Inside NYC's Hasidic Jewish Community (Will SURPRISE YOU!) (Boro Park, Brooklyn)

when you see people who look different than you from an outsider's perspective you can think like oh these people are all the same but they're actually very unique very colorful kosher not koshers when the cameras come into the community very often there's already a predetermined narrative of what the people who bringing the cameras want to portray you go to hawaii you take a picture from the beach you go to rome you look at the old structures and you come to borough park and you walk away you want to bring something from judea you come with an open mind and good intentions you're going to have a blast you come with bad intentions you're going to be run out of town real fast today we're going to show you around a neighborhood that's very unique in new york city burrell park and we have got the perfect ambassador to guide us through this shilling there are 1 million jews approximately in new york city 100 000 of which are hasidic what are some of the defining characteristics of the hasidic community the hasidic movement in general is consists of ultra-orthodox jews so i don't like to use the term more religious but they try to be more stringent with jewish law that's uh the gist of it what about the dress oh yeah so obviously most aesthetic jews they dress in black and white and very different from what you'll see is the regular fashion in new york city [Music] for the first time ever on the channel we are having kosher pizza and you are a huge fan of mendelssohn's why is why is this place so special i've been eating here since i'm a little kid everybody in borough park has been eating there since their children but it's just a staple this is like a landmark and borrow park if you haven't been to mendel since you haven't been to bar park my grandparents opened the business in 1969 when there was clearly very little exposure to pizza at all in america as well and um my grandmother being a kosher chef she said you know let's try this new concept of food kids like them you know i cook for children and september of 1969 they opened the first kosher pizzeria in this neighborhood and again a lot of non-jewish non-affiliated come here as well we like our food because you know we make great food here what makes kosher pizza different than the pizza i get down the block in a non-kosher spot basically we are restricted to a kosher dietary concepts no meat no pepperoni on the pizza so the pizza is pretty much a cheese pizza vegetarian pizza and there's no meats involved but other than that ingredients today in kosher market is second to none great ingredients we can source greetings from anywhere in the world kosher concepts thank you so much this might be the one of the biggest pizza places i've seen in new york now that i think about it usually tiny the biggest one i've ever seen it's biggest one you've ever seen and it's probably the largest kosher pizza chocolate okay so the pizza here is interesting for two reasons i would say number one um i think the sauce is sweeter than pizza you typically have additionally there's a good crunch when you bite into it but doesn't make the slice hard it's just you'll see what i'm saying when you bite it [Music] solid solid slice kosher not koshers is good in this community all the food places that you would eat at need to be kosher what other options do people have outside of something like pizza or a bagel oh there's so much like what's the craziest option craziest thing is kosher that we wouldn't think about obviously no ham no bacon no shellfish okay no shrimp but there are sort of imitations of all these things so you can get like a really good burger with uh some fried bacon on top or you can get uh some fake shrimp in your sushi or that kind of thing and they do have sushi here as well you saw that in front i thought that was really interesting that inside of a kosher pizza place you got kosher sushi right inside yeah sushi has almost become like a jewish food like every place has sushi do you think that if a tourist walked in here or someone who's not from the hasidic community would they have any issues where they feel uncomfortable they might feel uncomfortable but that's sort of a self-imposed thing when you walk into a neighborhood where everyone looks different and you're the odd one out you tend to feel uncomfortable but i don't think anybody would make them feel uncomfortable certainly anybody who came here with an open mind in my experience people i've brought here have always had a good time very always [Applause] oh my god oh my god i'm almost really sad that i live an hour away from here because i have this all the time i taste most of the food almost every day and the main thing is the pizza i taste everyday pizza the workers know i come in the first thing i taste the pizza make sure it's perfect you know and they know they're scared of the fact what happens if it's not going to be perfect today not mad but i throughout the whole batch you have to redo everything they know i mean i don't get mad i don't get upset it's just a matter of hey this has to be correct this has to be right this has to be perfect [Music] we are going to a surprise stop it's very personal to me that's all i'm going to say we're about to enter the heart of borough park right and you've described it to me as another world compared to what people might generally think of new york city right yeah this would be a very shallow point but this just obviously the truth that at face value when you see people who look different than you and they're all wearing sort of the same clothing they're all black and white they can seem very black and white like from from an outsider's perspective you can think like oh these people are all the same but they're actually very unique very colorful there are so many different groups within the black and white and something i'm trying to help the world understand i think you're going to meet a lot of nice people people are going to be curious about you they're going to want to know why you're here some might ask most will probably just stare um it's not they're not trying to be impolite it's just whenever the media comes here and i know you're not the media but whenever people come here with cameras people get like a little you know suspicious what's going on here do they have an agenda so hopefully if you're with me things are going to be fine okay i'm sure things are going to be fine and i think we're all going to have a great time [Music] i've decided to stop here because i recently found out that when my parents my grandma who was a holocaust survivor and my older brother moved to new york city in 1978 from the soviet union they lived on this block for the first year of their american experience and how does that tie in with the demographics here in berle park pretty much all of the hasidic jews who live here in barrow park are either holocaust survivors descendants of holocaust survivors some