The Post Orthodox Archipelago, a Purim Shpil

With all the chatter about post-orthodoxy I had a chance to observe some in the belly of the beast this Purim. There are certain aspects of a civilization that are almost non existent in the Jewish tradition, like civil governance, the structure of education, etc. You would expect this from a tribe historically deprived of a country. But there are the persistent formulas. Hey, you can tell a Russian from a mile, long after they crossed the pond (at least a Russian can). So while I was watching the Purim dancing a woman pointed to the dance floor and said to me: “Why the vulgar moves?” It was too noisy to respond but I immediately recognized a Russian girl and the typical Russian dance moves. It was not vulgar; it was how they dance in Russia.

On my way to New York I was reading the book about Spinoza by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, that she kindly signed for me. The opening chapter is a lengthy description about the first encounter with Spinoza in the Lower East Side Orthodox high school in the late sixties. All the angst of the intellectually curios girl colliding head-on with the “history” as taught in the typical indoctrination factory. I was getting inpatient, I read millions of such descriptions in the Jewish context but especially for people who grew up behind the iron curtain this was our life. There are volumes of the dissident literature that talk about the subject. Nevertheless the book came back to me after Purim. It takes a heroic effort, the mad curiosity of someone like Rebecca to overcome the indoctrination. Most people succumb to the path of least resistance and carry the legacy through their lives. And one can gleam the post denominational insight from the real pockets of the New York post orthodoxy. Here is want you should expect from the post orthodox culture:

You should expect to meet people who have a transactional relationship with other human beings. The value and emotion are reserved for the vertical interactions with the tribal social hierarchy and the family (antisemitism anyone?). This includes the hierarchical dead. An orthodox or post orthodox Jew is much more likely to have an emotional encounter with a grave than with a human being.
You should expect to meet people who view women as highly evolved domesticated animals and you should expect women to expect to be treated accordingly.
You should expect to meet people who internalized the belief that ideas and inspiration are to be contained, at best are just an exercise in futility.
You should expect to meet people who have been taught from the cradle that “words never actually mean what they say”, there is never a “simple meaning”. This has some unexpected outcomes, for example 10 am never actually means 10 am (I was wondering about that… There is the historic antisemitic misreading towards the assumed subterfuge of what Jews say or promise. Actually this culture is only a reflection on the stubborn assertion that there is a deconstructed secondary meaning to any narrative). I have to agree that one is pretty annoying.

But let me break from the list as I am about to make a point about Purim. So I was sitting having my lunch on Tannis Ester. Over sudden there is a herd of yeshiva yingelach walking down the street. I knew some of them; they looked like they just landed from the moon in that neighborhood in Boston. I was wondering where they were going till they took a sharp turn to a consignment second-hand clothing shop. But of course they were shopping for the Purim costumes. So wait, don’t they already wear a costume? In a regular culture a carnival is a day when you exercise your alter ego. But what do you do as an orthodox Jew when you daily life is behind a mask in a costume. Do you come out as yourself? For this very reason I always felt that the orthodox Purim is such an unsettling horror show. I am yet to meet an orthodox woman without a tzitzis envy that doesn’t have a proudly displayed photo of herself when she was 14 on Purim as a bearded Chassidic man…

You should expect in a post orthodox world to meet people who have ten times more personalities and costumes than a regular person and you never know what mask you are talking to at any given moment.