Brooklyn Yeshiva Cops Traffic

This post first appeared in The Times of Israel.

Some hasidim in Williamsburg, Brooklyn seem to be telling people where they can park it — and it’s not in front of Yeshiva Bnos Ahavas Israel on Franklin Avenue.

The sudden appearance of a no-parking sign in front of the school has driven city bus drivers and passengers to anger, as a nearby Metropolitan Transit Authority bus stop has been squeezed out of the space by the yeshiva’s school buses that line up (illegally) along the curb.

“Two Jewish guys were moving the pole. I saw them resetting it. They had fresh cement and made it look professionally done,” city bus driver Jamar Perry told the New York Post. He suspects the hasidic culprits took a sign that had fallen over after being hit by a car around the corner on Flushing Avenue and erected in front of the school.

Click here to read more.

© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

‘Blue Bloods’ Hasidic Costumes Fool Boro Park

This post first appeared on The Arty Semite blog at The Forward.

It was a little tricky telling who was a real Hasidic Jew and who wasn’t on 13th Avenue in Boro Park earlier this week. The CBS police drama “Blue Bloods,” starring Donnie Wahlberg, was filming there, and the extras dressed as Hasidim were throwing the real members of the tribe for a loop.

If you watch the clip that someone filmed and put on YouTube, you can see why telling the Jews from the non- would have been hard. This is one instance where the actors didn’t look like they had pasted-on fake beards and side curls. We extend kudos to the makeup and wardrobe departments.

The video is worth watching if only to see one (real) Hasidic man walking around dumbstruck at how authentic the extras look. “I can’t believe it,” he keeps on exclaiming. “It’s mindboggling. You have to watch out. You don’t know who you’re talking to.”

Click here to read more and watch the video.

© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Hasidic Heir Who Rides A Harley

This piece was first published on The Arty Semite blog at the Forward.

Audiences at the 2012 Starz Denver Film Festival earlier this month likely found it uncomfortable to sit through the 29 minutes of Pearl Gluck’s’s short film, “Where Is Joel Baum.” That, however, is a good thing, because the film tells the kind of story that introduces you to a disturbing, yet riveting, title character, and leaves you wanting to know what happens to him next. That is precisely the intention of the filmmaker, who intends to turn this short into a full-length feature.

Joel Baum is the heir to a Hasidic dynasty in Brooklyn. Now an adult, he has been living since childhood with his grandmother and grandfather, the Grand Rabbi, following the death of his parents and siblings in a car accident. Joel, with his peyes and tzizis looks the part of a Hasid, and he seems to appreciate his heritage and the religious way of life. But at the same time, his obsessions with riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle, and with listening to raunchy Lenny Bruce recordings, clearly hint at the fact that Joel is not your usual bearded, kapote-wearing, young Jew.

Joel is beyond eccentric. He is mentally and emotionally unstable, and this instability appears to reach a painful crescendo during an arranged date with a young Hasidic woman from Montreal. However, we soon learn that this is only a prelude to the tragic climax of the film, which takes place during a heated, sexually charged exchange between Joel and Anya, an attractive Polish cleaning woman hired by the grandmother to clean the house before Shabbat.

Click here to read more and watch a teaser.

© 2012 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.