New York is the most diverse city in the United States. Brooklyn the most diverse neighborhood in New York. And Williamsburg the most varied area of Brooklyn. However, the posh 30-somethings pouring in from Manhattan know only from the news that a segregated world of Hasidic Jews lurks a few blocks from their Michelin-starred restaurants and bars serving overpriced organic wine.
From South 9th Street, another universe emerges. The men wear black jackets, hats, long beards, sideburns along their temples and speak Yiddish on flip phones reminiscent of the 1990s. The women wear long dresses and wigs. Almost all walk the streets with strollers and armies of toddlers.
Most of the time, I’m the only foreign individual in the neighborhood. Grocery stores, bakeries and restaurants are strictly kosher and signs are almost all in Yiddish. All in the heart of New York, one subway stop from Manhattan.
In a language of yesteryear
When I meet an elderly man, I accost him in Hungarian. He answers me in Magyar without an ounce of astonishment. His Hungarian is rustic, but conceals the charm of the idiom of yesteryear, on the verge of extinction in the Magyar countryside.
Few people know that a large part of Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jewish community has its roots in Hungary. I discovered this neighborhood when I was living in New York. Since then, I come back often. The fact of being Hungarian helped me to know many people of this community curled up on itself.
The Magyar history of Hasidism dates back to the 19e century. This branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism has found fertile ground among poor, rural Jews in northeastern Hungary. Unlike the secular and assimilated Jews of Budapest and other major cities, the Hasidim refused integration, clung to ancestral traditions, and formed great hereditary dynasties under a charismatic rabbi. After the Holocaust decimated the community, survivors left Hungary and rebuilt their congregations in the newly formed state of Israel, as well as in the United States of America.
Today, more than 150,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn are of Magyar ancestry, mostly in Williamsburg [dans le nord de Brooklyn] et Borough Park [dans le Sud]. The dominant Hasidic dynasty, the Satmar, take their name from the former Hungarian-now-Romanian town of Satu Mare, where Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum had built a large community before World War II. Teitelbaum escaped deportation, arrived in New York in 1946 and resurrected his assembly. The Munkatch (from Mukachevo, today in Ukraine), the Popa (from Papa [en Hongrie]listen)) and the Klausenburgs (from Cluj, now Romania) are the other major groups of Hungarian Hasidim in Brooklyn. Other small communities exist, such as those of Kaliv (originally from Nagykallo), Kerestir (Bodrogkeresztur) and Liska (Olaszliszka).
“Several of these localities were separated from Hungary after the First World War [après le traité de Trianon du 4 juin 1920]but the Jews who lived in these communes considered themselves Hungarians”says Yosef Rapaport, a respected community leader in Borough Park. “My mother came from Valea him Mihai and my father from Halmeu, two villages located in Romanian territory, but both my parents spoke Magyar at home. In fact, the vast majority of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn speak Yiddish with a Hungarian accent.”
Renowned hospitality
Brooklyn has dozens of Hasidic communities. Most are Hungarian, the others Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. Despite their apparent similarities, subtle differences set them apart. “Hungarian Hasidim are renowned for their hospitality. In a Hungarian Hasidic household, there is always a dish ready to eat. And in a Magyar synagogue, coffee is both plentiful and free.” proudly describes Alexander Rapaport, son of Yosef and owner of Masbia, an associative soup kitchen network.
“The women are better organized, dressed more elegantly. They respect the Hasidic rules [qui exigent pudeur et sobriété], but it can be seen that they are Hungarian. Marrying one is a good pick.”
Unlike Williamsburg, not all Hasidic communities in Borough Park have Hungarian roots, but many of the area’s three hundred small synagogues are named after Hungarian localities, such as those in Sopron, Debrecen and Mad. A portion of the 13e Avenue, the district’s main shopping street, is called Raoul Wallenberg in honor of the Swedish diplomat, ambassador to Budapest during World War II, who saved tens of thousands of Jews from certain death. Many of them settled in Brooklyn afterwards.
Goulash, chou farci and paprika
In Williamsburg, my first stop takes me to Gottlieb’s, a bustling family restaurant filled with bearded men in black hats and run by 44-year-old Menashe Gottlieb. Jewish [du courant] Satmar, reserved, he wears glasses and blond curls. Menashe’s grandfather, Zoltan, left Hungary during the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising and in 1962 opened a restaurant specializing in dishes from his native land, which he missed: goulash, stuffed cabbage, pasta with cabbage (