I stopped inside the lobby of Best Western east of Rutland, Vt. to use the internet, and I barely got out. I met a pair of Hasidim, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect, from New York City, and hung out with them for hours. It was only half voluntary — they were very nice and interesting, but harrowing as well.
I met the wife, Zahava, while I was sitting on the couch. Or, I should say she accosted me. My phone rang, and as I picked it up and said “Hello?” she walked across the room and thrust her phone at me. She was originally from Israel, and wasn’t the best with English. “My GPS doesn’t work,” she cried. “Can you fix it?” Never mind that I was obviously on the phone, and even though I’m 26 and very plugged in, that doesn’t mean I know how to use electronics.
I told her that the phone’s battery was dead, and there was nothing I could do without it charged. She took it out to the car to charge it, and said she’d be back in five minutes. Fifteen minutes passed, and I gathered my things and headed out the front door. It went downhill from there.
They were parked right in front of the entrance in a large Cadillac filled to the brim with everything you could imagine – rusted cans, empty boxes, plastic bags. You couldn’t see past the back windows.
Here they are. Her husband, Rubayn, is doing his morning prayers with teffilin, black leather boxes containing biblical verses, strapped to his arm and forehead. (I don’t know how to spell his name. I asked him, and he said, “Any way works.”)
I wanted to leave, as I had a lot of ground to cover today, but they cornered me. She wanted me to fix her phone, and he wanted to tell me places I needed to visit on the trip. “That’s not real Judaism,” he said of my plans to visit Orthodox and Reform synagogues out West.
The problem was they were both talking at once. She’d tinker with her phone and he’d bring out the map, and talk to me the whole time. If I said something to one person, the other would continue to talk over me to the point where I had no idea what was going on. Worse, they didn’t acknowledge each other, so I had to repeat almost everything I said as one wouldn’t pay attention if it was said to the other.
I can’t explain how confusing it was.
Zahava said something in Hebrew to me, and I responded in Hebrew, which made her ecstatic. In fact, they had both assumed I was Jewish from the start, without me saying anything to that effect.
When I said I wasn’t Jewish, she protested. “Isn’t your mother Jewish?” she asked. No. “Your grandmother?” No. Then she started speaking loudly in Hebrew at me, which I only half understood. “Don’t you believe….,” “Don’t you know….” she’d ask, and Rubayn kept cutting in, chastising her. “Don’t try to convert him, just let him be,” he urged. Nevertheless, she gave me about ten fliers for the prophesy of the Lubavitcher Rebbe King Moshiach, a messianic Hasid.
When I opened my computer, still trying to fix her phone, she saw a picture of Jesus from something I was working on. “Who’s that?” she asked. I explained that it was Jesus. “Who’s that?” she asked. I said it was the Christian savior. “What’s Christianity?” she pleaded, befuddled.
On one hand, I was intrigued to have found someone in this country who wasn’t touched by ubiquitous Christianity in this country. She was a blank slate. On the other, how do I explain Christianity to a Hasidic woman whose English is not so good?
I couldn’t fix her phone, but she never stopped trying to get me to. And Rubayn started to tell me about his dreams of the pope converting to Judaism and about the problems of Islam, Catholicism and many religions. I felt like I was with my grandparents.
Did I fail to mention that Rubayn was eating chicken wings, and pieces of them were falling in his beard and on his shirt the whole time? When Zahava mentioned the schmutz, she was astonished I knew what that meant.
Also, Rubayn said he was an “expert bicyclist,” if you couldn’t tell by his photo, and was giving me pointers on what times of days are best for biking.
These people were the sweetest people ever, but they didn’t seem to acknowledge what was going on around them. It was obvious I had to go, and that I couldn’t understand them when they both talked at once. But they did it anyway. Oh, my.
That was most of my day. It’s probably only half of the craziness, but it’s the best I can do now.
Also, I saw this about 30 miles later, which was really cool:
