The Modern Shtetl

Yesterday my labmate took to grilling me on my religious background again. In lack of better explanations, I sadly found myself resorting to justifying many of the seemingly backwards aspects of the Hasidic lifestyle with “they’re fundamentalists” (why don’t people trim their beards anyway?). Perhaps I’m just ignorant, but after spending more than 12 years in a yeshiva setting, I should hope I was provided with enough background to offer simple explanations for basic traditions. On the other hand, maybe too much school time was dedicated to lecturing us on the evils of college…Anyway, Alex was amazed by the drastically different environment I was coming from and asked if encountering the “outside world” was a culture shock. Yeah, sure it was at first, but I think I’ve been away long enough that now I could almost say that visiting Crown Heights has become a culture shock.