I left the Hasidic world three years ago. This time of year, I dearly miss it
Leaving the Hasidic world was deeply painful, but I still feel a pang of longing for my old life
An illustration of a (former) hasid in Crown Heights Illustration by Avi Katz
Elad Nehorai October 6, 2023
I remember the feeling most of all.
Every year from Rosh Hashanah to Sukkot, the streets of my neighborhood would be overrun with Hasidim. Each one was rushing around like I was, searching with a combination of stress and excitement for the best lulav and etrog, balancing it against the hunt for a deal.
In Crown Heights, the heart of the Chabad movement and my home for a decade, Israelis came once a year for a pilgrimage to visit the Rebbe as they once did when he was alive.
Personally, I love chaos. When I lived in Israel, I’d walk to the shuk every Friday to shop for Shabbat, just to get a taste of the most chaotic time possible. I’d push my way through the throngs to purchase a dip or a challah, and I’d listen as the voices rose like a song around me.
I think about that energy a lot now, three years after I left the Orthodox world. Three years after the beauty of the community was so overshadowed by the backlash as I became more outspoken about things like abuse in the community and the dangers of the rising right among Haredi Jews. My family and I spent two years in a sort of Jewish exile, living in a “normal” place in Long Beach as I recovered, the pandemic timing out in a way that made not going to shul a holy excuse to recuperate from my time there.
Now that I live in Los Angeles, the opportunities for such chaos are few and far between. I go to the Iranian kosher market before Shabbat when I can, just to get a taste of it. If someone gets upset with me, even better.
When I lived in Crown Heights, chaos was always around, and I think that constant movement had its own effect on me.
When I finally had some space from being a public figure in the community — and from Jewish observance as a whole — I finally shed the Orthodox label and began to learn about extremism and high-control groups (a less charged term than “cult”).
I was shocked to find out how much of what I had experienced (being “love bombed” by Chabad, followed by a process of indoctrination, followed by integration and finally punishment for speaking out) was experienced almost word for word by so many others in so many different situations.
I began to learn and understand that the sort of societal makeup I experienced was nothing unique at all. It was simply a toxic method used by leaders to maintain control through societal cohesion and indoctrination. Authoritarianism, in other words.
And yet.
It’s three years later, and it’s Sukkot, and I’m still thinking about the Hasidim running through Kingston Avenue. Pico Boulevard just isn’t the same. It is that particular madness, one where it was one group specifically rushing, and where shop after shop after shop had been transformed just to make space for this holiday, that I still miss.
There are a lot of intellectual reasons I could give you for this feeling. Walkable communities are far more powerful sources of connection than ones with massive roads built just for cars. Societal cohesion helps us feel like we belong and like we matter. Moving, especially when you feel like it isn’t your choice, can be traumatic. Doubly so when you leave a religious community you devoted your life to.
All of this is true.
But as I’ve also learned, intellectualizing can be its own defense mechanism, acting as if trauma can be dismantled if we simply use our logic to break it apart.
That’s not how it works. Logic can only do so much. It allows us to describe a problem, but not tap into the core of it.
The core truth is simply that to be human is not a solitary act. We are not individuals, really. We are organisms that attach ourselves to those we love and care for with tendrils, some stronger and some weaker, as we connect to those around us. Those tendrils give us life because they are our lives. If I meet you and I know you and I connect to you, you are now like an artery that brings oxygen to my heart. Except that the life you are giving is one of immeasurably deeper and truer life than just the kind that keeps us breathing.
Why did I join the Hasidic Orthodox community? There’s no simple answer. But in short, I wanted to matter. I wanted to walk the streets and see people I knew and cared about. I wanted to absorb the smells and sights of others and feel like I was one of them. I wanted to share in the dreams and hopes of others.
Americans are desperately beyond lonely. The fact that I was searching for belonging in college didn’t make me an outlier; it made me the norm.
Our desire to belong motivates us in ways most of us don’t even realize. It’s why a cult will drink the Kool-Aid and why an obviously psychopathic president can lead a nationwide movement of hate. It’s also why people will give to the needy, sacrifice their own comfort to fight for the rights of others and work to build a better world.
It is what is most human about us.
And it’s why I still think about Crown Heights. Because all the negative stuff is not in conflict with my love for my time there. The connections I built were not erased by the difficulties. The love I felt for them was not imaginary just because it ended in trauma and pain.
The pain exists because it is a place and a people I love. Because you can’t build your web without feeling pain when it breaks apart. You can’t cut an artery without crying.
A community is core to who we are. It is who we are. And so leaving one is a form of amputation, cutting off a part of ourselves in order to save the rest. It is necessary, but it is OK to mourn the loss.
In fact, it’s necessary if we ever want to move on.
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