A scroll through what’s on offer in New York City under Airbnb’s “Experiences” tab reveals little of value in the way of adrenaline or anthropological knowledge—the two reasons to experience anything, in my opinion. If you want to pose for some digital photography, you can do so beneath the Brooklyn Bridge on Dumbo’s cobblestoned streets or sprawled alluringly across a Central Park lawn. You can book a crawl through Manhattan’s “secret bars” and speakeasies (drinks not included). Having seen my colleagues sail the Adriatic and traverse Rio’s rainforests by bike for this series, I wanted to find something in our own city—the best city, if you hadn’t heard—that was at least as interesting, if not as exhilarating. Only one listing caught my eye—a walking tour of Hasidic Brooklyn.
If you live in North Brooklyn as I do, you share the streets with a vast diversity of friends and neighbors. It follows that most of said neighbors are different from you, but none are more so on the surface than the Hasidic Jewish citizens of Williamsburg and Crown Heights. There, the boys never shave their beards and wear a uniform of bekishes, black overcoats (silk, silk blend, or polyester depending on budget); the girls, pleated charcoal skirts to the ankle and, once married, wigs over their hair (whether she owns multiple lace-fronts of human hair or a single synthetic affixed atop her head with some sort of hat is again largely a matter of money, as I learned later on). Pulling off the BQE onto Bedford Avenue one Saturday afternoon, an Uber driver who had recently moved here from Uruguay was greeted by an abundance of fur hats with coils spilling out either side and turned to me with a bewildered, “What is going on here?”
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We were five minutes from my apartment, but beyond the fact that it was Shabbat, I had to admit that I didn’t really know. I wanted to. And so I booked the tour listed on Airbnb, which promised that a rabbi (at 25, Mayer Friedman is two months younger than me) would take me deep into Crown Heights’ Chabad-Lubavitch sect—a private home and its kosher kitchen, the inside of a synagogue. While talking over the idea, I learned that while this type of thing might fly in the relatively progressive Crown Heights, the Satmars of Williamsburg would never allow it. Indeed, while no rabbi pierces the veil there, a woman named Frieda Vizel does. Frieda left the Satmar Hasidic community at age 25, but she didn’t go very far, and her unique combination of knowledge, freedom, and love for what she’s left behind inform her work there. I don’t choose. I go to both. What I find Vizel and Friedman share is an expectation that their guests come with open minds and respect—we are not gaping at zoo animals here—and faith that, by the tour’s end, participants will find some level of affinity with a group of people so visibly different from them.
Should time and money allow, I recommend New Yorkers and visitors alike embark on both Vizel’s and Friedman’s tours—each lasts about three hours. Not only does each make a fabulous guide, but they’ve also designed fine experiences that stand alone. But if you need to narrow it down, I’ve outlined the strengths of each below without spoiling all of the fabulous gems of information that make each worthwhile in the first place. The long and the short of it is that Friedman’s Hasidic Crown Heights is cheaper and warmer—you’re embedded in the community rather than infiltrating it. Vizel’s is scrappier, real woman on the street fare. It also includes a bunch of delicious food that justifies the higher price tag.
Hasidic Williamsburg with Frieda Vizel
I met Frieda on a Friday at the Williamsburg Bridge Plaza Bus Terminal, a glass building just below the on-ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge. Our group is small—joining us are a mother and son from the Pacific Northwest with Eastern European Jewish heritage. Frieda’s first stop is the courtyard of a nearby apartment building, where she sets us up with headsets that will allow her to speak to us if we wander out of earshot. Her illustrated map lays out on one side the various parts of Eastern Europe from which Hasidic movements hail (the Satmars being Hungarian, while Lubavitch are Russian-Polish). She touches briefly on her own Hasidic history, alluding to the Netflix series Unorthodox while also speaking of her family as people she remains very much in touch with. But Frieda isn’t here to talk about herself, simply noting her love for the place and its people despite her leaving it.
