First Time in the Home of a Hasidic Jewish Family 🇺🇸

A day in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with Rabbi Yoni, who runs a bookable tour of the neighbourhood. Harry opens with a disclaimer he reads out rather than captions: a government and its people are two different things, this is a video about a religion and not about current politics, and viewers can form their own opinion.

What follows is mostly explanation, and it is the densest single video in the United States cluster: what the dress means, how a synagogue in a converted house became the headquarters of a worldwide movement, why a kosher kitchen has two of nearly everything, and what a family of nine looks like from the inside. The rabbi’s opening claim is that the community is assumed to be closed and insular and is the opposite, and Harry can in fact walk into the synagogue unaccompanied.

Key moments

• [00:00] The disclaimer, delivered before anything else.
• [01:02] Crown Heights, at Kingston and Eastern Parkway.
• [02:33] Over 4,000 synagogues and Jewish centres worldwide were started from this one building.
• [03:06] Tzitzit — worn from age three, on a four-cornered garment, with eight strings and five knots on each corner: 613, the number of commandments.
• [03:36] The correction he offers: mitzvah means connection rather than commandment, and the framing is an invitation rather than an order.
• [04:07] Beards, from the instruction not to cut the five corners of the face.
• [04:39] 770 Eastern Parkway was a Jewish doctor’s house, bought in the 1940s when this was an affluent Jewish neighbourhood — close enough to hear the Brooklyn Dodgers’ home runs.
• [04:39] Around 15,000–20,000 Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, the largest such population outside Israel, across more than 200 Hasidic groups each named for where they came from.
• [05:09] Successive New York mayors came here for a blessing and a dollar to give to charity — the principle being that when two people meet it should benefit a third.
• [05:41] A wall of telephone equipment: a 1970s hookup system broadcasting the Rebbe’s talks live to hundreds of locations worldwide, from Rio to Alaska.
• [06:45] Built improvised, by young yeshiva students.
• [07:20] The black suit is not required. It functions as a uniform, so that a rabbi is recognisable the way a policeman is.
• [07:51] The main synagogue, with men and boys studying and praying.
• [08:26] Tefillin, worn from bar mitzvah at 13 — parchments in two boxes, one bound to the arm by the heart for the emotions and one on the head for the thoughts, so the two are in step.
• [08:58] The yarmulke, which literally means fear of God.
• [09:31] Study runs from 7:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night. Harry says he can’t concentrate on one thing for two hours.
• [10:04] Shmira, the community’s own patrol — shmira means guarding.
• [10:36] Harry raises the underground tunnels story directly. The rabbi’s account: students expanded a cramped part of the synagogue themselves, it was filled in with cement, and some of the students were upset and took it as antisemitism. He answers the question rather than deflecting it.
• [11:08] Married women cover their hair from the morning after the wedding.
• [11:42] The wigs have a lining made to look like scalp, in shades to match different skin tones; the hair is bought from Europe, Ukraine and Brazil, with Brazilian hair preferred because it’s finer. The reason for covering is modesty, framed as between a woman and God rather than about other people.
• [12:16] Hatzalah, the community’s volunteer ambulance service, which he says is faster than the city’s because the crews know the streets. Hatzalah means to save.
• [12:47] These few blocks are around 90% Jewish; further out it’s more mixed, and a non-Jewish neighbour moving in is unremarkable.
• [13:19] Intermarriage is not permitted unless the other person converts, which he states plainly when Harry asks.
• [13:53] A hat shop gives Harry a hat, which he says makes him look like a Peaky Blinder.
• [14:27] The family house — where the rabbi’s wife grew up.
• [14:57] The kosher kitchen: two ovens, two microwaves, two dishwashers, two washing machines. One fridge, and he’d like a second.
• [15:33] The verse behind it — do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk — and the practice that follows: meat and milk are neither cooked nor eaten together. He describes it as inconvenient and says they do it gladly.
• [16:40] Nine children, from the first commandment in the Bible: be fruitful and multiply.
• [17:12] Boys’ hair isn’t cut for the first three years.
• [17:43] The misconception he most wants corrected: that the large family and the path are imposed on you. They aren’t.
• [17:43] His answer on peace, which is the longest thing he says: that the real question is what happens once the fighting stops, and that people will turn to deeper questions. He is explicit that being responsible for protecting your people doesn’t make you more important than anyone else, and that every country carries the same responsibility.
• [18:49] Harry’s own summary when asked what travel has taught him: 99.9% of people are kind, there are good and bad people everywhere, and strangers will help you anywhere in the world.
• [20:28] The tour is bookable, and the family took no payment for the day.

Extracted pages

• Place: New York
• Country: United States
• Person: Rabbi Yoni
• Tips: Judge a place for yourself