The Sichuan Broadcasts

Finally, I hit the jackpot: Slobodka.

   That was one of the magic names I had so often heard in Strasbourg. If there is an Ivy League of yeshivot, Slobodka is one of them. Like all the old yeshivot, is called after the name of the city in Eastern Europe where it was first established. It now stands on the top of a small elevation in the north of Bne Brak, a white building of the 60's. When I walked there in the morning, I passed by its great rival, Ponevitz, which is much bigger and stands on a higher hill in the center of the city. Ponevitz is the seat of rabbinical power for the ultra-orthodoxy of Lithuanian obedience. The people in Slobodka never had harsh enough comments about the way politics was corrupting learning.
  When I was late, I went by bus, but I tried to get up early to have time for that morning stroll, even though walking in the black suit of cheap fabric I wore wasn't exactly comfortable. I tried to vary itineraries to see new streets and passages. I discovered new yeshivot and new houses of study all the time. There wasn't a block without at least a room dedicated to prayer and study. During those walks, I often thought about the fact, which had struck me when I had first heard it, that Bne brak was a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants, and that there wasn't a single police station. Years ago, the State closed down the only station which had been opened at the beginning of the settlement, because the police never had anything to do, and it was a waste of money to maintain it. Bne Brak is an enormous religious community, a city-sized monastery devoted to study and prayer, but a monastery bursting with shops and restaurants, workshops and warehouses, a monastery full of women and children.
  Once a week, the town belonged to the children. When I came back from the study hall on friday afternoons, I watched overexcited little boys getting ready to oppose the entrance of any shabbat profaning traffic. They stood by all the entries of the city, waiting eagerly for the first sounding of the municipal alarm to lay mobile fences across the streets. Sometimes a car driven by a religious man got to the crossroads when the barricade was already in place. The driver had to stop and negociate with eight or nine years old zealots, and explain to them that the first sounding was only a warning and that it wasn't shabbat yet. The boys were adamant that you should not be driving so late, and it was hard to convince them. They had stones in their pockets, they would have liked to use them.