Hasidism, in Living Color

With all due respect to the impressive collection of circular fur hats, the best and most revealing exhibits at “A World Apart Next Door: Glimpses Into the Life of Hasidic Jews,” the Hasidic-themed show now at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, are the videos. In one of a half-dozen such offerings, mitzvah tantz (difficult to translate beyond “mitzvah dance”), a bride, dressed and veiled so that the only skin you see are her hands and a flash of bare jawline, grips a long sash that serves both as an umbilical attachment and a barrier to the dancing rebbe at the other end: From a modest but breached distance, the two circle each other at mismatched tempos in front of a pulsating wall of Hasidim.

It’s a weirdly intimate moment, in a different spiritual key than we’re used to: There are no other women in the frame. Although the bride’s movement is restricted to stepping in time with the way-more-excited rebbe, they are without question dancing together. (If you don’t appreciate how momentous that is, may I suggest the excellent Roman archaeology exhibit across the hall?) In tish (literally “table” in Yiddish, it denotes a kind of semi-mandatory rebbe-centric get-together), an enormous table surrounded by waves of sitting and standing and screaming Hasidim is headed by the rebbe, who stoically dispenses fruit from towering platters. Everyone is clamoring for a piece, like it’s manna. A boy walks on the table—it’s the width of a one-way street—and with all of his weight drags one of the platters closer to the rebbe.

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