THE HASIDIC MOVEMENT HISTORICALLY AND TODAY

The Hasidic movement (Hasid ‘pious one’, pl. Hasidim) originated in eastern Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. The movement was sparked by the teachings of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezar, known as the Baal-Shem-Tov (literally ‘Master of the Good Name’), who was considered by many to be a miracle worker and healer. After his death (1760), leadership of the growing movement fell to his disciple, Rabbi Dov-Ber of Mezerich, and under him Hasidism quickly spread throughout much of eastern Europe.

There has been scholarly debate as to how to characterize Hasidism and explain its success (e.g. Dinur 1991, Dubnow 1991, Ettinger 1991). Most scholars, however, agree that two features distinguished Hasidism as a movement. The first was the institution of a spiritual and community leader, a rebbe (charismatic leader), who provided his followers with an actual conduit to God. The second was a focus on joyous expression of faith, including singing, dancing, and ecstatic prayer. This was in contrast to the existing rabbinic structure, which was based on ascetic study of the Torah, primarily the domain of the elite (Hundert 1991; Rosman 1991, 1996; Heilman 1992; Heilman & Friedman 1991).

Each Hasidic group was organized into a dynastic court named after the town of a particular rebbe's origin. The courts differed from one another in practice and philosophy. Followers of a rebbe were often dispersed across the eastern European landscape, and pilgrimages were made to visit a rebbe who might live in another town, even far away. The Hasidic movement was radical for its time, offering a transformed and transformative Judaism (Belcove 1989, Ettinger 1991, Heilman 1992, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998).²

By the close of World War II, the majority of Hasidim had been killed in the Holocaust. A number managed to escape, however, and resettled in urban centers around the world, with the largest populations in the United States and Israel. The Holocaust provided Hasidim with a mission of reconstruction which made it their responsibility to rebuild and repopulate their communities (Mintz 1992, Heilman 1992, Belcove-Shalin 1995).

Today Hasidic Jews claim to be the keepers of authentic Judaism, a way of life which they trace back to eastern Europe and even further to Mount Sinai. However, ethnographic work in Israel and North America with Jews many scholars now call haredim³

Despite increasing religious stringency, haredim rarely withdraw completely from the wider communities in which they live. Rather, they “hyperbolize” community boundaries (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998) as they simultaneously participate in a range of contemporary spheres, which allows them to flourish. Ethnographic work with Hasidic Jews in Canada, Brooklyn, and Israel has made important contributions toward our understanding of the various ways that Hasidic Jews actively engage educational, political, technological, cultural, and economic channels of the contemporary nation-state in order to strengthen and separate themselves, at least ideologically if not physically, from those Jews and Gentiles who are outside their communities (e.g., Poll 1962, 1965; Shaffir 1974, 1995; Rubin 1972; Friedman 1986, 1987; Heilman 1992; Sharot 1982; El-Or 1994; Kranzler 1995; Mintz 1992; Belcove-Shalin 1995; Koskoff 2001; Glinert & Isaacs 1999; Kahn 2000; Morris 1998).⁴

Boro Park, Brooklyn, the site of my research, is known among Hasidim as a balebatish ‘bourgeois’ neighborhood with a large population of diverse Hasidic groups, multiple denominations of Jews (from observant to nonobservant), and other ethnic groups, including Italians and Latinos. The Hasidic women I worked with call themselves “moderates” in comparison to more “radical” Hasidic groups or, at the other end of the spectrum, more “modern” observant Jews. Hasidic women distinguish among the diversity of North American Jews by referring to neighborhood, symbolic markers of difference (e.g., clothing, education, language choice of Yiddish, English, or Hebrew), religious practice, and level of engagement with contemporary society.⁵

One area we know little about is how Hasidic women and children are implicated in the contemporary “hyperbolization” of observance and difference.⁶

WOMEN'S FAITH AND KHINIKH: AUTHORITY AND DIFFERENCE

The covenant between God and the Jews is a bargain of sorts, a community member, Mrs. Katz, explained to me. If Jewish men and women observe the commandments (mitsves) which they hold that God has decreed for them, they will be rewarded in this life and the hereafter. There are 613 commandments. These can be broken down into 356 negative commandments and 248 positive ones; negative commands are prohibitions while positive commandments are duties to be performed or observed.¹²

Hasidic women told me that they must practice the commandments despite any feelings of incomprehension, doubt, or dissatisfaction. Comprehension, faith, and satisfaction are thought to develop over the life cycle through religious practice. Jewish women's faith is marked by a willingness to acquiesce to God's will, even if one does not always understand God's reasons. Women I spoke with expressed the belief that human existence is directed by a divine authority figure. Women explained that they often search for explanations for misfortune or problems, because “there is always a reason.” When a reason is not clear, however, women frequently claimed that they were simply not yet able or ready to understand God's plan for them. Women strive to receive their lot in life with cheerful acceptance, no matter their understanding.

