Top Ten Interesting Facts About the Practice of Hasidic Judaism in New York City

Top Ten Interesting Facts About the Practice of Hasidic Judaism in New York City

Sometimes, YouTube is my television and we all know how one video on YouTube can lead to another and another, linking a recommended video to another until you are down a rabbit hole. I love to learn about other countries and cultures worldwide. I love to watch documentaries. I was born and raised in the New York area and have been riding in a car with my family in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York many a time.

I have seen Hasidic Jewish men and women dressed in their traditional attire but there are many things that I did not know about their culture and that came to light while watching one documentary clip of several minutes from a news segment that was posted on YouTube.

This was an NBC news segment introduced by Brian Williams with reporting by Nancy Snyderman. The segment was published on YouTube in June 2013 by YouTuber Duudeabides2. This YouTube video poster titled the news segment “Former Hasidic Jews reveal hidden world”.

Here are the top ten things that I found interesting as they were discussed in this brief video posting.

10. There is a community of over 300,000 Hasidic Jews in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York.

9. Yiddish is the main language of the Hasidic Jews residing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.

8. The marriages are arranged sometimes with the bride having met the groom only a few weeks before the marriage. A Hasidic Jewish man that was interviewed for the video segment noted that “We do not marry the one we love but we love the one we marry.”

7. The bride’s face is completely covered before the wedding ceremony and the groom is surrounded by other men who pray for him.

6. The bride dances only with other women at the wedding reception.

5. The groom dances only with other men at the wedding reception, with the wedding reception heavily segregated, men and women on opposite sides of the room or in different rooms.

4. Married Hasidic Jewish women typically cover their hair with wigs and dress modestly while all of the Hasidic Jewish men dress in a similar way to each other- dark/black clothing, hats, sideburns of curls..

3. Many adult Hasidic Jews have never watched a secular movie or television show in their lifetimes.

2. Even in education, secular aspects of education might stop around the age of thirteen for a boy with continued studies having a religious focus.

1. The study of many subjects is forbidden within the Hasidic Jewish community. One boy discussed how his family did not allow him to visit the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan when he was interested in learning about dinosaur artifacts, for example.