What’s the going rate for an ex-Hasidic, atheist US army
veteran to religiously observe a single Sabbath?
One thousand dollars, it turns out.
It also turns out that, like many good stories, this one
begins with a single tweet.
Ari Mandel, who grew up in Monsey, New York, has been trying
to raise money for Chai Lifeline by running in the Jerusalem marathon next
March. He was having trouble reaching the $4,500 minimum when someone tweeted
to him that we would contribute $10 if Mandel would keep just one Sabbath.
“I said, are you crazy? Ten dollars?” Mandel told The Timesof Israel in an interview this week. “I’m a social media addict, you’re going
to give me ten dollars to stay away from Facebook and Twitter?!”
Mandel maintains an active social media presence, and he
blogs at “Confessions of a Koifer: The (humble) opinions of a recovering
Hassid.”
Koifer is a Yiddish term for heretic.
As luck/fate/divine providence (take your pick) would have
it, when Mandel posted about the proposal on Facebook — he goes by the name
Rachmuna Litzlon, or “God help us” in Aramaic — he was met with a more serious
offer.
“What’s your price?” a Facebook user by the name of Isaac
Mavorah asked Mandel, noting that participation in synagogue services would
have to be part of the deal.
“I’ll wear a shtreimel [a Hassidic fur hat] and go to the
mikvah for the right price,” Mandel replied.
It wouldn’t be Mandel’s first time selling spiritual assets
for cash. He once tried to sell his “portion in Olam Habah (Heaven)” on eBay,
with the bidding reaching $100,000 before the site canceled the bid.
Although at first, Mandel didn’t think Mavorah was in
earnest, it turned out that he wasn’t playing around. Still, Mavorah was
insistent on verifying that Mandel would truly observe this upcoming Shabbat,
so Mandel offered to have his friend, who has assumed the online persona Rabbi
Pinky Schmeckelstein, serve as his witness.
Schmeckelstein, the author of a satirical blog, takes on
serious issues through frequently off-color fake homilies.
The two have known each other for about a year,
Schmeckelstein told The Times of Israel. “We in particular have collaborated on
anti-sexual abuse issues in the Jewish community,” he explained.
“Rachmuna will be with me from after Friday night dinner (I
will see if I can bring him as a guest for dinner as well),” Schmeckelstein
wrote on Facebook. “He will sleep in my MO [Modern Orthodox] house.
I will
bring him to davening [prayers] with me at my MO Shul. He will eat Shabbos
lunch with me. Short of joining me and my Bashert [spouse] in bed, I will
certify his activities through Shabbat.”
“I’ve been following his Facebook for a while,” Mavorah told
the Times of Israel, “never commenting much then one day he posted about his
Chai Lifeline fundraising campaign. Seemingly he was well behind his goal
because he said someone was offering a donation if he kept Shabbat, but no one
came forward with a significant amount.
So I asked him what’s your price? He
said make me an offer. So like any negotiation I started low at $260, he went
high at $2600. We eventually agreed somewhere in the middle at $1,000.”
“To me, the sum is insignificant,” said Marovah. “One
thousand dollars to get a Jewish atheist to keep Shabbat, Mikvah, and praying
with a Minyan AND help sick children?”
“Truth is I would have paid double.”
Schmeckelstein also offered to have Mandel prepare a Talmud
class if Mavorah got another friend to match his pledge. As it turned out, an
anonymous donor gave $500, and Mandel will be giving a class on the origins of
Hasidism at Schmeckelstein’s synagogue as well.
Mandel said it would be his first time keeping Shabbat in its
entirety since leaving the Orthodox fold.
Mandel, who grew up in the Nikolsburg Hasidic sect, said he
had an insular childhood and received no secular education alongside his Torah
studies. “It was a very restrictive lifestyle,” Mandel recalled. “But it was a
fine upbringing.”
Armed with a naturally curious mind, Mandel started
exploring the outside world on his own. “I had been researching and doing
homework and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “The more I read, the more the
curtains around my eyes began to be pulled back. I kept following my curiosity.
It broke apart the foundation on which my entire world was based.”
At the age of 24, Mandel made up his mind.
“It finally came to a point where I didn’t want to be part
of that life anymore. So I left,” he said.
Not surprisingly, Mandel’s parents didn’t take it well at
first. “We’ve since reconciled,” said Mandel. “We get along wonderfully
now…they’ve accepted me, we get along now.”
After leaving the insular world he had known his whole life,
the next step was the US Army. Surprisingly, the military proved to be a
relatively soft landing for a newly secular young man.
“The nice thing about being in the army, especially in basic
training, is that everyone is out of their element, so I didn’t stick out like
a sore thumb more than anyone else did,” Mandel reflected.
Still, he had to smile and nod as if he was in the know when
conversation turned to pop culture.
He didn’t tell people about his background, or that he was
Jewish at all, until they got to know him. “I made it a point of not telling
people until they got close. I wanted to break stereotypes with the people I
got to know.”
Serving almost five years in the 82nd Airborne Division,
Mandel was deployed to South Korea and Haiti. When Haiti was struck by a devastating
earthquake in 2010, Mandel arrived there with his unit that very night.
His foray into the secular world continued when he entered
the media arena.
“I was slightly known before I got out within the small ‘OTD
[off the derech, literally, 'off the path'] community’ (if there is such a
thing),” he said, adding that he became “really well known” after organizing a
protest against the “asifa,” the Hasidic rally in New York against the evils of
the Internet.
“It got international press attention,” Mandel said. “Then
my eBay shtick just took it to a whole other level.”
Nowadays, Mandel’s social media presence has proven to be
surprisingly profitable, with the attention the Sabbath deal has brought
leading to more donations pouring in.
“Make this one Shabbos as Jewy and holy as you possibly can,
I’m game, as long you dish out the shekels,” he posted on Monday, just hours
before hitting his minimum goal.
But the exercise is not likely to lead Mandel back to the
world he turned his back on.
“I know Orthodox people who have been following the story
would love for this to be the case, but I don’t have high hopes. It’s not like
I left Orthodoxy because I hated Shabbos,” he said.
“Staying away from the Internet is what’s going to be the
hardest,” he added.
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