Hasidic women's conceptions of faith are presented to children in khinikh, the moral upbringing that shapes children into autonomous Jews responsible for fulfilling the commandments. A divine presence is a given and permeates everyday life. Women caregivers consistently invoke God's presence for children, reminding them frequently that the aybeshter iz iberal ‘God is everywhere’.

Adult women's belief that religious practice cultivates faith and that “understanding” is not critical to faith appears in socialization routines that emphasize adherence to authority figures and social hierarchies regardless of children's understanding or desire to comply. Caregivers believe that practice leads to understanding and culturally appropriate feelings, not the reverse. For example, when a young teacher was frustrated that her second-grade class did not show much enthusiasm for their morning prayers, her grandfather told her that when he was a boy he terribly resented his father's requiring him to get up before dawn to study Torah. However, his father kept after him. With time, he came to appreciate his father and relish his early-morning rising as a time to experience the beauty of the Torah. His message to his granddaughter was clear: Keep your students praying, regardless of what they feel. Appropriate feelings of satisfaction and respect will develop with the practicing of the commandments.

The belief that khinikh is to socialize bodies to practice, with understanding coming later, is a way to simultaneously socialize a form of faith that need not question certain beliefs and practices because they are legitimized by divine authority. Samuel Heilman, in his ethnography of haredi Jews in Israel, includes a quote from the writings of the Lubavitcher rebbe:

The Hasidic women I worked with presented young children with a moral universe where acceptance of familial and communal authority was in direct contrast to evocations of Gentile society. Hasidic women told me that the “secular” and/or “Gentile” focus on individual fulfillment, portrayed as selfishness, was what ultimately led to the high divorce rate, the breakdown of families, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure. Hasidic women caregivers rarely invoked the complex range of Jewish difference that constitutes Judaism in North America. Rather, they drew on the “black-and-white” distinction between Jews and Gentiles, which is inherently less problematic to explain to children.¹³

A Hasidic child's failure to fit in goes beyond negative consequences for the individual. It has a communal and a redemptive dimension as well. A child who does not fit in shirks his or her responsibilities to family and ultimately, through threatening the matchmaking process, the growth of the Jewish nation. These are the activities that lay the groundwork for the coming of the Messiah.

Hasidic mothers and teachers I spoke with report that learning appropriate relationships with authority figures, as well as learning to rein in one's selfish desires for the greater good, is essential to learning their version of faith. Caregivers suggest that in their interactions with children they model the relationship the children should eventually have with God. In effect, khinikh is a rehearsal for how to be a Hasidic woman or man who has autonomy and uses that autonomy to obey the commandments, which often includes putting the needs or emotions of others above one's own. The ideal of a moral Jew that caregivers elaborate is one of autonomy without selfish individualism. An important way that Hasidic women teach their children to be autonomous without being individualistic is to fit into community expectations and hierarchies. Children are taught that making caregivers “proud” is analogous to and practice for making the aybeshter ‘God’ proud of them. Conforming to communal hierarchies of authority is a concrete way for children to fulfill God's commandments.

Despite the emphasis placed on fitting in and not challenging authority figures, some women caregivers expressed ambivalence about unnecessary pressure on children. Several mothers and teachers, especially those whose children were labeled as “interesting” (a negative term used in English, implying that they did not fit in), expressed regret that “by us, you don't rock the boat” – meaning, as one mother elaborated, “Anything different and people will talk.” Another mother actually did not send her daughters to Hasidic nursery school because she felt it stifled “creativity.” She said that young children were not encouraged to draw, for example, a purple apple because as teachers tell those students, “a purple apple can't be.” She kept her daughters home until kindergarten and encouraged them to express themselves as long as possible.

