If there’s one thing that’s remained the same in Williamsburg, it’s that nothing has remained the same in Williamsburg.

The essential Brooklyn neighborhood, once home to much of the borough’s blue-collar muscle, is marked by nostalgia and history as much as by contemporary change. In Williamsburg, yesteryear’s industrial monoliths are increasingly yielding to modernized modes of working, shopping and living—a meeting and melding of the old and new aptly metaphorized by a recent neighborhood parade that took a progressive but timeless principle to the street.

On Monday, May 17, 2010, a scant two days before Shavuos, the holiday commemorating the Giving of the Torah, consumers of the Hamaspik Day Hab center in Williamsburg marched down the neighborhood street to celebrating their own version of the completion of a scroll of the Torah. (The then-upcoming event was mentioned in Gazette #72.)

Accompanying them were hundreds of local schoolchildren who lined the sidewalks of Division Avenue along with members of the Shomrim community safety patrol and supportive community members and neighbors.

As the city’s parade of historical events goes, the event was little more than a logistical blip, a short and sweet community march. But for the participants pounding the asphalt or putting their hands together from the sides, each step was a bold thrust into the enemy territory of stigmatization, each marcher and onlooker a frontline soldier in the war on exclusion.

In a neighborhood landmarked by change, another had arrived.

Mapping out the march

The event actually began several weeks before the parade date, with Hamaspik of Kings County Day Hab Manager Israel Lichtenstein and staff laying the logistical groundwork. Phone calls were made. Meetings with community schools, safety patrols and the local NYPD precinct leadership were held. Supplies were purchased, equipment rented.

The plan was simple: Grant the Day Hab consumers as authentic a Torah induction ceremony as permissible.

As detailed in the Gazette’s abovementioned previous article on the subject, few things rival the spectacle and pageantry of a siyum sefer Torah, the completion of a Torah scroll, in the Hamaspik consumer’s regimented Orthodox Jewish society.

With Shavuos approaching, the extracurricular activity was conceived as the perfect opener for the meaningful holiday. But of even greater import was to impart to the consumers a sense of community belonging, using the vehicle of a non-uncommon community event which heretofore consumers could only wistfully observe from the sidelines, proverbial noses to the glass.

This siyum, by contrast, would be all theirs.

On April 26, a mock Torah-scroll initiation ceremony, complete with all liturgical trappings, was hosted by the Hamaspik Day Hab staff for its beloved consumers. That event, a celebration in its own right, set the tone for the climax of completion to come in three weeks. Excitement mounted.

Feet to the street

“This day will stay in our memory forever,” attested Lichtenstein in an e-mail sent after the event to Hamaspik employees.

On the grand day of celebration, consumers from all three Day Habs in the Hamaspik system—Orange, Rockland and Kings Counties—assembled on the sidewalk in front of 293-295 Division Avenue to collate spiritual energies and amplify the already positively-charged atmosphere.
By 11:30 a.m., all participating consumers and staff had arrived, and the anticipation built.

Inside, staffers were penning the last letters of the “Torah scroll,” a full-size replica of the real thing. Upon completion, a velvet mantel was slid over the scroll’s two spools, and a consumer was honored with bearing it to the center’s front door.

As soon as the consumer’s figure appeared in the aperture, buoyant singing and clapping burst out from all sides, as lively music performed by a one-man band in the form of Direct Care Worker and keyboardist Yoel Appel, struck up an exuberant melody.

Reminiscent of a triumphant politician upon election victory news, the consumer was instantly surrounded by cheering participants as he made his way to the chupah, the Heaven-symbolizing canopy under which are borne Torah scrolls at siyumim. This chupah, poles decked out with steel and rubber outdoor casters and extra railings by Hamaspik of Kings County Maintenance Manager Eliezer Stern to better accommodate consumers’ special needs, was then effortlessly rolled along the street as the pedestrian procession continued down Division Avenue.

With the street closed to vehicular traffic through the coordinated efforts of the 90th Precinct of New York’s Finest and the Shomrim team, dozens of jubilant marchers, consumers, staffers and their own family members alike, closed ranks behind the chupah’s lead, which itself followed the van carrying the keyboardist.

As the parade wended its way down the street, every marching consumer got the chance to carry and dance with the “Torah scroll,” completing their sense of personal involvement. Holding the Torah at a siyum is a high honor.

The climax, however, was yet to come.

Upon completing the short march, the nucleus of consumers ringing the chupah encountered hundreds of earnest young students from the neighborhood Satmar Chasidic cheder, or boys’ school, led by noted educator and friend of Hamaspik Rabbi Shaya Rubin. The crowd of boys filled an adjacent public park, creating a striking visual spectacle with their matching uniforms and bright siyum pennants.

The children, as excited as the consumers by the infectious music, gladly accepted the marchers into their midst, and thick circles of dancing little feet quickly formed around the canopy. Driven by the music, consumers and diminutive guests alike danced with abandon for over an hour, with genuine smiles seen on faces of onlookers and participants alike.

Sending a message

With the return of the cheder boys to their afternoon studies at approximately 1:00 p.m., consumers and staff alike sat down to a picnic-like outdoor celebratory meal set up in the park.

Staff nimbly set out folding benches and tables, quickly setting them with appropriately irresistible and elegant culinary fare. The tables were soon filled with gleeful consumers coming down from the “high” of the just-concluded music and dancing.

The meal served as an ample, refreshing “cool-down” before the event’s official 2:30 p.m. close, at which time staffers lovingly loaded consumers onto Hamaspik vans and returned them to their places of residence at various locations within their native communities.

However, the event’s perhaps-greatest achievement was not seen in the exhausted smiles of the attending consumers but rather, heard in a recording, encapsulating no less than a breakthrough shift in societal thinking, left by a Hamaspik neighbor in Mr. Lichtenstein’s voice mail box.

“I just got a phone call from a neighbor … how proud she is to be a neighbor of such [a] wonderful organization,” recounted Lichtenstein in an e-mail message broadcast to Hamaspik staff. “She was so overwhelmed … and decided to call in to say in person how nice it was … to see what Hamaspik is all about!” the message concluded.

In Williamsburg, a neighborhood defined by redefinition, society’s view of individuals with special needs continue their march of redefinition.