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Sex and the Nervous Single

by Dorothy Rabinowitz

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Thursday, March 15, 2012

To do justice to the powers of “Only for God: Inside Hasidism” would require more space than a column, but we can begin with the power of surprise. A documentary that addresses this subject without condescension, as this National Geographic film does, is a rarity. To have grasped the fundamentals of the Jewish lives under scrutiny here without any hint of that estranged tone now common in reporting on the profoundly religious is rarer still.

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NGTMatisyahu Devlin in ‘Only for God.’

This is, to the contrary, a remarkably intimate look at the Hasidic way of life—a factor that owes much to those speaking for that life interviewed in their communities in Brooklyn and upstate New York. For a people who have chosen to live apart from the secular world as much as possible, they have a lot to say to that world, and they say it with zest. For Hasidim, merely serving God is not enough—that service must be joyful. That joy is given expression in the film’s most compelling scenes—in the piercing merriment of the music, in the exuberant dancing, and singing, that takes place in the synagogue.

Not to mention at the weddings, a subject on which the filmmakers have amassed wonderful detail. Matchmakers introduce most Hasidic couples. But as Toby, a still young, clearly happy married woman, recalls it, she wasn’t enthusiastic about the arrangement—she’d wondered how these marriages could work. Nevertheless, she attests, within 10 minutes of her meeting with Joel, the young man the matchmaker produced, she got the feeling, “Hey, this is the kind of guy I would want to marry.” Joel, now her husband, beams as he helps serve dinner with one hand while holding a toddler with another. They have three children, we learn—not enough as far as Toby is concerned. Hasidim believe in the tenet “Be fruitful and multiply.” A common question among her women friends, she notes dryly, runs something like “so when are you having your next?”

Not everyone is happy with the Hasidic life—there are rebels, two of whom tell their stories of the decision to break away. One is a young man who says he couldn’t abide the discipline, the refusal of the outside world’s learning, to say nothing of its sex—and so he made his break, only to find he can’t quite bring himself to do so completely. He says he doesn’t have the guts—that’s not the word he used—to cut his payes, the sidecurls that mark many ultraorthodox Jews. That’s why he has them tucked behind his ears.

There are those, on the other hand, who come as strangers to the Hasidic world and stay there. The most memorable of all the narratives here concerns a young man, product of a Catholic-school education, born to a Catholic father and a nonreligious Jewish mother, who got into trouble at home, made his way to New York and, by some route or other, to the Hasidim in Williamsburg. There he soon decided that he had found his faith as a devout member of the Hasidic community. The film crew follows him home to his Catholic family in his full Hasidic garb, carrying his supply of kosher food. He leads the family, his devout Catholic father included, in a Hanukkah service, in which they happily partake. This Hasid’s father, who looks fondly at his baptized son, can’t resist noting, wryly, that “once you’re Catholic, you’re always a Catholic.” An extraordinary hour.

Only for God: Inside Hasidism | Friday, March 23, 10 p.m. on National Geographic Channel