There are, however, culturally sanctioned areas in which Hasidic children can express themselves and be creative. These frequently include the arts, especially performing in plays, singing, drawing, painting, and reciting. There are also many incentives and rewards in place across socialization contexts for children which sweeten the prospect of enacting the appropriate ways to think, be, and ask. There are elaborate praising routines throughout childhood and young adulthood in which children come to associate parental/caregiver love, satisfaction, and personal happiness with fitting into communal expectations. There are also some who cannot or will not fit in. Individuals sometimes do leave the community, although this is not very common, as I discuss toward the end of this article.

I turn now to socialization routines which effectively end certain lines of questioning or requests by invoking the morality of essentialized Jewish difference and communal hierarchies of authority, often in direct contrast to caregivers' evocations of Gentile society.

GOOD QUESTIONS, BAD QUESTIONS, AND REQUESTS

In order to learn to fit into the expectations of authority figures, Hasidic children have to learn which kinds of questions and requests are appropriate, eliciting approving explanations, and which questions or requests are shown – through silence, evocation of essentialized difference, or reprimand – to be inappropriate. In preparation for the holiday of Passover, when the Exodus narrative is retold during a ritualized meal (Seder), a first-grade teacher, Mrs. Weiss, dramatized a portion of the hagude (the text used in the Seder). The section she presented is based on a rabbinic commentary which claims that there are four kinds of Jewish children, and that each one should receive a specifically tailored answer to the ritualized question the youngest child at the table has just recited: “Why is this night different from all others?” One kind of child, a khukhem ‘wise child’, is a good, obedient boy who likes to learn Torah. He asks his father respectfully to explain the Exodus from ancient Egypt so that he might fulfill God's commandments. His father rewards him by teaching him all there is to know about the Seder so that he may participate. Another kind of child, in contrast, is a rushe ‘bad child’. He is disobedient, does not like to learn Torah, reads Gentile books, does not obey the commandments, and makes fun of all Jewish things. He asks his father mockingly what God commanded Jews to do for Passover, excluding himself. His father yells at him that if he had been in ancient Egypt, he would not have been redeemed because he asked in such a khitspedik in narish ‘willfully defiant and silly’ way. Children and young adults who do not live their lives as Jews, who fail to maintain the boundaries between themselves and Gentiles (e.g., by reading Gentile books), who ask their fathers disrespectful questions, are labeled as babyish, silly, or – even worse – not meriting membership in the community of Jews. The third and fourth children are a “simple” child and a “baby.” The teacher told the Passover narrative in its barest outlines for the former and then told the story to the baby in Yiddish baby talk, to her students' delight. Mrs. Weiss's dramatization suggests that there are good children who ask good questions, bad children who ask bad questions, simple children who ask simple questions, and babies who “don't even know what to ask.”

In homes and school I saw many young girls ask “good” questions. These questions were generally text-based and could, for example, refer to an inconsistency or an unusual marking in a text. Parents and/or teachers, in these cases, would warmly applaud the young questioner for her careful attention and diligence. These girls were often held up as models to their siblings and/or peers for their engagement, attention, and the respectful manner in which they asked a question.

Similar to the baby or the simple child in the Passover narrative, there are other situations in which a question or response to a question is considered irrelevant or inappropriate and is simply ignored by a caregiver and peers. For example, in a kindergarten classroom, the teacher (Morah Chaya) asked girls what they wanted to be when they were big, and all of them responded with “a mommy” or “a teacher.” One child, whose family was actually not Hasidic, said she could be a policeman. Although she repeated this several times, the teacher and the other students ignored her. Ignorance or lack of control in very young children (under five, generally) often excused culturally inappropriate questions or claims.

Questions posed by young girls that were not encouraged were those about the rationale for or intricacies of religious practice. When I heard girls pose these kinds of questions, women caregivers ended the questioning by invoking the Torah as the inviolable word of God. Girls learned in many different socialization contexts that the Torah and the complete acceptance of its contents is the benchmark that differentiates Jews from Gentiles. Questions about the “why” of religious practice are used as a way to reinforce the ultimate divine authority residing in the Torah. Further, caregivers frequently emphasized that those without a Torah have no divine authority to control their morality. In these “why” questions, children learn the special responsibilities of being a Hasidic Jew.

