This book provides a very informative and insightful look into the world of the Hareidim, both from a personal perspective and from Mr. Heilman's trained perspective as a social anthropologist. He explains that he chose to study Israeli Hareidim as opposed to American Hareidim because, even though Hareidi communities in America do walk the walk and talk the talk, they're just too much a part of the modern world, such as in how they ride public transportation, work, and do business with people who aren't a part of their communities. In Israel, the Hareidim have much less contact with the modern secular world, and, on the surface at least, shun almost everything that has to do with it. However, as we come to discover, in spite of how they have clearly defined us vs. them boundaries and believe that there's no turning back if one, for example, goes to a university, with no happy middle existing between completely ultra-Orthodox and completely ultra-secular, they do benefit from the modern world. They rely on doctors to treat them, doctors who were trained in modern secular universities, sometimes have computers in their homes, even if it's just for the purposes of writing a religious newsletter, use specially-approved public buses to go on pilgrimages, the women sometimes wear modern clothes (within the dictates of modesty, of course), and they use modern smaller tefillin instead of the larger outdated impractical ones used by their forebears, feeling that the modern tefillin are superior and that anyone who would want the old kind made would have to be a fool, even in spite of how in many other matters they feel that the ways of previous generations are superior to anything the modern world has to offer.
I personally have very mixed feelings about the people described in these pages (except for the Lubavitchers, the most modern Hassidic group). On the one hand, we come to see these people, in all of their various groups (Belzers, Reb Arelach, Satmars, Neturei Karta, Sanzers, Breslovers, Lithuanians, etc.), as almost regular people in spite of the glaring differences, people who live decent upright lives even though they seem like people out of an 18th century shtetl, who are living the only way they know how to live, the only way they can imagine living, who have become so strict in response to what they feel is a corrupting of morals, Judaism, and the world in general, particularly after how their communities were all but decimated in the Shoah. However, as normal and sympathetic as the Hareidim come to seem during the course of this book, it is still unsettling to read the things they say about the modern world, such as how anyone who's not ultra-Orthodox isn't really religious, how a man who rushes to hug and kiss his wife after she's just had their baby is overcome by lust and can't wait to get back into bed with her instead of just being overcome by love and tenderness after such a powerful event, how a woman who doesn't dress the way a Hareidi woman does must be very lax in her morals, even if the clothes she's wearing are still rather modest by secular standards, how if someone comes out of a public university with his or her Judaism unaffected, s/he was never really observant to begin with, and how all goyim are adulterers, thieves, liars, and generally bad silly corrupt people. As lovely as these people are, it's dangerous to see the world in such black and white terms, to not want to venture outside for fear of contamination no matter how strong one's faith is, to group people into "self" and "other." Still, as a modern person, it's easy to judge them and be offended by some of the things they believe. For people who have lived and believed this way their entire lives, it's the most normal thing in the world. And they're so insulted in their communities that it doesn't seem like a problem that they receive no secular education or don't want to go outside of their neighborhoods. That's their world, and if it works for them, then great.
A lot of subjects are covered in this book, though they're grouped into three main sections--community life (such as the Belzer rebbe's son's bar mitzvah, the Belzer rebbe's Friday night tisch, the third ritual meal of Shabbos with the extreme sect the Reb Arelach, an offshoot of the Satmars, and a pilgrimage), education (going from gan [kindergarten] to the yeshiva attended by men in their twenties), and personal matters (funerals, weddings, matchmaking, sex). As has been already noted, Mr. Heilman had a special position as a partial insider. He's Modern Orthodox, so he was quite familiar with a lot of the rituals, prayers, and events; a non-Jew or someone of a more liberal denomination probably wouldn't have been allowed such wide-ranging access to all of these events and wouldn't have been allowed to observe schools or talk to couples about their sex lives. Although this stringent way of life isn't for me, I was left wanting more information about these communities, wanted more stories about them, wished there had been another chapter on their regular day-to-day lives as opposed to covering mainly ritual, education, and life passages. I also wished there had been more material on Hareidi women, outside of the chapters on matchmaking and sex. I understand that as a man, he couldn't really have access to women's lives the same way he was able to observe and talk with those of the male sex, but that did mean that a big part of what the Hareidi experience is all about wasn't covered as fully as it might have been. In spite of what the average modern person views as shortcomings or even offensive and highly outdated and inaccurate views and beliefs on the world, this is a fascinating society that has a rich warm vibrancy, and this book is a wonderful introduction to them.
