July / August 2005:

ESSAY: rebooting the ipod generation
Reboot, a group of young Jewish thinkers and activists, surveyed Generation Y and helped us better understand the way young people see religion. But what if the findings bode ill for the Jewish future? by Bradford R. Pilcher



Walk into the A Plus Auto Shop a block away from the Dekalb County Courthouse in downtown Decatur and the cognitive dissonance practically smacks you in the face. By no stretch of the imagination is this your typical mechanic’s garage. A Hebrew Beavis and Butthead poster shares wall space with a car parts calendar. A photo of the saintly Lubavitcher Rebbe hangs alongside one of pro-wrestler Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake. It’s a purposely dichotic mood set by the twisted mind of Greg Herman, the shop’s 40-year-old owner.

Yeah, he may look like any other of a dozen auto mechanics you’ve come across over the years of strange brake noises and broken Johnson Rods. You know what we mean: The tattered baseball cap, the scruffy facial hair, the weathered hands covered with smudges of black grease that make you think twice before shaking hands. The sweat stained and sunburned machismo that can only come from keeping your head under a hood for 12 hours a day.

So far, so typical. But then he says something so utterly incongruous with who he appears to be that you actually have to stop and sit for a moment on one of the many random and battered car parts that litter the four-bay garage. “I hope all my children become rabbis,” he says with a straight face. Yeah, he ain’t your typical mechanic. And since we’re already breaking down stereotypes, we might as well let you in on one more secret: Greg Herman used to be known as Demon “The Madman from Miami” Hellstorm, a professional wrestler.

Make no mistake. You don’t want to mess with this guy. Look at him closely and you realize Herman could be a ticking time bomb. If you were to cross him, he seems to have the uncanny ability to reach out from this page, grab you by the collar, and shake the living daylights out of you.

Yet, he’s astonishingly a man ripe with pathos, with compassion, with a tender heart.

“I don’t let my kids watch wrestling,” he says. “It’s too violent.” This coming from a man who, when sporting a mohawk and face paint, was once ranked #241 in the world for his unique ability to smash the head of another grown man with a metal folding chair. In fact, save for his oldest son, neither of Herman’s other two children are even aware of his previous incarnation.

Indeed, Herman keeps that part of his life boxed up (literally) in several cardboard storage bins in a closet of the backroom of his auto shop. Pry one chest open and you’ll see newspaper clippings from Demon Hellstorm’s heyday, photos of Herman and Hulk Hogan, videos of his classic bouts, and the peace de resistance, his old wrestling costume.

For the surprisingly studious Herman, it’s like opening up a time capsule from a bygone era. “I don’t even remember that time anymore,” he says, although a tiny but discernable glint in his eyes would say otherwise. “It was so long ago.”

Well, not exactly. Herman’s last professional match took place just a week prior to 9/11 only a few years ago. But a seemingly unquenchable thirst for religious growth had already been gnawing at Herman and pushing him away from the sordid world of professional wrestling for almost a decade.

Living in one of the many non-descript towns that dot the South Florida peninsula, Herman’s life was a lonely one. Under contract with the now-defunct International Wrestling Union (IWU) and with no matches to fight, Herman was basically being paid to sit at home. It was this eerie sense of calm for Hellstorm that opened his eyes towards his Jewish faith. “I had all this time and nothing to do. So I started reading.” In fact, for his 30th birthday, he asked his mother to get him a Bible. “She almost had a heart attack,” Herman recalls of his mother’s response.

But for Herman it was no laughing matter. “I wanted to learn who I was. I spent 16 years on the road with born-again Christians who had tattoos and wanted me to believe in Jesus. And none of that ever happened.”

Even now, years after shedding his demonic alter ego, Herman takes pride in his Jewish heritage wherever he can get it. He points to a beat up station wagon currently being worked on by one of Herman’s mechanics. “That’s the rabbi’s car.”

Perhaps for nostalgic reasons Herman still has a thing for wrestling. Although he claims to be “way out of shape,” the burly 210 lb, 5’11” Herman is still a force to be reckoned with and when he has time he works out on the weight sets in an abandoned area of his auto shop. In fact, up until recently, Herman actually had a wrestling ring in the extra garage where he and some of the guys would joke around for old time’s sake. “People think wrestling is this big glamorous life,” he says, as he munches on some greasy chicken fingers. “It really isn’t. After six months, it was just a job.”

That monotony and his newfound focus on Judaism brought him out of the religious wasteland he was wallowing in, and along with his Israeli wife Navit he moved to Atlanta where his children could grow up in a proper spiritual environment. They now attend a local Jewish day school and Herman, in his new incarnation as an auto mechanic, finds ways to infuse their lives with a sense of uniqueness. In the back of his garage, amidst the valuable antique cars that Herman fixes up, lies one of his most treasured items: A large menorah he made for his son out of scrap metal and sparkplugs.

Greg Herman may be many things — a father, a friend, an existential mechanic — but one thing he isn’t is regretful. Unlike many professional athletes who find themselves retired by 40 with nothing to do but watch the highlight reels from the glory days of their youth, Herman can barely sit through a tape from one of his old matches.

Instead he focuses on his future: His new business, his family, and his religion. “It’s a slow process,” he admits, looking off into setting sun. But a journey he’s more than happy to take.