For example, seven-year-old Rifky, her mother, Mrs. Klein, and I were on our way to the playground when Mrs. Klein stopped off to have a sweater checked by a local expert for shatnes (a mixing of wool and linen, which is forbidden). The following interaction occurred:

That was the end of that. Rifky did not question further. In this exchange with her mother, Rifky questions the reason behind the prohibition on mixing wool and linen by clarifying that her question is not about what the prohibition is, but the reason behind it (‘But why?’). Her mother's answer is that in the Torah the prohibition is noted. The shatnes rule is one that in normative Judaism is believed to have no religious explanation. Hasidic Jews apparently go out of their way to provide some possible explanations.¹⁴

A similar stance to the Torah's authority and prohibition on questioning one's lot in life can be seen in a school assembly I attended. An older Russian woman had been invited to address the girls on the school's theme for the year: simkhe ‘happiness’. The speaker told the girls all about the hardships and prejudice she and her family had endured in order to remain observant Jews under the communist regime. Despite everything, she claimed, Ma mame hot nit gefreygt kan kashes. Emune iz simkhe ‘My mother never asked questions/for any reasons. Faith is happiness’.

Hasidic children, young boys and girls, learn that their Torah and their unquestioning adherence to its commandments makes them “special and different” from Gentiles. For example, Mrs. Weiss, the first-grade teacher in Bnos Yisroel, told her students that obeying the commandments in the Torah ensures that Jews, unlike Gentiles, have the self-control to struggle with their inclination for bad. In a comparison between Jews and Gentiles, she noted:

A number of women explained to me that within all people there are inclinations for good and bad. Following the commandments provides Jews with the fortitude to control the inclination for bad. Gentiles who live outside of the authority of the Torah have no such checks or guides for their behavior. Caregivers often represent Gentiles to children as people who are incapable of controlling their selfish bodily inclinations. In her explanation to me about the prayers observant Jews make before eating, my Yiddish tutor, Mrs. Gold, told me: “A Yid est vi a mensch [‘A Jew eats like a human being’]. A Goy digs in.” By following God's commandments and by participating in hierarchies of authority which all support the same message, Jews are able to sacralize everyday life through religious practice, unlike Gentiles, who remain in the material world.

In addition to questions, parents' responses to requests to change religious practice are an important way that children learn about communal hierarchies of authority which are invested with a divine stamp of approval. While there are certain laws that all observant Jews obey, the interpretations of the laws in practice vary. Religious differentiation among Hasidic groups is an important marker of family solidarity, genealogy, and continuity. In fact, although there is unusual continuity across home and school contexts, family religious practice is acknowledged to take precedence over the practice of the school when the issue is one of style rather than level of observance.

Familial authority (based on age and gender) is invoked by parents to reject their children's requests to look or worship differently from the family, often as a result of their exposure to the religious practices of their peers. For example, Mrs. Cohen told me how she responded to her seven-year-old son's requests to look more like the boys in his school, the Stolin Yeshiva, a Hasidic group which originated in Lithuania. Stolin is known for being very “American,” meaning that males do not look or sound so distinctively Hasidic. Mrs. Cohen, in contrast, comes from what she calls a “European” background, which implies stricter adherence to and heightening of the commandments.

Mrs. Cohen's son asked to wear a tie and also to cut his long, curly side locks and tuck them behind his ears, so the other boys would not make fun of him. Mrs. Cohen told me that she told her son, “We don't wear ties.” Regarding his hair, her husband told her son that his mother liked his side curls long and, his mother reported to me, “That was that.” In their responses, caregivers stress, through appeals to familial authority (“we don't do that”) that fitting into family practice is not open to negotiation or discussion. In the side curl discussion, Mrs. Cohen's son learned not only the importance of conformity to family practice, but also that his desires must give way before his mother's.

Children's requests or questions regarding gender categories are another important time for caregivers to essentialize gender differences as markers of Jewish morality. In Hasidic circles, males and females have strictly defined spheres of interest and activity. Hasidic women often morally criticize the “women's lib” movement, suggesting that gender relations in the Hasidic world are happier and morally in tune with God's will (see also Morris 1998).

