02 July 2012

Lakewood

Here are all the people of my own Jerusalem neighborhood: the yeshiva men and their wives and the double strollers full of kinderlach, walking to and from yeshiva and the grocery store and the schools.

But this population is juxtaposed with the idiom of America: the avreichim and their families live in houses with SHUTTERS! on LAWNS with LAWNMOWERS and the time and inclination to mow them! And they drive!

Lakewood is Disneyland: a fairy-tale country, the stuff of my American childhood but not of the world I have come to know as a grown-up, populated by grown-ups acting as if the magical scenery is real.

I wonder how long I could live there before coming to believe that it is.

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