Belz world center synagogue
Yesterday, I was way outside my comfort zone meeting with the spokesman for the Hevron Jewish community, an ardent settler in one of the most contested and complicated settlements. And then, there was today, when I managed to get myself invited to join Young Judea Year Course’s visit to the Belz Hasidim. (I am sitting in on a Jewish art class at Year Course so heard about the trip. What I am very curious about, is how did Year Course manage a tour and meeting with a Belz Hasidim as their community is fairly closed to outsiders). And adding to my visit, I was late to meet the Year Course group and spent over a half hour trying to find them in this vast building complex – not seeing any other women, and having all the men I asked for directions, clearly not wanting to speak with a woman and avoiding looking at me and turning away, making it hard to hear them, which was further complicated by the fact that they were Yiddish speakers and not all had strong Hebrew.
Belz world center synagogue
World biggest ark
Some of the many balconies for additional seating. The ones for women are the ones with the white walls. The ones with open windows are for overflow men who don’t fit in the 2800 seats on the main level
The Belz world center we visited was a combination of beit midrash (study hall), banquet halls and the biggest synagogue I have ever seen (and I have seen many). It was built to imitate the former Belz synagogue in Belz, Poland. Our host from the Belz community said it is the biggest ark in the world, and can hold 70 sifrei torah and that they have 9000 seats (6000 for men and 3000 for women) and standing room for several thousand more with a series of 12 different balconies. He claims that the acoustics are so good, you can hear the shaliach tzibbur (prayer leader) from everywhere without a microphone. There as also a huge courtyard outside the building, constructed for the weddings of the rebbe’s grandchildren where the whole Belz community of 12,000 would attend the celebration.
Part of the courtyard and the building from outside
What really led me to feel I was in a different world were the answers the host provided to the q and a he had with the 18 year old Year Course participants. Below are a few of his statements that I found the most challenging:
- when asked about Reform and Conservative Judaism, he called them dead forms of Judaism, and when pushed to explain, shared that the descendants of their adherents became dead to Judaism and were highly unlikely to remain Jewish and all of their Judaism could fit on one page of a notebook
- when asked about agunot (women unable to get divorced or remarried because their husbands won’t grant them a divorce), he went into a diatribe about all the women who refuse to give their husbands divorces and no one helps the men and men were the ones who were at a disadvantage as those who don’t give their wives divorces can end up in jail and shared about one man from the belz community currently in jail for this
- the people who want an egalitarian space at the kotel are left wing extremists trying to get a foothold into Israel
And the Year Course participants were shocked to hear that they censure all the internet access. And that his three married children, and one engaged child (he has more kids who are younger) only met their spouses/fiance once before deciding to get engaged. In the Belz community, when a teen turns 18, the parents work on getting a shiddach and do lots of background research (calling everyone they know) on potential spouses and when they feel they have found a worthy potential partner, they then let their kids know about him/her and if the child agrees, arrange for a meeting in the dining room (with the parents waiting in the kitchen) and the expectation is that the two 18 year olds with know within 1-2 meetings if they want to marry him/her. He explained that they will be looking for someone who embodies their mother or father’s attributes and love comes much longer. And that this is the system that works.
The chair where the current Belz rebbe sits in tefilot
The chair of the previous Belz rebbe, encased in glass, at the front of the sanctuary