Girls often do not have access to certain realms of male knowledge. Requests for knowledge that crosses gender boundaries spark either teasing or caregivers' evocation of immutable and divinely sanctioned gender differences which require reminding but no explanation. For example, when Mrs. Weiss, the first-grade teacher, was asked by Chana about a sacred text, the Mishna, Mrs.Weiss shrugged off her question by telling her (in Yiddish), “When you're a boy, you'll understand.” Everyone laughed, including Chana and Mrs. Weiss. The teasing tone, laughter, and dismissal of the question suggested that it really does not matter if a girl knows what the Mishna is or not. And indeed, Mrs. Weiss effectively cut off any further questioning and continued her lesson.

Young children learning about religious practice and social differentiation are taught through specific socializing routines that certain questions and requests will not be answered except through reference to essentialized and divinely mandated differences. These essentialized differences reinforce inviolate categories of textual authority (the Torah), gender, and family religious practice which may not be challenged. Caregivers simply will not answer or do not offer much in the way of explanation when children question the boundaries of social hierarchies of authority. Depictions of Gentiles are a resource that Hasidic caregivers I observed drew on to compare those with and those without the Torah as a way of life. Gentiles were frequently depicted as individuals without hierarchies of authority to guide them toward living the way God has commanded.

In contrast to culturally inappropriate questions and requests, if a caregiver perceives a willful challenge to her own authority or that of another caregiver, the reaction is very different. What gets labeled as khitspeh ‘willful defiance’, to whom it is attributed, and how it is dealt with are based on cultural understandings of how intentionality and self-control develop across the life cycle.

REMINDERS, WARNINGS, TATTLING, AND PUBLIC SHAMING

Hasidic children are not considered to be fully responsible for observing all of the commandments until they reach the age of twelve (for girls) or thirteen (for boys). This is the age of bas or bar mitsve (literally ‘daughter/son of commandments’). Women caregivers did not expect children to act like adults. They were expected to make mistakes in religious practice, to defy authority figures at times, and not always to ask only “good” questions. Caregivers tried very hard to give children the benefit of the doubt because they are not considered fully competent community members. In response to children's disobedience or challenges, caregivers tried a variety of tactics, including reminding them of responsibility, warning of a boundary that may not be crossed, encouraging girls to monitor themselves, their peers, and their siblings, and, as a last resort, publicly shaming those who seemed to deliberately flaunt challenges to authority. In these cases, the child's behavior might even be compared with that of Gentile children.

In their reminders and warnings, parents and teachers frequently drew on communal hierarchies of authority to remind children that their will (as children) must be subordinated to that of authority figures. The very first day of first grade, a little girl, Esty, jumped out of her seat before Mrs. Weiss had given the students permission to line up. Mrs. Weiss told her to sit down, but Esty said, “No!” Mrs. Weiss asked her if a student could say “no” to a teacher. Esty hung her head and was silent. I heard a number of teachers and parents ask a range of rebellious kindergartners and first-graders, Me meg zugn nayn far a Morah ‘Can you say “no” to a teacher?’ Children almost always seemed embarrassed and said Nayn ‘no’ or hung their heads in silence. Parents similarly disciplined their children by asking if one said “no” to a “mommy or a tatty [‘daddy’]?” Through a generalizing strategy, caregivers placed themselves in the category of “teacher” or “mommy,” so that rather than casting the event as a personalized struggle, they reminded children that there were categories of adults who simply had to be obeyed. Indeed, part of the “Jewish” curriculum in the girls' school was to enforce respect for parents and teachers. Jewish religious texts were drawn on to legitimize these positions.

Caregivers also appeal to the affective influence children's actions have on authority figures. Caregivers frequently suggest to children that following the instructions of authority figures makes them “proud,” while not following instructions makes them “sad.” On a number of occasions I heard mothers tell their sons that their teacher would be very “sad” if they do not do all of their homework. Mrs. Weiss similarly told a student (in Yiddish) who had not followed instructions, “Matty, you have to obey a teacher. You have to. Even if you don't want to …”

Thus, an aspect of this form of disciplining is to encourage a sense of personal responsibility for the feelings of authority figures and learn to put them above one's own. In these socialization routines, caregivers suggest to children that following the wishes of authority figures is more important than one's individual feelings or desires. Caregivers legitimate their authority by drawing on sacred texts. The message children are presented with is that by accommodating to caregivers' authority, they are fulfilling God's commandments. This parallels the conception of faith that Hasidic women articulate, in which religious practice leads to culturally appropriate emotions and desires. When children put their caregivers' desires above their own, they are participating in a form of faith which requires that they use their autonomy to fulfill the Jewish commandments.

