The Beautiful Distance

Last Sunday as my class made our weary way home from Shabbaton, we made a detour. We turned off the highway by the sign that said "New Square, New York" and we entered a different world.

The world in New Square is like nothing I have ever dreamed. It is possible, perhaps, that my visiting view tinted the scene with an imaginary piety, but somehow I don't think this is the case.

New Square is the central community of the Squverer Chassidim. It is a place where women and men walk down separate sides of the street, and where tricycles on the sidewalk are identified in Yiddish. In New Square, the Rebbe holds court over all decisions made, be it physical or mental, public or private. This is a place where the streets are laid on foundations of deepest faith, and where there is not a television, radio, video game, or computer to be found. In New Square, it is fashionable to be modest and it is popular to be happy.

My school had long ago adopted the tradition of sending senior students to spend a few hours in New Square, but I never could understand quite why. What was to be gained by gawking at "the other half," so to speak, for a few hours as though they were actors in colonial Williamsburg? What more did we need to know of Chassidus then what we had already been taught through history and community folklore? I wasn't scornful exactly, but I admit that the idea seemed like something of an insult to our intelligence.

But that was until Sunday, when finally I walked through this little, private world and began to understand. When I went to New Square, it was as though a closet I had thought locked and musty opened to reveal a glowing pasture of radiant vitality. There were little girls, rambunctious and lively as any I have met, answering our questions with bewildered glee. There were the women we watched, women of forty and fifty with cheeks smooth as glass and eyes bright as morning. There were the girls of our own age, almost all to be married within a span of two years who finally explained how this was quite alright, and I saw a trust in their eyes for their parents and for G-d that I could never hope to rival. I watched as men walked down the street, foreign and austere to me, but as they passed their female counterparts I could almost feel the baritone reverberations of purest respect.

And I saw the Squverer Rebbe shatter my ingrained misconceptions as he walked, swiftly and straight backed to his chair and spoke in a voice that rang with purpose and pride.

Now I understand why I went to New Square. In watching those I had thought were trapped, I freed myself from prejudice.