Turning in Tefillin

Williamsburg natives Yisroel Stein and Benzion Star have shaved their beards and lifted their black hats off in salute to starting life anew, outside the confines of the centuries-old lifestyle prescribed by their ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

“Srully” and “Benzi” were raised Chasidic, a sect of Orthodox Judaism founded around 1750 in Poland. Despite many outdated customs, Chasids live in strict accordance with Jewish law and tradition. Men must grow out payot or side curls, adhering to commandment against shaving the corners of one’s head. On Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, Chasids cannot even flip a light switch, lest signifying the creation of light, which in antiquated times was an act of work that violated the “day of rest.” Yiddish is the first language, marriages are arranged, and the internet is censored. All in order to preserve the Chasidic way of life. But despite efforts at complete insularity, not all members of Williamsburg’s ultra-Orthodox community have shunned the rapidly changing, secular world around them. In fact, some of have purchased iPhones and joined it.

In yeshiva (Orthodox Jewish school), Stein and Star became dissatisfied, unable to “reconcile that what they’re supposed to believe is what they actually believe,” as Hella Winston, a reporter at the Jewish Week, describes it. After meeting secular Jews during his time in Israel, Star realized he need not be Chasidic in order to be Jewish. With a Yiddish accent, 20-year-old Star explains his choice to abandon the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle: “The Chasidic box is not real life. They’re like on a train their whole life. Everything is planned for them already on that track.” He says he “just wanted to chill,” and with no scientific “proof” why he should be Chasidic, he dropped it altogether.

Stein also wanted more answers than his teachers could empirically provide. He asked too many questions, which “is fine, but don’t be out of the box,” he recollected. His curiosity earned him the nickname apikorus — Yiddish for “heretic.” “I took it as a compliment,” Stein proclaimed. At 22 years old, Stein just began his freshman year at Columbia. For Chasids, going to college is unheard of. Every weekend, he has custody of his son, who lives in upstate New York. After Stein “came out as atheist,” his ex-wife’s parents pressured them to divorce. Though Stein, one of 13 children, still visits home occasionally, “by default,” he is not “part of the family.”

Star, on the other hand, still lives at home and works at a kosher pizza shop nearby. “If his mother knew he were interviewing with you, she’d kill him,” coworker, Shimon Minsky, warned. But Star’s parents seem to “accommodate the reality that their kid is less religious,” as Winston puts it. In fact, he spent Labor Day weekend camping at a psi-trance festival.

“Things are changing, a lot of parents are now seeing that if they disown their kid, [he or she] is going to be able to find help elsewhere, and in an odd way it has made people more accepting and more flexible,” Winston explains. Footsteps, an organization that assists ex-Chasids transition into the secular world, has seen steady growth in its membership, despite their “no outreach” policy. Between 2009 and 2012, the number of member intakes climbed from 35 to 95, and was up to 113 this past year. Winston gives much credit to the internet — when it is accessible, that is — for providing questioning Chasids the opportunity to connect with each other and obtain knowledge outside the scope of religious curriculum.

Still, ex-Chasids’ “crisis of faith where what they’ve been raised to believe doesn’t fit for them and hasn’t for a long long time” can be very painful, explains Footsteps staff member Rachel Berger. She acknowledges the hopeful risk in searching for “a way of living that really does reflect what they believe.”

“It’s been difficult,” Star says. “The community gives you some kind of look, talks about you, ‘oh he became like that’ or ‘are you really happy now?’” Part of the difficulty for Stein is what his ex-wife and her new husband will say to his son. “But no matter what they tell him, he will always have this view that he has a choice just from seeing me.”

Winston finds that “the phenomenon of people leaving also affects what’s going on in that world, provoking questions and changes in attitudes about physical and sexual abuse and education.” With very few state-accredited yeshivas, many questioning Chasids are ill-prepared to enter the secular world and choose to stay Chasidic out of circumstance. Though highly educated through the rabbinic system, Stein had to take the GED before applying to Columbia.

Both Stein and Star say they are happy with their decision to leave the Chasidic lifestyle, yet maintain a “cultural approach” to Judaism. “They called me akshen — stubborn,” says Stein, who still integrates many Yiddish words into his English vocabulary. Star still wears a kippah around his parents, and intends to marry a Jewish woman someday and raise a reform Jewish family. “But I make those decisions in everything I do” he says. “Now I know what I am and who I am.”