We and Satmar chasidim live in very different worlds

I’ve recently returned from my first visit to Israel in 35 years. I never meant for the gap between visits to be so long, but it was — and it certainly won’t be so long until my next visit. It was an amazing experience, and I was able to connect again with so many people, family and friends. It was just what I wanted from this trip.

On the flight from Tel Aviv to Vienna (then there was another flight to London, and then finally home to New Jersey) a young woman sat down in the middle seat next to me. Her head was fully covered with a printed scarf. As the plane got ready to take off, she pulled out a worn prayer book and silently read the T’filat HaDerech prayer — the one for safe travel.

Purim in Israel.

After the plane took off, the flight attendant came around and offered a snack and a beverage. The woman refused everything and instead pulled out a bag full of snacks and sandwiches, each one carefully labeled clearly in Hebrew letters. She said a prayer and began to eat a sandwich; I could read the Hebrew letters that spelled out “tuna.”

I asked her in Hebrew if she had been in Israel for Purim. She didn’t really respond, so I asked again in English, and she nodded her head yes. “Yerushalayim?” I asked. Again, she nodded yes.

This is a museum at Kibbutz Alonim, where Yonah lived 35 years ago.

I attempted to make more small talk in Hebrew, and she then said to me, in Yiddish-inflected, British-accented English, “I don’t speak Hebrew. I’m Satmar.”

The Satmar are chasidim who belong to a group that began in Hungary, now flourishes in the United States, England, and elsewhere, including Israel, and is famous for its extreme right-wing worldview, rigorous religious practices, and fervent anti-Zionism. Satmar chasidim’s daily language of choice is Yiddish.

This spice shop is simply pretty.

“Ahh,” I replied. “English okay?” “Yes.”

“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?” I asked.

I told her she didn’t have to answer any of my questions, but that I was sincerely curious and that I had never had an opportunity to meet anyone from her world. I also told her that she could ask me anything she wanted to ask. She nodded yes.

The site of the Nova music festival, where Hamas massacred more than 380 people, has become a memorial to them.

“Do you have kids?” She shook her head no. “I was just married eight weeks ago.” Then I asked her a few more questions, and she told me that she taught English, and that her students included young children.

I found the fact that she teaches English to be interesting, as she had trouble understanding me. She speaks and reads Yiddish and was reading a magazine in Yiddish that was full of recipes, cartoons about kids performing mitzvot under the direction of a rebbe, and a couple of articles.

In this quintessentially Israeli picture, three people sit under a sign asking them please not to sit there.

I asked her if she had any connection to the hatufim — the hostages. She didn’t understand the word so I translated it into English for her. She seemed not to know what had happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. It was unclear if she had even heard about it. I told her how my wonderful synagogue in Manhattan, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, has placards on seats to remind us — not that we need reminding — that Hamas still is holding hostages in conditions that are beyond deplorable, and that in my community, and in many others, some of us have a connection — sometimes two degrees of separation and certainly many beyond that — to specific hostages or murdered victims. And that we pray for their release and for peace.

I asked her if she had noticed any of the placards that are all over Ben Gurion airport, including by the area where we were waiting to board, in many parts of Jerusalem, and all over Israel. She didn’t really acknowledge the question, nor did she seem familiar with some of the other cities in Israel, or its geography. I explained to her that more than 1,200 people had been brutally murdered and several hundred were kidnapped, and that it had been 500-plus days since the Nova music festival. I didn’t try to explain Nova — it is so outside her world. I purposefully did not use the word “tortured,” as I felt that it was truly beyond her comprehension.

A huge sign in Tel Aviv reminds people how long the hostages have been held in Gaza.

She then pointed to a word in her Yiddish magazine: “Hezbollah.” She wanted to know what it meant, and who they were. This naivete caught me off guard, but I explained who Hezbollah is and also who Hamas is.

I showed her a wedding picture of my son and daughter-in-law. She asked me a few questions about them. She was interested in finding out where my family, my daughter-in-law’s family, and my late ex-husband’s family were from, and she wanted to know their family names. That was about it.

Eggs aren’t particularly expensive in Machane Yehuda, Yonah says.

There were at least five other Satmar families on the plane, including one with eight kids — one was a sniffling, crying baby, and the father was not really doing much to help. Some kids were shouting “Mommy, Mommy” (along with hollering the names Gitti and Shloymi over and over again) for much of the trip. All of them were flying home to London. Maybe I was in the middle of all this craziness because I typically aim to sit in row 18 or 36 whenever I fly.

During the more than two weeks I spent in Israel, I heard a lot about how there are so many super-religious people who don’t do any military service, but having the experience of sitting next to this young Satmar woman — even though she is not Israeli but from London — was something else.

So young. So naive. I thought about the bubble she lives inside, and how safe, protected, and buffered it is from so much of the world. While it’s a lovely fantasy in certain respects, I’ll take the real, informed world every single day. We need to know what is happening, and especially we need to know about cause and effect. We are all responsible for each other, and for members of this group, whether they live in Israel or in London, to be so selfish and not contribute to the state of Israel frankly makes me sad as well as angry.

Am Yisrael chai!

Yonah Levenson of Fort Lee is a metadata and taxonomy consultant and an adjunct at Rutgers University where she teaches digital asset management.