Speaker 1: I'm sitting here in my car, a car rental, on
Speaker 1: a beautiful dusk evening in Carrie's Joel, my childhood village.
Speaker 1: I've been driving around trying to think of what I
Speaker 1: need to do as a YouTuber, as a vlogger for
Speaker 1: my visit to the annual Hudlookah, this big fire. I've
Speaker 1: never seen it before. It wasn't the thing when I
Speaker 1: was a child. I came to do a video about it.
Speaker 1: I come here to visit family. I'm going to come
Speaker 1: next week for Hasana, a wedding. It's not like I
Speaker 1: don't come, but when I come, I almost always go
Speaker 1: straight to whatever it is. I'm coming for a wedding,
Speaker 1: a celebration, my parents, and I just want to get
Speaker 1: back home right away afterwards. Now, because this is a
Speaker 1: specific trip for a video, I'm trying to push myself
Speaker 1: to think of it as a work project instead of
Speaker 1: a personal visit. But this is the place where the
Speaker 1: personal and the work is intertwined for me, where it
Speaker 1: is almost not work at all ever, And that's why
Speaker 1: I actually don't make videos when I visit family. When
Speaker 1: I visit, I think someone is trying to pass anyway.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here, and I'm pausing, and I'm reflecting on
Speaker 1: the fact that it's near impossible for me to approach
Speaker 1: Gary's Joel as a video project. I just enter a
Speaker 1: headspace when I'm here that is so meditative that I
Speaker 1: can't just take pictures. I can't take videos and think
Speaker 1: of what is the story, because I feel myself transported
Speaker 1: to that particular childhood. Seeing the girls on the pobo
Speaker 1: sticks playing badminton, seeing them all of them pause and
Speaker 1: stop and stare and wonder who I am, and I
Speaker 1: feel a sense of perhaps intrusion mixed with intrigue. It's
Speaker 1: such a unique, particular flavor that doesn't exist elsewhere. It's
Speaker 1: not to say that this world is perfect or terrible.
Speaker 1: It's not to say that it's a value judgment. It's
Speaker 1: just a particular flavor. And a part of that flavor
Speaker 1: is a tremendous innocence in childhood, an experience of a
Speaker 1: childhood where you step out of your house and there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of children playing outside and women are
Speaker 1: sitting around in a circle and talking. It's inexplicable to
Speaker 1: me to explain to outsiders what it means to grow
Speaker 1: up with us. I think there's something extremely charming, and
Speaker 1: there's a sadness to me about society today where that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. I think in order for children to have
Speaker 1: what exists in care is goal, an entire equo system
Speaker 1: must exist where a women have a lot of children,
Speaker 1: a lot of children. I had one child, and now
Speaker 1: that mother's days coming, I reflect on that it wasn't
Speaker 1: what I thought would happen. But having so many children
Speaker 1: is giving your life towards motherhood, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how many women would be willing to do that. And
Speaker 1: in order for children to have a childhood of this
Speaker 1: kind of communal experience, you pop out of your house
Speaker 1: and there are other children playing. Everything is about children.
Speaker 1: You need the women to have a lot of children,
Speaker 1: and you need the men, of course to be extremely
Speaker 1: involved and not only be successful business owners, entrepreneurs or
Speaker 1: workers in whatever regards supporting a large family, but also
Speaker 1: being extremely involved with the children. It's a very gender
Speaker 1: segregated world. There are a lot of spaces that are
Speaker 1: male only, and the fathers need to be very hands
Speaker 1: on with the sons, or the male teachers with their
Speaker 1: male students, and so in order for society to produce
Speaker 1: this kind of cocoon for childhood. Adulthood needs to be
Speaker 1: entirely about taking care of children, almost entirely, which is
Speaker 1: of course a lot to ask. I see myself as
Speaker 1: a feminist. I mean, there are all sorts of feminists
Speaker 1: these days, but I see myself as someone who believes
Speaker 1: in the empowerment of women. And for me, the idea
Speaker 1: of creating only one track for women, the possibility of
Speaker 1: focusing their lives so entirely on motherhood, it doesn't jive.
Speaker 1: And so I'm left with this conflict where I admire
Speaker 1: and appreciate things that I see here, and yet the
Speaker 1: elements that it takes to create it, I can't stand by.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling this tremendous inner conflict about. Another example is
Speaker 1: the banning of secular media, which me means that children
Speaker 1: don't have TV, they don't have smartphones, they don't have internet.
Speaker 1: And it sounds so romantic and so wonderful, but first
Speaker 1: of all, there is a tremendous limitation. It's not all wonderful.