of them made it out of europe before the holocaust but the majority of them settled here in and in other areas of brooklyn and that's why your story is a little bit similar to the you know to the rest of us yeah so my own past started here in in new york city even though i grew up in jersey this is where my parents originally came to just two hundred dollars in their pocket to start their lives here one of the languages here in berle park is yiddish and there are many words that come from yiddish that are actually used in everyday interactions in new york city right now what are some of your favorites so i'd say um it's not just in new york city it actually it's it's all over america and in pop culture i mean yiddish has definitely made some noise so we got the classic meshuggah mazeltov those are not yiddish words but they're definitely associated with yiddish because they're jewish words slept schlepping yeah schlepping cocos maybe no yeah i'm improvising i'm coming up with some very good what else you got you know my grandma used to speak to me and my brother in yiddish so i actually knew a couple words really i could count to ten einstein dry field finish exhibit soon i'm impressed i try sometimes yeah so you this is definitely the language in the community everyone here speaks even a lot of the non-jewish people who work here picked up yiddish and like i'm talking fluent as for english everybody speaks english as well some to a higher degree than others but most people's english here is really good and um yeah this is the dish is definitely the language of the town so you're saying there could be a non-jewish person working at let's say like a pizza place of your uncle spot like a latino person that speaks yiddish really well yeah i've seen it there are like sometimes you see like a black person speaking in in uh rapid fire edition it's just always entertaining that's new york for you though yeah that's new york for you that's the the melting pot that is new york city is we have cultures really blending together like that in really cool ways [Music] i hardly see people wearing masks here what's the the community's opinion of covid right now the community's opinion of kovid and i i'm not a spokesperson for the community but i can tell you what the general feel on the street is everybody's had it i would say 80 90 of people here have had it they have antibodies and they're not very worried about it uh they're not very worried about it obviously if you go into a store there are laws so you need to put one on okay it's sort of like each each person has to make a decision for themselves if they're worried they're going to wear a mask they're not worried they won't and that's the way it's going pretty much right now at the beginning of the pandemic people were taking it very very seriously and it hit this community quite hard i wouldn't say i'm not sure again i'm not into statistics but everybody had it i had you chances are if you asked anybody in the street if they had covered the answer is going to be yes more than 95 of the time starting tomorrow night and friday is the holiday of purim which is some people might get upset about this but the way for your viewers to understand it would be that it's it's like sort of like halloween but very different because halloween is a pagan thing and and this is definitely not of course um it's a holiday where people get dressed up in costumes give lots of charity um everyone makes parties they give out like these food baskets one everyone gives out food baskets to their friends and family and uh the men get really drunk it's a good time will you be dressing up absolutely and what are you gonna be this year i can't talk about it yet my wife doesn't let me your wife doesn't let you it's top secret okay all right we're in front of eichler's right now i clerg not anything a available religious person would need pretty much from when they're born until they pass away we're going to show you guys inside some things that you might want to come and buy yourself let's get in there you know what really caught my attention actually was this uh a superhero one yeah this was used for purim this sells more attitude locally i was gonna say i could imagine people visiting might want to buy this you go to hawaii you take a picture from the beach you go to rome you look at the old uh structures and you come to bar park and you walk away you want to bring something from judea so if you could blend they can something that younger kids love parents love to bring it back for the children this is a gold keeper 100 you can get anything here what would draw somebody in here who maybe isn't jewish and wants a really interesting souvenir of their trip to pearl park shop glasses you okay yeah you break it you buy it ben wine decanters pictures this okay this this has caught my attention this is okay hey judea cause shot glass i may have to buy this actually i'm into this i love shot glasses there you go i don't do shots enough but i like shot glasses well they're really just for the yeah uh are central to jewish celebration every friday night every holiday we like candles saturday night again so we have a lot of different uh kinds of candle holders and we have candelabras because people like an extra candle for every child okay and you know people around here have large families okay that's a lot of candles awesome um but those also look great on a mental piece on purim which is coming up one of the ways we celebrate is by giving gifts of food to our friends uh so it turned into kind of a holiday of gratitude so people give gifts to people who they want to thank or people who they care about john let me show you this this is uh army magazine that's the magazine i work for and uh leave it the largest english language orthodox jewish magazine in the world is this your friend here this is not my friend this guy's name is uncle meishi he's like uh children's entertainer i see the guy and everyone we all grew up listening to his music and his story here i'm seeing people left and right taking photos of us what's going on with that almost nobody has televisions here internet is more of a gray area because it's pretty much needed right now in this day and age i would love to try that here because that's like something i've tried in all the other delis in new york i want to see it right here yeah all right let's do it let's try it

Channel: Here Be Barr

Views: 206,529

Keywords: hasidic jewish, nyc, hasidic jewish community, here be barr, jewish, hasidic jewish nyc, brooklyn, schloime zionce, inside hasidic jewish community, hasidic jewish customs, new york, life in new york, jewish brooklyn, kosher food, orthodox jews, documentary, peter santenello, hasidic, hasidic jews, hasidic judaism, jews new york city, orthodox judaism, new york city, hasidic judaism (religion), orthodox judaism explained, hasidic community, hasidic community in brooklyn

Id: NQfPWlnhFlA

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021