As children get older (beginning generally in first grade), direct challenges to a parent or teacher's authority is publicly named as khitspeh. Critical to naming khitspeh is the inclusion of the child's peers or siblings, who usually ally themselves with the authority figure. In the following example, a first-grade girl, Blimi, announces to the class that her sister has challenged Blimi's teacher's (Mrs. Weiss's) account of a religious practice:

Once Blimi reports the accusation, Mrs. Weiss is quick to reframe the challenge to her authority. She ignores the content of Blimi's sister's remark (which is actually based on a simplification Mrs. Weiss made of a text) and focuses on the defiance she displays by questioning a teacher. Through labeling Blimi's sister a groyse mekhitsev ‘big troublemaker’, Mrs. Weiss shows that there are public consequences for girls who challenge a teacher's authority. The other first-graders are encouraged to rally around Mrs. Weiss. Blimi's sister will get the punishment she deserves from her own teacher, whom Mrs. Weiss will tell.

In this incident, there is a chain of tattling to authority figures. Blimi tattles on her sister to Mrs. Weiss, and Mrs. Weiss encourages her and the other students to tell her the name of Blimi's sister's teacher. Mrs. Weiss then plans to tattle on Blimi's sister to her teacher. Girls are encouraged to report when a peer challenges an authority figure. Mrs. Weiss, however, does try to defuse the gravity of the sister's comments by repeating that Blimi's sister simply did not understand her own words or their import. Khitspeh can be a serious charge. Mrs. Weiss attempts to reframe the breach and bring it down the level of “mistake.”

Mrs. Weiss is simultaneously engaging in what Goffman terms “face-saving practices” (1972:328), in which participants attempt to reestablish “ritual equilibrium” by publicly acknowledging and correcting for challenges to someone's face or social worth. Mrs. Weiss attempts to repair the direct challenge to her own authority by claiming that Blimi's sister did not intentionally challenge a teacher's authority.

In these types of socializing interactions, children learn to monitor not only themselves but also their peers. The result is that children learn to participate in the enforcement of fitting into hierarchies of authority. Part of children's socialization, however, is learning the appropriate manner and contexts for what is locally termed in English “being someone else's policeman.” Telling on others in order to humiliate them is considered a sin. Telling on people in order to help them be better Jews is fulfillment of a commandment. In the case above, a sister's tattling on a family member was appropriate culturally because her sister had challenged a teacher. Children learn that their loyalty should lie with authority figures rather than with their peers or even their own siblings. Children do not always conform to this model, of course. From my position in the back of the classroom, I witnessed a number of occasions when two students allied themselves against the teacher, although this was done in secret.¹⁶

When a child challenges authority figures repeatedly or in a more serious way, caregivers may get frustrated and resort to more dramatic forms of public shaming to underscore the severity of the transgression. Threats to reinscribe boundaries of difference may be used to show a child that khitspedik behavior will not be tolerated. To illustrate this form of disciplining, I turn to the case of Tsini, a little girl in the first grade. Tsini, according to students and teachers alike, was a real “troublemaker”.¹⁷

Tsini tried to clean the desk with a paper towel, but it did not come clean. Mrs. Weiss then called her over and read, in a whisper, a letter she had written to her parents. Meanwhile the other students stared at Tsini, who did not reveal much emotion.

Mrs. Weiss's disciplining of Tsini was, in fact, the most severe I saw during my time in her class. By drawing public attention to Tsini's doodling, Mrs. Weiss emphasized the gravity of Tsini's offense; she compared Tsini's behavior – almost, but not quite – to that of a Gentile child who goes to public school, writes graffiti, and “doesn't care.” Observant Jewish children always have to care about what they do and say, because God is always watching. As Von Hirsch Erikson 1995 similarly noted in her work with haredi caregivers in England, the phrase “I don't care” is a particularly loaded one and elicits very strong reactions from caregivers.

Defacing a desk is a form of defiance and disrespect to authority: the authority of the school, its teachers, and ultimately the whole community, for the Bobover rebbe established the school specifically for Bobover girls and their families. As a student remarked to me, “It's the rov's (rebbe's) school.” A number of mothers and teachers described Gentile children who go to public schools in the neighborhood as disrespectful of their communities. Mrs. Weiss's evocation of a constellation of practices that are symbolic of Gentile children (going to public schools, writing graffiti, not caring) emphasizes how the moral boundaries separating Jews from Gentiles can be threatened when Hasidic hierarchies of authority are challenged.

