If you get lost in Brooklyn, New York, and wander into the section called Williamsburg, prepare to do a double take. Boys playing baseball look odd: long, uncut curls of hair trail from above their ears down to their chests. Men in black, with long, untrimmed beards, coach from the sidelines. All the women you see wear wigs because they've shaved their heads completely. Is this a new cult from California? The latest punk fashion from London?
You've stumbled into a community of Hasidic Jews. They live, not by the latest fad, but by ancient rules based on Old Testament law. They follow complicated dietary regulations. They keep one set of bowls for meat, and another for dairy products. Young men devote long hours of study to the Hebrew Old Testament. Though they are Americans living in New York, their cultural compass points to Mount Sinai, where God gave Moses the Law.
Jews Outlived Their Enemies
The Jewish people have survived, astonishingly. Who in Jeremiah's time could have predicted their persistence, when they were hemmed in and threatened with total destruction? The Babylonians conquered and carried them into exile. But where are the Babylonians today? They have vanished. Desert sand covers their capital.
The story of the Jews is a long chronicle of discrimination, exile, punishment, and slaughter. Against no other people have such destructive measures been taken. Yet they have survived, and thrived. Their language endures. Their book, the Old Testament, is part of the great bestseller of all time. |
