Video: Fake Hasids, Real Hasids

Hollywood has long been fascinated with Hasidic Jews. From A Stranger Among Us (1992) to New York I Love You (2009)—featuring Natalie Portman as a Satmar wife—to Madonna’s most recent film W.E. (2011), it’s not like we haven’t seen the ultra-orthodox on the big screen before.

But none of those glittery final cuts can compare to this behind-the-scenes video, which captures the spectacle that took place last week while shooting the CBS cop drama Blue Bloods on location in the Hasidic neighborhood of Boro Park, Brooklyn.

Several crowd scenes were scheduled to be filmed, and over 100 actors were hired to portray Hasidic Jews. Even in New York, where film crews regularly set up shop all around the city, the filming of a major show usually attracts a crowd. But nothing can match the ironic hilarity of this scene: hundreds of actual Hasidic Jews showing up to watch hundreds of actors pretending to be Hasidic Jews.

Fortunately for us, the ensuing drama was captured by an astute onlooker with a video phone. This YouTube video is the surprising and very “meta” account of what happened.

Amen

The word amen is Hebrew, dating back to the Book of Numbers--but it's not only used by Jews. When the ancient Greeks controlled the Land of Israel, the word entered the Greek language. From there, the little word made its way to other peoples and other prayers, and it continues to be used as a standard response in praying by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.


For a four-letter word, it certainly packs a punch. One Talmudic commentator believed that amen was an acronym (in Hebrew, it has three letters) for "el melech ne'eman," or "God, faithful ruler." Another rabbinic saying posits that someone who responds "amen" to a blessing is greater than the one who recites the blessing in the first place. The word is related to the Hebrew word emunah, which in the Torah means faithfulness. When you say amen it's like you're saying, "I can believe that" or "hear, hear!"

The Talmudic sage Rabbi Meir says that a child merits the World to Come from the day he or she says amen for the first time. And it's also believed that if someone says "amen" with all his or her strength, all the gates of heaven will blow open, and nothing can be refused to them.

Jewish English Lexicon

Welcome to JEL, a collaborative database of distinctive words that are used in the speech or writing of English-speaking Jews. Think of it as the Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary of Jewish language.

The words in this database stem from several languages of the Jewish past and present, including the Hebrew and Aramaic of ancient biblical and rabbinic texts, the Yiddish of centuries of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and the Modern Hebrew of contemporary Israel. When Jews use words from this list within their English speech or writing, they indicate not only that they are Jewish but also that they are a certain type of Jew. Some are Yiddish lovers, some are engaged in religious life and learning, some have a strong connection to Israel, some have Sephardi heritage, and some are all of the above. Because Jewish and non-Jewish social networks overlap, these words are not used exclusively by Jews. Some are English words that certain Jews use in distinctive ways, and some are Yiddish-origin words that have become part of the English language.

JEL was started in 2007 as a class project in Sarah Bunin Benor's course "American Jewish Language and Identity in Historical Context" at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. Students were asked to contribute words that they heard from their friends or read online or in print, as well as definitions, example sentences, and source languages. Many of the entries already appeared in one or more of the published Jewish English dictionaries, but many appear here for the first time, thanks to the students and visitors like you.

By design, JEL is a work in progress. We hope you will help us build and refine it. If you notice a word missing, add it. If you disagree with a definition or want to add notes, please click the edit button on that entry. All changes are moderated. We invite you to experience the lexicon by browsing, searching, sorting, participating in conversations on the JEL forum, and, most importantly, adding new entries. Past contributors have reported that once they started paying attention, their eyes (and ears) were opened to a whole new world of Jewish English language.

The Jerusalem Robbers' Gallery

Like many formerly gritty downtown districts around the world, Jerusalem’s is undergoing gentrification. Elegant buildings full of distinctive Ottoman-era or British Mandate-period architectural features are being torn down or gut-renovated, much to the dismay of history buffs and romantics alike.

Enter the Robbers' Gallery, a guerilla preservation effort that’s become a home for the architectural and cultural detritus that would otherwise wind up in Israeli landfills. The Gallery, which occupies a series of interconnecting rooms inside a 19th-century apartment, feels like a cross between an architectural salvage yard and a museum.

Its most distinctive, and numerous, holdings are the dozens of handcrafted wooden window frames from bygone centuries, some still filled with pieces of the original stained glass, and carved with Stars of David. Founder Yoram Amir mounts the wooden castoffs on brightly painted walls, alongside photographs depicting the evolution of modern Jerusalem and poetry about the ancient city.

