January / february 2006:

Sects and the city
A female sociology student discovered the hidden world of Hasidic rebels. And she's written a book about it. We took her out to breakfast. And we've written an article about it.

By E.B. Solomont | Photograph by Lionel Da Silva


Hella Winston wakes at dawn to walk her dog, Willie, the morning we meet for breakfast at a nondescript diner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. What is so remarkable about my first impression of her — in a soft black T-shirt, with her face free of makeup, and her dark hair pulled back — is that the 37 year old blends in easily with the rest of the diners despite a recent literary accomplishment that is anything but ordinary.

In Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels, Winston forays into the closed world of the Satmar Hasids, who typically shun the outside world, and manages to give voice to those "rebels" seeking to break free. Admittedly, I expect Winston to be a rebel in her own right, but as she digs into French toast and eggs, she notes casually, "It's funny, because I didn't set out to do it."

In fact, when casting around for a topic for her sociology dissertation, the Ph.D. candidate at CUNY originally set out to explore the cloistered, spiritual lives of Hasidic women. But after a group meeting with several women, one young mother — who arrived late — pulled her aside and asked to "cut the bulls**t."

"She said, 'Did they tell you the truth, or did they sugarcoat?'" Winston recalls. "I was like, what? " The woman sat down with Winston for several hours and told her: "This community is really rough. I am religious, I am observant, it's not about that, but this community is totally extreme."

Until that point, Winston's experience with Hasidism was limited to an occasional visit with her mother's Orthodox cousins that stopped when it became clear the families were "too different."

Born in New York, Winston spent her childhood and adolescence on the Upper East Side before attending Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts for high school. In the sleepy suburban town, though, she chafed against the insular, academic life and recalls often eating dinner at the home of a friend whose father was a dean at school. "They'd serve us wine and stuff — which of course you weren't allowed to drink — and we would go into Boston in her car," also a highly restricted activity at school. Not surprisingly, Winston returned to New York City to attend Barnard College ("After boarding school, I was so sick of campus life"), where she majored in comparative religion.

Her studies inspired her to look inward, at the faith of her mother — a hidden child during the Holocaust — and her father, a secular Jew who opted not to give her brother a bar mitzvah when the boy let it slip that he was only interested in the presents.

Winston says college was also a time when she was sometimes angry with her parents, often asking them, "Why didn't you give me more of a Jewish education?" Through her studies at Barnard, though, she took away an appreciation for Jewish philosophy, culture and religious history, stopping short of actual religious observance. "It didn't have an emotional resonance for me," she explains.

After college, Winston settled into what would become — through many evolutions — the work of telling others' stories. She worked first at the Manhattan District Attorney's office, then assisted in production at PBS and A&E: Biography. The latter produced biographies on the likes of W.C. Fields and Harry Houdini, but the corporate productions, for the sensitive and freewheeling Winston, were too formulaic: "It was awful," she recalls. "We would do something on the working poor, and then we'd have to go find a working poor family."

At CUNY, more structured research guided her exploration of human nature, and ultimately led her back to an academic interest in religion. Her dissertation on Hasids required her to burrow deep, but ultimately resulted in the telling of one of her most significant stories to date.

In Unchosen, Winston gives voice to the most cloistered of subjects: members of Brooklyn's Satmar Hasidic community that have chosen to abandon the insular community's customs and traditions. Through a sociologist's lens, Winston peers into the world, the views, and the struggles of uneducated men who want to work, and young mothers who crave independence.

"It's what every human being struggles with, to figure out who they are ... what they want to be," she says. "For people in this situation, they really are so terrified to do anything."

After a while, being in the "field" became schizophrenic as Winston traveled from her Upper West Side apartment and life to the Brooklyn enclave, where she dressed modestly in long skirts, and watched what she said. Over breakfast, she jokes, "In some ways, it might have been easier being an anthropologist going to Africa and staying there."

In fact, many of the more traditional Hasids considered her a goy, or non-Jew, she explains, and it was difficult to listen to those who suggested the Holocaust was caused by assimilation, or that secular Jews lived heathen lives.

For a female Ph.D. candidate like Winston — educated, smart, and savvy — to uncover the Satmars' illiteracy and abuse, and also hope and passion, was difficult, and poignant at times. She ultimately helped some with resumés, and was asked more than once to purchase theater tickets for someone who couldn't use a credit card for fear of spousal reprisal. Still, she bristles in talking about misconceptions of so-called rebel Hasids who break from the norm to follow their individual desires.

They don't all have mental problems (although some do); they don't all have substance abuse problems (even though some can). Many are bright, modern, and committed to Judaism: "One thing that I wanted to show ... was that you can't just pin it on, 'This person is a misfit.'"

In talking to her, Winston's sense of injustice bleeds into other world issues: the rise of religious fanaticism, the state of journalism, and America's war in Iraq. ("I think, frankly, if there were a draft, we wouldn't be in this war ... It's terrible, but if rich people and poor people served, then the country would be much more engaged in this issue.")

Alternatively serious and insightful, I find her peppering me with questions by the end of breakfast when I can't help sharing my mistaken assumption (before we met) that she would be a rebel herself, as if she chose her subjects in her own likeness. She laughs without restraint, as I flush, and try to explain: "You seem so grounded, you really don't have an agenda, you're so —"

"Normal," she supplies.

I pause. Utterly stumped I say, "Well, yes."



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