ABSTRACT
The circumstances surrounding my decision to study Hassidic Jews1 are mostly clear. While the decision was mine, the idea wasn’t. Malcolm Spector, who would later serve as my advisor both for the master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation, suggested it. To the best of my recollection, over dinner at his rented flat that bordered the Hassidic neighborhood, his wife innocently asked if I knew anything about the Jews that were dressed in black. I believe Malcolm then said: “It would be interesting to study them.” The Spectors knew that these were strictly observant Jews, but not much more. I certainly didn’t know much more than they did about the Hassidim’s lifestyle or community organization. However, I could recall their distinctive presence along the Park Avenue area of the Mile End district of Montreal in the late 1950s when I was growing up nearby. Identified facetiously by many of my peers as the Park Avenue White Sox after the famous Chicago White Sox baseball team-many of the married men wear breeches tied below the knee so that their white stockinged calves were visible below their long black coats and slipper-like shoes-the Hassidim not only appeared out of place but, to my surprise, seemed impervious to the secular influences of modern society. My study of the Hassidim replaced another project I had begun of a pool
hall in downtown Montreal when I learned that I had been accepted into the master’s program at McGill University. I had begun hanging around the Windsor pool hall that attracted, among others, business people who came to hustle over the lunch hour, seniors who mainly sat and watched the action, and the unemployed who also hustled but for much smaller stakes. It certainly wasn’t unusual to see money change hands. I guess I had become a somewhat familiar face because, on occasion, I would be asked to keep score of some matches. Ned Polsky’s (1967) Hustlers, Beats and Others sparked and maintained my interest in this project. However, try as hard as I might, I could not convince my father that a study of a pool hall constituted reputable research. When this project was later abandoned, he confided that he was thoroughly relieved that I had chosen to write about the Hassidim. For
reasons I could understand, he held a low opinion of pool halls and this colored his assessment of my proposed study. At any rate, though I mistakenly believed that the Hassidim spoke only Yiddish, I believed that I could qualify to study them as I wrote, read, and spoke Yiddish fluently. Once my new research plan became more widely known, the general
advice offered by those claiming to be familiar with the Hassidic community, though well intended, was of little value. The generalizations were profuse. Hassidim, I was informed, are extremists in their religious practices, and wouldn’t take kindly to an outsider entering their synagogue. It was hardly conceivable, I was told, that I’d be able to penetrate their cloistered settings. On the other hand, however, I suppose it was good to know that this research wouldn’t be a cakewalk. However, no amount of advice and warning ever offers a suitable substitute for entering the field and experiencing the response to one’s presence first-hand.
