“Yiddishyiddishyiddishyiddish Yid?”

Today, after dropping off my cousin’s car with Hassan in Sunset Park, and after a series of greener pastures-related poor train decisions, I got off the J/M/Z at Marcy rather than Myrtle because I wanted to walk through South Williamsburg to see what it’s like there on this holiest of Jewish days. I wondered if the holiness would be visible, if I would behold the power of traditions and religious fervor, manifest in raiment, physiognomy, population density, architecture.

Here are some of my observations:

– There seem to be fewer men on the street, but not fewer women, and possibly more groups of unattended children

– Everyone dresses up, but there is either a limited array of dresses available at the store or members of sects tend to dress up in the same fashion – several young girls from different families wore the same dresses, and pairs of women would match each other but not necessarily the pair across the street

– The women seemed unaffected by fasting and continued to walk briskly and engage in animated conversation

Tish, Purim, 5766

– Children are permitted to play on Yom Kippur — a group of boys sat around a table inside a sukkah like members of the Sanhedrin, or perhaps like their fathers attending a tish

– People do not seem especially somber and in fact seem relaxed and happy (other than the  somewhat crazy-looking Hasidic man smoking a cigarette while pacing at the Marcy stop)

As I was leaving the neighborhood and heading for the Bushwick Public Library, I turned toward a particularly active corner, onto which a stream of men was emptying from what must have been a basement synagogue. When I reached the corner, a girl (with dry skin on her cheek right where I get it), pulling a smaller girl along with her, approached me and said what I thought was, “It is a holiday; we need someone to shadow the light.” Assuming my own ignorance of a Yom Kippur tradition, I asked of her to where she needed me to cast a shadow, and she pointed down the street. As I nodded in agreement, struggling to find my shadow in the midday sun, her grandmother approached and said to her something in Yiddish that culminated in “Yid?” Grandma then turned to me, smiled, asked if I’m Jewish and then explained, after I answered, that though they needed someone to “shut off” the light, a Jew couldn’t be asked to do it.

On my way down the street I passed what I assume to be the house in question, in whose window hung a brightly lit golden chandelier.