By Daniel Albert
Our tour of Me’ah She’arim started like any other tour of any other neighborhood. We got off the bus and Jamie, our tour guide, stopped and turned around to us all. Looking back at him was a group of 34 Jews of all different upbringings, religious levels, and backgrounds. Yet, here we all were; girls dressed in long skirts, long sleeves, covering their collarbones; the guys all with yarmulkes and some even with tzitzit. Jamie pointed up to a sign at the edge of the town of Me’ah Shearim, “Please do not come into our community dressed improperly…” Everyone in our group tried very hard to cover up and wear what they had to make sure they were dressed appropriately in respect to the neighborhood. Jamie warned us that people still might yell or say rude things to us, but told us to ignore them.
We crossed the threshold into Me’ah Shearim as if crossing through a forcefield separating this town from the rest of the world. As we started passing people on the streets we saw that this was not the types of people we were used to seeing on the streets of Mount Scopus or on Ben Yehudah Street or the shuk on Machane Yehudah. Everyone we passed was a Chasidic Jew wearing the traditional chasidic garb. Men wearing long frocks and hats; some black, some furry. Other men sported black velvet yarmulkes and side locks (peyot) past their shoulders. One of my friends leaned into me and said, “You’re the only one of our group who doesn’t stand out here.” See, I have peyot that go a little past my shoulder- and I wear them proud. I started growing them because in a secular world, I want to show everyone that I am proud of who I am. When my co-Nachshon fellow made that comment, I wasn’t sure what to feel. It was well intentioned, but it made me start thinking about whether I wanted to fit in with Me’ah She’arim or would I rather not.
Our tour continued and led us past a yeshiva and outside stood two boys from that yeshiva. Yet, instead of learning Torah at that moment, they stood outside and heckled our group, my friends. They called them “shikshas”, a derogatory word that connotes both “non-Jew” and “slut”, and told them to leave their community. My friends weren’t bothering anyone, they were very respectful- made sure to dress appropriately, not to talk too loudly to bother anyone; there was no reason for these men to say anything to my friends. It was at that moment, that for the first time in my three years of growing peyot that I was ashamed to have them, I realized I didn’t want to be associated with this group.
There are Ten Commandments- two tablets- five sets of laws side by side. One side is the commandments between man and God, the second five, between man and his fellow. Here I was in Me’ah She’arim, a “utopia” of so-called “religious Jews.” And I couldn’t help thinking, how is it possible that one can be a religious Jew keeping only the commandments between himself and God and then go out of his way to desecrate commandments between man and fellow. Being a religious Jew is not just about how you act towards God, just as equally important, and if not more important, is your relationship with and how you treat other human beings. If you wrong God, you can ask and beg for forgiveness, He can give up his honor, but hurting another human being, especially one you don’t know, how can one do that?! How will you ever apologize to that person? How will you ever ask others for respect when you can’t respect others?
