A summer of Hasidic cool

These are days of extreme heat and July has just begun.

Were I cacti, I would say, "big deal, heat is a breeze." I am not cacti; neither are the people I know.

There is, however, a way to appropriate the "big deal" attitude of the cacti and not only survive, but also triumph over the summer heat.

How? Turn to Sartor Hasidicus (a self-made pun on Tom Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, a 19th century philosophical text on how clothes make the man): If you stroll the streets of Boro Park in Brooklyn in the blistering heat of a New York July, you are most likely to catch a glimpse of men and women, covered from head to toe in heavy black clothing, scooting past you, with not a wee bit of heat-induced botheration on their bodies or faces.

The men and women you catch a glimpse of are Hasidics, an orthodox Jewish group who don't wilt under the sun, as they believe in dressing not with weather, but with "faith" in mind. 

The Hasidic Jews could be the human counterpart of the cacti who also have the cucumbers ability to stay cool in summer.

How do they do that? The Hasidic explanation is deceptively simple: They say that hot and cold is a mental state. I believe in the verity of this claim though it wouldn't sell widely as Americans wilt under the slightest of inconvenience, let alone temperatures in the 90s. 

What the Hasidic Jews say is not the exact equivalent of "don't whine, just withstand." In other words, they don't preach the virtue of fortitude. 

To claim that weather is a state of mind is to suggest that with a slight adjustment of perspective much that is deemed "intolerable" at a glance, could be lived with, especially when that which is intolerable is also unavoidable (like weather). 

The typical Hasidic lets the heat be. They argue that they dress, for their god, not for the weather. When one dresses for god, then one is relieved of many a sartorial and life-style burden. For doesn't god transcend conditions imposed by earthly climate?

A change in perspective empowers the mind. Heat is deflected from the physical to the metaphysical sphere. Quarantined to a state of mind, extremities of weather can be controlled.

The Hasidic state of mind reminds me of a poetic trope prevalent in 19th century Romantic poetry--pathetic fallacy. Under the aegis, as it were, of pathetic fallacy the landscape would take on the hue of the particular mind that would be contemplating nature. So, on a perfectly beautiful day a Wordsworth would be strolling in Wiltshire, and the terrain would turn ghastly or forlorn because Wordsworth would be in a forlorn state of mind.

I remember reading Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality" and finding the landscape he evokes to be one in which terror seems embedded. This perplexed me. I figured it out by and by: As he walked through the pretty English countryside, Wordsworth experienced an inner torment; his mind welled up with anxiety brought on by the burdens of an adult life. Oh, how sunny and carefree childhood is, and how scary adulthood is in comparison!

Thus, on a perfectly nice day the weather turns grim because a state of mind has been projected onto the world of external reality and the outside mirrors the inside.

The Hasidic Jews prefer to use the technique of pathetic fallacy in a different way.

Since they owe primary allegiance to a divine entity (which they don't like to represent verbally), and this keeps their mind, sort of, in a temperate state regardless of the weather. In July they project this temperature outside.