Category Archives: Rancho Roly Poly

The black hats—or penguins if you want to be rude—are the ultra-Orthodox of Judaism, mostly found these days in New York and Jerusalem. But a growing number can be seen daily in our hilly neighborhood on the eastern slope of Austin’s northwest plateau. They’re the surface indications of a growing Jewish population and, therefore, Jewish choices hereabouts.

There’s the proximity to the Dell Jewish Community Center half a mile or so up the road from the rancho. It mainly offers a variety of secular, reform, and conservative services. All of which many of the Haredim lump with pagans and gentiles. Although there is at least one orthodox congregation there and an orthodox  Chabad-Lubbavitch center a mile or so farther north, as well as the student one a few miles down to the southeast of the neighborhood at the University of Texas.

The kosher meat market tucked into a corner of our local H.E.B is a nicety. And, who knows, the diamond merchants amongst whom the Haredim are said to be proliferating might like to congregate. Confirmed for me by a gentile friend hereabouts who is also in the diamond trade. An unassuming fellow devoid of identifying costume except for his diamond pinky ring and the small, belt-holstered 9mm whose outlines are occasionally visible under his shirt. Hard to imagine the Haredim going armed—they’d need a concealed-carry permit from the state of course—but their permanent choice of black suit jackets would provide appropriate concealment.

Whatever the draw for Jews and their burgeoning choices hereabouts, I find the black hats comforting. I see them every Shabbat escorting their long-skirted, hair-covered wives and young children in their Saturday best, all walking in the general direction of the community center and back home again to the rental duplexes on a street a few blocks east of the rancho. But I have always been among the god obsessed, even in our seemingly secular age.