Jews on Scooters

El Chonon and Mendel, right, on the hunt.

      Suburban street life has a bad reputation. Or rather, no reputation at all. Generic houses along curving nondescript streets. Astroturf lawns. Block after block of empty sidewalk, devoid of humanity, art, interest.

     No paleta carts. No street musicians. No knots of kids hanging out on stoops. Hardly any stoops at all.
     Even my own section of the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, close to the train station, the library, the Village Hall, downtown, public garden and soccer field can, particularly early in the morning, feel lonely, even forlorn. Where is everybody?
     Other times, life is to be found here. I routinely happen upon fellow dog walkers.  Conversation ensues. Banners hang from light poles. In the winter, the trees are decked with lights, in the summer, hanging baskets of flowers. There are festivals, parades, lemonade stands. I can stand in my backyard and hear trains and shouts from hockey games. Not to forget exotic fauna: owls, hawks, even a stray fox or coyote. 

     Plus the occasional religious zealot. Friday afternoon I was giving Kitty her afternoon stroll by the Civic Foundation — which regularly draws crowds of business people, Rotarians and recovering alcoholics, arriving for their 10 a.m. Sunday meeting — when I spotted the above pair of Hasidim on scooters. Their black hats; the white strands of their tzitzits dangling out from below their jackets.
     I had the presence of mind to instantly whip out my iPhone and snap some shots. Usually I'd be reluctant — the polite thing is to ask permission first. But as these young men are in the business of accosting strangers for their own religious purposes — in their worldview, getting Jews to do their duty hurries along the time of the messiah (assuming he wasn't just here, in the form of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, but I've addressed that previously). Turnabout is fair play. I fired away, then asked them if they mind me taking their photos. They didn't seem to. Or at least didn't say so.

     I mentioned that I had been friendly with the late Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, who headed the Lubavitch movement in Illinois, and know one of his sons, Rabbi Meir. They nodded vaguely — kids of any faith seem fairly oblivious of the world they've sprung up in.

     I've written before about the cheder boys who'd come to the newspaper to hunt for Jewish men to prod into donning on prayer boxes, as required in Deuteronomy 6:6-9: "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall bind them upon thy hand and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
     That last line, by the way, is why most Jewish homes have mezuzahs — little decorative boxes containing key prayers. Even Jews who don't observe much of their religion manage to put up a mezuzah, and why not? It's a comforting ritual, to touch the little lozenge as you come and go.

    The lads — Elchonon and Mendel, both 15, the pride of the Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago on Morse — asked me if I wanted to pray. How could I refuse, given my documentation of their arrival? I said I was game. Elchonon (he said it means "the land" though Prof. Google translate it as "God has graced") handed me a black yarmulke, and instructed me to roll up my left sleeve so it could be wrapped in a leather strap. I took off my fleece to facilitate that. Mendel looked on — usually, with these pairs, there's the alpha boy and the beta boy, the doer and the watcher.  I set down Kitty's leash, stepped on it to keep her from bolting after a bunny or squirrel — more street life — and expressed a concern that the dog might be tref, or unkosher. Dogs do not figure largely in Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. But they didn't seem to mind Kitty, which I took, like the scooters, as a sign of uncharacteristic liberality.

     I must be getting thick-skinned in my old age, but I cared not a whit what any passing Northbrookites might think to see me putting on phylacteries in the street. I repeated the half-remembered prayers after Elchonon's prompting.

     Truth is, over the past years, I've soured a bit on the Lubavitch, as the New York Times documented how their East Coast schools fail miserably when it came to non-Talmudic subjects like science and math. A shonda fur die goyim. Religion should expand a person's scope, not clap him in blinders. And the Ultra-Orthodox have been cheerleaders for right wing nationalism, at home and in Israel. Not the spirit of Adonai as I understand it. What good is Judaism if it's just another brand of oppression?

      That said, the home team has been suffering enough lately, as the hostility being firehosed toward Israel for defending itself splashes Jews in general, many of whom were pretty down on the country before, for picking a Trumpish criminal and self-dealing stooge like Benjamin Netanyahu to lead it. If I had to choose which is a more pressing priority, crushing Hamas or tossing Netanyahu into the dustbin of history, I'd say both are important, though maybe not in that order. 

    Anyway, Elchonon — sounds almost Spanish, doesn't it? El Chonon! — handed me a little brochure analyzing this week's parsha — the portion of the Torah read in synagogue. Regarding burnt offerings in the Temple 3,000 years before the latest group who showed up and announced the land is theirs and the Jews should quietly die where they stand or go live someplace else, far, far, away. In your dreams...

     He asked where I lived, and I pointed toward my house, already worrying about weekly visits — I suppose I could just tell him to scram, though that seems unkind. The news being what it is, we Jews need to hang together or eventually, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, we'll run the risk of hanging separately. It's happened before.