showed up at last night’s performances – men in the traditional long black coats, hats, white shirts, beards; the older women in head scarves, the younger women in ill-fitting sheitels.
I was shocked to see them – xenophobia is an actual tenet of the Hassidic brand of Judaism (Anyone who eats with a gentile at table, worships idols and eats sacrifices to the dead.) In fact, one wouldn’t be too far off the mark to call the whole religion, with its peculiar Talmudic obssessiveness, institutionalized Aspergers. What the hell were they doing under the Big Top, mingling with Gentiles, staring up at Chantal’s see-you-next-Tuesday?
Exodus from Crown Heights to the promised land of Iowa began in the mid-eighties when a Hassidic rabbi bought a defunct slaughterhouse in Postville, eight miles away. Agriprocessors became the largest kosher meat processor in the world.
Locals were initially inclined to view the Hassid as just another flavor of Amish. Eventually they grew to hate them. Hassidim don’t mix. They balk at paying taxes. They’re ruthless businessmen – think John D. Rockefeller with forelocks. Think Taliban of modern Judaism.
Butchers in Iowa used to earn $25/hr. The new owners of the meat packing plant were union busters; once the wage for slaughtering animals dipped below eight bucks, the only people they could find to take the job were illegal aliens, most of them from Central America.
Following a much-publicized raid by ICE in May 2008, Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy and the Reb moved back to Crown Heights.
The raid became something of a cause celebré among both Jewish and immigration activists. You’re anti-Semitic! You don’t like Mexicans! By all accounts, though, Agriprocessors’ owners if not precisely corrupt had certainly allowed their disdain for the Gentile world to entice them into some pretty shady business practices. There were also rumors that a meth factory operated out of the plant; at any rate Steve Bloom, author of a moderately famous book about the Postman Hassid, saw speed and firearms sold openly there.
About 300 Orthodox Jews remained – men who’d taken management positions with Agriprocessors, and their families.
I parked myself behind two families to spy on them. Really, I wanted them to use their divinely inspired Jew-dar to sense that I was one of them, invite me to Shabbat dinner, feed me a really good corned beef sandwich and some matzo ball soup. I’m dying for some matzo ball soup. Alas, it wasn’t to be. The only interaction I had with the Hassidim was when the well-spoken young woman in a sheitel who’d hid her eyes behind her hands throughout Chantal’s act asked, “So the tight rope walker – is it a woman or a man please?”
What do they do in Iowa now, I wonder?