Speaker 1: There are some ways in which it is extremely limiting,
Speaker 1: but also it is extremely onerous on the adults. It's
Speaker 1: extremely difficult to raise children like this, where you can't
Speaker 1: hand them a device where you can't rely on media,
Speaker 1: where you can't yourself sink into media. It's not to
Speaker 1: say that it's not extremely beneficial in many ways, but
Speaker 1: you know, there are a lot of people who get
Speaker 1: a lot of comfort and social connection through the Internet,
Speaker 1: and in this community, I'm sure there's a percentage of
Speaker 1: people who are lonely or isolated and would have been
Speaker 1: otherwise if they had access to the media opportunities there
Speaker 1: are out there. I also think there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the secular world who are overstimulated, addicted
Speaker 1: to their devices, and I'll be the first to raise
Speaker 1: my hand on that, and whose lives are diminished because
Speaker 1: of hyper addiction to screen culture. I'm turning over in
Speaker 1: my head all of these different feelings, sacrifices, and payoffs,
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing a charm in the payoff when I
Speaker 1: feel the feeling of the sweat of a young girl
Speaker 1: on her pogo stick, innocently passing the hours without being overstimulated,
Speaker 1: so enveloped with the real needs that a child has,
Speaker 1: the real needs for childhood. I think, looking back driving
Speaker 1: around here, in many ways I was gifted with a
Speaker 1: childhood experience that was enriching and gave me an opportunity
Speaker 1: to become a more vibrant, artistic soul, which is how
Speaker 1: I see myself. It gave me to become more complicated,
Speaker 1: more myself, more tortured in some ways, more baggage, and
Speaker 1: also more just growth of the self, which would have
Speaker 1: been flattened in a flowery, perfect stimulated, structured Western world
Speaker 1: where the parents are setting you up with the best college,
Speaker 1: with after school programs, with your play dates and so on.
Speaker 1: I think that makes the bud of the self smaller.
Speaker 1: Yet at the same time, I also think a community
Speaker 1: like this, which is so much pear pressure, so many eyes,
Speaker 1: can also make you smaller in other ways. And so
Speaker 1: when I come to Kirisole, it's almost impossible for me
Speaker 1: to approach it as a video project because I become
Speaker 1: so consumed with all of these feelings. As memories flood back,
Speaker 1: I have these sensory experiences. I can taste jobs afternoon
Speaker 1: isis and Foxy's corn chips at night, after cleaning the kitchen,
Speaker 1: washing the floor, I can smell the mister cleaned the murphy,
Speaker 1: the table cleaned away, the chairs tucked on the table,
Speaker 1: running around with the girls at night, when the younger
Speaker 1: kids are already asleep, the summer breeze through the window
Speaker 1: as we fold laundry. I can feel it, I can
Speaker 1: taste it. The littlest things bring back memories that are
Speaker 1: so long ago. I've lived such a long life since then.
Speaker 1: I walked in front of a place I worked as
Speaker 1: a young single mother, and I remember my son coming
Speaker 1: off the bus after school and coming up to my
Speaker 1: office very hard time I was going through divorce. I
Speaker 1: was shunned, I was shamed. It was brutal. And on
Speaker 1: the one hand, I walk through this area and I'm
Speaker 1: filled with gratitude that I'm not in this precarious place
Speaker 1: of transition. The other hand, I see myself in the
Speaker 1: reflection of this office building, and I'm older, so much older,
Speaker 1: so much time has passed, and it reminds me of
Speaker 1: how there's this tremendous chasm of a river between my
Speaker 1: childhood and carriage jold. Today I visited this whole area
Speaker 1: that is completely new. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: who lives there. It's just like all apartment buildings. And
Speaker 1: what's beautiful to me about it is it's structured in
Speaker 1: a way to give the children maximum social cohesion. Everyone
Speaker 1: lives together, it's safe, the children can run around downstairs.
Speaker 1: Everything is walking distance. It's not spread apart. It's not
Speaker 1: everyone in little isolated bubbles. But it's also not apartment
Speaker 1: buildings like in my part of Brooklyn, where no one
Speaker 1: is connected with each other's in apartment buildings. It's like
Speaker 1: true neighborhoodness. And it's the architecture, the design that allows
Speaker 1: for this communal experience to be. And I'm happy to
Speaker 1: see it. When I drive around and I see new
Speaker 1: neighborhoods that give children this kind of innocent childhood, I'm
Speaker 1: happy for them because I'm remembering my own happy moments.
Speaker 1: My childhood was not a happy one writ large. It
Speaker 1: was in some ways very tormented, but it also had
Speaker 1: a lot of innocence, and I have so many happy memories,
Speaker 1: and it makes me happy to see it, to see
Speaker 1: it come back in new areas, new places, new developments,
Speaker 1: stretching this bubble that makes the Hasidic community tick of
Speaker 1: unique architecture, school systems, an entire approach. It's not one thing,
Speaker 1: it's a whole system coming together, and I'm happy to
Speaker 1: see it exist. Yet at the same time. Understand it's imperfect.
Speaker 1: I'm not in denial about the issues. I think some
Speaker 1: children are having it horribly. As I drive around, I'm
Speaker 1: just reflecting on the miracle of such a different way
Speaker 1: of raising the family than is structured in the host culture,
Speaker 1: secular culture, and what it feels like to remember it
Speaker 1: when driving around in this community. And I just decided
Speaker 1: take a little break as the sunsets and stop trying
Speaker 1: to see and think of where should I go to
Speaker 1: film and just share my thoughts and then go see
Speaker 1: my mom. Maybe I'll go see my sister who wants
Speaker 1: me to go teach her how to knit, which is
Speaker 1: the strangest thing. She invited me to come from Brooklyn
Speaker 1: to teach her how to knit. Told this, who does that?
Speaker 1: You go on the internet you learn how to knit.
Speaker 1: That's how I learned. I said, what's going to happen
Speaker 1: when I've If you're gonna forget? Then I thought, you
Speaker 1: know what, Actually, we can use her canon camera and
Speaker 1: record it. Anyway, I'm gonna go to the headlook and
Speaker 1: see what that's like, see what that experience is gonna
Speaker 1: be like. Already I've gotten so many looks. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'll get plenty, but that's my experience in Cious Trouble