The sunlit rooms testifying to a vibrant and noisy past overlook Jaffa Road, with only the low rumble of the new Light Rail and shoppers' multilingual chatter disturbing the quiet.

German Ritual Baths

Walk through most German cities today and you don’t have to look too hard to find commemorations of pre-Holocaust Jewish life – they're in the sidewalks, on plaques, and in memorials here and there. And yet it can still be hard to imagine an observant Jewish community in Germany before the war – not to mention way before the war. One thing aiding our imaginations are the Jewish ritual baths that are being restored all around the country.

Some of these mikvaot are remnants of medieval synagogues — which can make their contemporary appearance that much more jarring. In Cologne, for instance, a hyper-modern glass pyramid protects the mikveh’s excavation site right in front of the City Hall.

Thanks to the literal depth of some of Germany’s old mikvaot – Cologne’s is nearly 50 feet underground, and is reachable only by descending 79 steps – they’ve survived remarkably unscathed. Peering into their depths is like looking through a portal to another world, and the experience is powerful — and surreal.

Traditions and Preparations for a Jewish Wedding

Customary rituals and practices of Jewish weddings are almost no different from their Christian counterparts including those of other religions and culture. Although variations may exist and are conspicuous, they are basically similar in intent.

Just like any other religion and culture, there are traditions and customs that must be adhered to before a Jewish wedding. Some of these customs are based on the cultural heritage of the Jews but are still observed today regardless if some of them are thousands of years old albeit with minor modifications.
The following are some common customs before a Jewish Wedding:
The Engagement (Tena’im)

In Jewish law and custom, engagement carries a radically different meaning than the intention to marry because a Jewish engagement contract (Tena’im) also involves the undertaking of substantial legal and social consequences. The engagement ritual is officiated at the groom’s table where he signs the engagement contract (in Aramaic) which is afterwards given to a prominent Rabbi or close friend to read publicly. After the public reading, the mothers of both bride and groom perform the ritual of breaking a china plate as a symbol announcing to one and all that the engagement agreement is completed to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.

The Te’naim is a legally binding agreement between the bride and groom’s parents that contains the pertinent information like the date and financial arrangements of the wedding. The practice of entering into such an agreement goes as far back as the 300 C.E. in order to do away with unsystematic wedding preparations and avoid misinterpretations that may lead to disagreements and awkward relationships not only between the couple but also between their families. The practice is mainly observed by the Orthodox Jewish community.

Aside from the Tena’im, other rituals and customs of a Jewish marriage are the giving of the ring (Eirusin) which signifies that the future bride cannot marry someone else even if they are not yet legally husband and wife; the bride’s acceptance of the ring (Qiddushin) and finally, sharing a home and consummating the marriage (Nissuin). The maximum allowable period for this is one year to prevent men from performing eirusin without committing to nisuin. When the allowable period has lapsed, Jewish courts can compel the man to support his bride. In the 12th century, the custom has evolved into the performance of eirusin in the morning followed by wedding celebrations with nisuin subsequently being performed before sunset. Modern day Jewish wedding rituals and customs are now done all in the span of one day due to business and work commitments and the changing times.


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Fagin the Jew

The antihero of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist is the "villainous-looking and sinister" Jewish moneylender, Fagin. Fagin is referred to as "the Jew" 257 times throughout the first two-thirds of the novel, often in the context of him doing something nasty, salivating over his gold, or beating poor Oliver.

While working on the final third of the novel, however, Dickens forged a friendship that would change the course of his writing—or at least, that is, his writing about Jews. He bought a house from a Jewish couple he would later befriend, and the wife, Eliza Davis, wrote to him reprimanding him over Fagin's character, saying he'd "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew." Dickens eventually agreed, and excised every inclusion of the word "Jew" from the book's final 13 chapters. In a public reading of Oliver, he omitted every stereotypical description of Fagin, and in his later novel Our Mutual Friend, he created several Jewish characters, all of them sympathetic.

Despite Dickens’s stab at reform, the legacy of Fagin endures. In 2003, Will Eisner published a book, Fagin the Jew, which wrestles with the figure; and last year, a historian claimed that the real-life model for Fagin wasn't Jewish at all, but--just as disastrously--was black.