Further, Mrs. Weiss suggests that Tsini's mother will have to come into school and scrub the desk in front of everyone. Tsini's behavior has the potential for shaming not only her but also her parents and family name. When Mrs. Weiss includes Tsini's mother, she is also warning of a child's responsibility to respect her parents and “make them proud.” Hasidic socialization includes teaching children that there is divine legitimation for the goal of learning to put the feelings and desires of authority figures above their own. Tsini's behavior and disciplining served as a reminder to the rest of the girls of the danger of not controlling oneself and not abiding by the rules made by authority figures. Drawing on the desk, especially in the context of her “wild” behavior in class more generally, caused her to be compared to Gentiles, “almost like that kind,” the opposite of the “chosen people.”

TOO OLD TO ASK

Adults expect that by early adolescence children should have a sense that certain questions and requests should not even be asked. My Yiddish tutor, Mrs. Gold, described her displeasure and impatience when her eleven-year-old brother asked if their mother was going to have a baby. She responded, “Ask a better question.” She told me, “The others [her other siblings] knew already not to ask, but my brother …” Her brother was old enough to have known, she implied, that it is not modest or appropriate, especially for a boy, to talk about having babies. In fact, Mrs. Gold was able to reel off a whole battery of responses which immediately ended a questioning sequence. She reported that in her family when a child inappropriately asks “Why?” in English, an adult purposefully reinterprets the question word as the letter “Y” and responds with the letter “Z.” If a child asks in Yiddish far vus ‘why’, answers might be azoy vi ikh hob gezugt ‘because I said so’, azoy iz ‘that's how it is’, or nisht dan business ‘not your business’.

Even adults remember that they had questions they couldn't ask. Mrs. Schwartz, a mother and teacher, told me that when she was in fourth grade, she knew and accepted that God had made the world. She wanted to know, though, who made God. She was afraid to ask her teachers or her parents. The question really troubled her, and finally she pulled aside a slightly older male cousin. He was horrified by her question and shamed her, threatening to tell her parents if she ever mentioned it again. It was a good question, she told me, “but we're not so good on questions here.” As an adult she was able to go to an inspirational lecture for women and hear a rabbi offer an explanation for that very question. His explanation was that as humans we cannot expect to understand all of God's workings. This was a satisfactory response.

Married women more generally are able to ask and find answers to more questions than are unmarried young girls or children. When I expressed surprise to an observant but not Hasidic friend that Mrs. Gold, my Yiddish tutor, was asking me so many questions about dating, my friend asked if she were married. When I said she was, my friend seemed relieved. She explained that asking questions out of curiosity was fine, especially once someone is married and part of a tight set of social relationships and responsibilities. If she were single and asking, my friend said, then one might be worried that she was looking outside the community. Girls and women across the life cycle have different access to different kinds of knowledge dictated by communal expectations around questioning.

After early adolescence, inappropriate questions, requests, and khitspeh do not just go away. They change. The pressure to fit in, from my observations, has made great inroads by early adolescence, and the temptation to challenge and question seems to become more selective and savvy as girls reach their teens. Substitute teachers and teachers of secular subjects, mothers report, confront more khitspeh than do Yiddish teachers (teachers of religious subjects), and boys are notorious for tormenting their English instructors. Secular subjects are given much less weight by adults, a fact which children and teens exploit by pushing the boundaries they know are more elastic.

Those who do continue to ask inappropriate questions, cannot fit in, or will not fit in, sometimes leave Hasidic communities in Brooklyn. There were cases of young men or women who left their communities during my research there. I interviewed two young women who left. Each had had a crisis of faith. Both left their families and independently pursued higher education, an option not generally available to Hasidim. Mothers and teachers struggled to explain why these young adults had left. Most often, they suggested that there was strife of some kind at home and the parents must not have provided appropriate guidance. In other cases, overexposure to contemporary society was blamed or mystical explanations appealed to. The child might have been the reincarnation of a troubled soul who had issues to work out, suggested one woman. When at a loss, caregivers remind themselves and one another that while humans cannot always understand God's plan, there is a plan. To echo an address given by the principal of Bnos Yisroel at a school assembly, Me tur nisht freygn oder complainin ‘We don't ask or complain’.