NY Times
In Midwood, Brooklyn, there’s a luxury kosher grocery store called
Pomegranate serving the modern Orthodox and Hasidic communities. It
looks like a really nice Whole Foods. There’s a wide selection of kosher
cheeses from Italy and France, wasabi herring, gluten-free ritual foods
and nicely toned wood flooring. [...]
Nationwide, only 21 percent of non-Orthodox Jews between the ages of 18
and 29 are married. But an astounding 71 percent of Orthodox Jews are
married at that age. And they are having four and five kids per couple.
In the New York City area, for example, the Orthodox make up 32 percent
of Jews over all. But the Orthodox make up 61 percent of Jewish
children. Because the Orthodox are so fertile, in a few years, they will
be the dominant group in New York Jewry.
Another really impressive thing about the store is not found in one
section but is pervasive throughout. That’s the specialty products
designed around this or that aspect of Jewish law. There are the
dairy-free cheese puffs in case you want to have some cheese puffs with a
meat dish. There are the precut disposable tablecloths so you don’t
have to use scissors on the Sabbath. There are the specially designed
sponges, which don’t retain water, so you don’t have to do the work of
squeezing out water on Shabbat.
Pomegranate looks like any island of upscale consumerism, but deep down
it is based on a countercultural understanding of how life should work.[...]
For the people who shop at Pomegranate, the collective covenant with God
is the primary reality and obedience to the laws is the primary
obligation. They go shopping like the rest of us, but their shopping is
minutely governed by an external moral order.
The laws, in this view, make for a decent society. They give structure
to everyday life. They infuse everyday acts with spiritual significance.
They build community. They regulate desires. They moderate religious
zeal, making religion an everyday practical reality.
The laws are gradually internalized through a system of lifelong study,
argument and practice. The external laws may seem, at first, like an
imposition, but then they become welcome and finally seem like a
person’s natural way of being.[...]