The Sacred and Scared

…With Beards as a Security Fence

Decades ago, in the middle of my silent journey out of religiosity - but before I altered any externals like my uncut, religious beard – I was digging into my proverbial chicken-and-steamed-vegetables at a community member’s wedding, when my clean-shaven son, Josh, came over to chat.

Shaving is not much of a topic anywhere outside the virtual ghetto of the Chassidic ecosystem, where I created and raised a family - where male facial shaving is viewed as murder-suicide. If you shaved, you left the community.

Not my son. He shaved, dragging his bloody hand through the shark-infested waters, giving the sharks the finger along the way. In matters of religious observance, he did what he wanted, where he wanted, following the dictates of democratic law, not edicts by the self-appointed.

Josh and I chit-chatted. Aaron, a community leader and old acquaintance who had come from another country for the wedding, was sitting next to me. When Josh walked away and Aaron learned that the young adult who had just conversed with me was my son, his face paled and his glass of Grey Goose slipped from his hand to the table.

Aaron was an alcoholic. The Chassidic ecosystem embraced people who, as they preferred to say, liked sharing L’chaims (drink-salutes "to life"). As long as they also bellowed and proselytized the gospel and sang soulful melodies, it was a holy, divinely endorsed practice, not alcoholism or drunkedness.

Aaron stood up, took me by the elbow and started walking me towards the kitchen. En route, I noticed he was trembling. The commercial kitchen was hot and grimy; full of people and smells of two-way food traffic. He steered me to a wall of shelves stacked with dusty, tin, serving bowls, steadied himself by holding me with one hand and holding a shelf with the other hand, and began sobbing outright. I felt him start to buckle. He leaned fully on me, weeping into my suit lapel. I felt very uncomfortable. The passing food service folks were giving us weird looks - two grown men in some type of embrace, one crying into the others chest.

After about a minute - which felt like a month – of his soaking my jacket, I peeled him off me and said, “What gives? What’s up?”

In between the sobs, sniffles and nose blowing, I got his calamity. Actually, my calamity. He was feeling very sorry and sad for me – as if my son had died or lost his mind. He was mourning my loss with me. It was almost like he was Jesus – my pain was his pain. He was suffering and crying for my loss and pain.

My son, our son, our religious community’s son, had obviously strayed from The Path of Truth. A Tragedy.

He was a community leader, maybe in his mind even representing the whole Chassidic movement, and was there for me, as friend but especially as god’s representative, to help me as I dealt with my son. I apparently – given my son’s clean-shaven face - wasn’t successful in raising Josh. But it’s ok. He’ll come back. And even if he doesn’t, Aaron offered comfort, support and advice on how I should see things. I was being gifted divine perspective and support. All wasn’t totally bleak.

As he empathetically went on, I tried making sense of his performance. I wasn’t mourning. How and why was he mourning for or with me? I know that booze releases inhibitions, but I was struggling to find the foothold from where his crying launched. If I’d said or expressed something, anything, of discomfort or negative feeling about my son’s appearance, I’d understand why he’d feel moved. But I wasn’t troubled at all. I had an easy chat with my son in front of him.

Did he just assume I felt as he felt, projecting himself on to me? That didn't seem to justify the depth of his sobbiness – as if completely shaken to the core.

I struggled to find the source of his internal collapse.

As we turned to walk back to our table, it occurred to me that while he was crying, he was hoping I’d respond in kind, in tears.

Then it hit me.

“You’re not crying for me. You’re crying for yourself. You’re scared.”

We had known each other for a long time. He knew me to be reasonably intelligent and logical. He knew my children were socially and personally healthy. And yet my son publicly rejected the core - a dress code, a behavior and badge of society, religion and belief. His belief. Our society. And I didn’t seem to mind.

The structure of theist fundamentalism is only as strong as its members’ allegiance, belief and especially overt expression of membership. The public desertion of a fully functioning member can damage the integrity of the group. A former flag bearer who moons you in front of your troops, will certainly give your troops something to think about. What if this poisonous, mutinous behavior is contagious? What if another one bolts? What if people start thinking too much, doing as they think and not as told?

If normal me has a normal son who shaves and parades amongst the unshaven, and I don’t seem to care, there seems a serious breach in the wall of blind faith. Will the wall hold?

It was probably even more than that for Aaron. He may not have even given a shit about the religion. But his personal prestige was atop the deck of cards. His life was in that deck. If it turned out to be untenable; if regular, intelligent people pulled out, he’s nothing, nowhere.

Aaron’s face morphed quickly from sad and teary, to shock. “I’m crying for me? I’m scared?”

“Yep. He shaved your god away. It’s that easy. Scary, aye?”

I think his face had a tinge of anger as he turned away and disappeared into the throng of dancing beards.