We Clannish Jews

In my day job, I deal with customers and clients around the world by phone and by Internet, with little face time.

"Electric doughnuts", as the bond traders of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities call their faceless customers on the other end of the doughtnut-shaped round mouthpieces and earpieces of their telephone handsets.

There is something disembodied, lacking soul, and dehumanizing about doing business that way and living that way in modern suburban life. I never get to make or see my customers and clients happy.

Today, I realized that I found just the opposite as a consequence of my journey on the derech. In my orthodox Jewish community, I've made friends at all three shuls. They all know of my skills with computers because of our frequent conversations.

I've helped a number of them with their personal and work computers. For free. Because they are my friends and I know how frustrated I get when my computer doesn't do what I expect (I'm something of a computer maven).

I like helping them. To see their faces light up in joy when something works, or when they problem is solved and they can get their documents printed, computer viruses removed, Internet service restored, etc. gives me as much joy as seeing people enjoy my cooking.

When I belonged to a Conservative suburban shul, the congregants didn't want to get to know me well enough to figure out what I do for a living, my computer skills, my hobbies, or my interests. I was the oddball, the anomaly, the untouchable, because I was single.

And we were so spread out geographically because so many chose bigger and less expensive houses further from shul, since we could drive on Shabbos. It would never be practical to merely stop in around the corner to help out a friend. I never bumped into them outside of shul or in a restaurant or supermarket.

So I never got to be involved in their lives.

Recently, one of my new frum friends, Ted, saw me at shul. We chatted during Kiddush. He expressed to me his frustrations with his home computer configuration. So I volunteered to help him. He wanted to pay me since I was a computer industry professional, but I insisted on taking no compensation. He and his wife are lovely people and I wanted to help them out of friendship.

I stopped in on a Sunday morning, fixed his system in short order, and bonded with Ted. It was fun to make him so happy with his computer.

Today, he spotted me when I walked into a local kosher restaurant where he was eating. He ran up to greet me and insisted on buying my lunch and my joining his table. I was a slightly embarrassed by the generosity of his gesture; it's not like I saved a life. But he is such a warm guy, and naturally effusive and charming. He bought my lunch and I sat, ate, and talked with him, his wife, and a mutual friend and had a lovely time.

That simply never would have happened had I remained at my Conservative shul. Nobody would have talked to me, much less about their computer problems or about my computer skills. I would not have visited the same restaurants, because we didn't keep kosher. I couldn't just drive up the street to visit their home; I would have needed a GPS device to find the remote and dispersed residences of people who didn't walk to shul.

Being in a compact Orthodox community means that people see each other, visit each other, do business with each other, shop at the same places, walk to the same shuls, send their children to the same schools, and welcome everybody who commits to the same lifestyle, standards and values.

For me, that kind of connection makes up for the disconnectedness of suburban life and for what suburban living lacks for (non-frum) Jews.

***

As I finish this post, I am at a cafe drinking tea and listening (OK, eavesdropping) to the three women at the table next to me. My kippah sruga (knitted skullcap) prompted two of them to ask the third about the synagogues nearby, and why there were so many Jews, synagogues, Jewish schools, and kosher restaurants and supermarkets in the area.

The Jewish woman of the three then giggled self-consciously to the other two about how she was divorced from a Catholic man, how she grew up celebrating only a few Jewish holidays, and doesn't actually do anything Jewish in her life now, but she did manage to explain that observant Jews live close together near synagogues because they can't drive to synagogue on the Sabbath and "there are all these things they can't do on Fridays and Saturdays."

Forgive my "zealotry of the Baal Teshuvah", but I felt sorry for her. In my opinion, we frum Jews do more of the most valuable things that one can do on a day of rest. We do it with our true neighbors, in real neighborhoods. And during the week, that kind of proximity leads us to "Buy Local, Sell Local" figuratively and literally.

To me, that explains the reasons for the stereotype of Jews being "clannish." I wouldn't want it any other way at this point in my life.