This American Life, from 2005, interviews Curley Oxide, a Hasidic Jew from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, about his two years of conversion into a mainstream lifestyle that led to his short-lived rise as a musician.
Chaim and Billy both lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just blocks away from each other, in worlds that almost never collided. Chaim was a Hasidic Jew — he’d never heard pop music or watched MTV. Billy Campion, known as the rocker Vic Thrill, was the star of an underground band. Billy put Chaim, who took on the name Curly Oxide, into the band, and in just one year, he leapt from the 19th century into the 21st.
From what Billy implies, the outside world rarely comes in direct contact with the Hasidic community. If that’s the case, I find my past interactions with a Hasidic family to be more unique than I previously realized.
I remember one Saturday night, while riding to Mike Ley‘s house in Bed-Stuy, being stopped by a group of three Hasidic men on the side of the road. They waved me down while I was cycling down the street. I stopped abruptly when one man seemed to make eye contact with me. One moment I was riding through the dark empty streets in South Williamsburg, and the next moment I was walking down a residential neighborhood with these three men as they were trying their best to explain that they needed my assistance. Their grandmother had somehow left the stove on during Shabbat, and now their entire home was suffocating with gas fumes. I walked into their home to see no less than ten to twelve people, all staring at me, the Chinese kid in a North Face jacket, jeans and some really dirty vans, that has suddenly appeared to help them turn off their gas stove. After shutting off the stove, I also helped them turn off the heater. I spoke with the grandmother, who was pretty much blind, and then the family offered me some cookies before I departed.
I wonder if that experience was something of a rare occurrence or, rather, somewhat common in an age of technology that’s hard to integrate into a strict religious lifestyle.
Self Edge New York
Congratulations to 3sixteen and Self Edge for their new retail venture in the Lower East Side.