Soon after waking up on the Shabbos I had chosen for my visit to the Bostoner Rebbe's court—the temple of Boston’s chief hasidic rabbi—I had to decide what sort of Jew I would be for the occasion. Would I regard the Sabbath with the laxity allowed by my liberal upbringing, or would I enter more fully into the visit, through the temporary adoption of orthodox custom? Practically speaking, would I drive or walk? Would I stick a ten dollar bill in my pocket, to buy a sandwich on the way home, or would I abjure mammon on the Sabbath day, as tradition demands? And what would I wear?

I decided to walk, and carry only a house key in my pocket. As for clothing, I put on the simple black pants and solid white shirt that I knew would ruffle no feathers. On my head I placed a black velvet yarmulke. As I set out, my orthodox appearance offset only by the light green windbreaker and pom-pomed ski-hat I wore against the cold, I couldn’t help wondering whether I was simply a Jew on the way to services, or an undercover agent.

The walk over to the Rebbe's shul was a passage from one world to another. When I first passed a hasid, a few blocks onto Beacon street, I accepted his greeting of "Good Shabbos" as proof of my arrival. Only a few paces further on I found myself suddenly standing before the door of Beit Pinchos.

In the early 1900's, Reb Pinchos Dovid Horowitz, the son of an illustrious hasidic family that had relocated to Jerusalem in the middle of the 19th century, was advised by his uncle, a seer, that his destiny lay in the United States. Unwilling to abandon the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael for the squalor of America, Reb Pinchos rejected his calling. Some years later he was sent to Europe, to represent the Jews of Jerusalem in an international legal dispute. But upon setting home he found the way blocked by the complications of World War One. In order to escape the hostile authorities of Salonika, Greece, the only destination available was America. He arrived in 1916. Submitting to the will of the hasidim then living in Boston, he established the first American hasidic court. In calling himself the Bostoner, Reb Pinchos cleverly distanced himself from the grandiose and myth-enshrouded courts of his ancestors. When a hasid questioned his advice, he would reply, "What can you expect from a Bostoner Rebbe?"

The figure of the Rebbe, a man who in his very being is a spiritual bridge between his followers and the Master of the Universe, is a unique creation of hasidism. Hasidic courts once abounded throughout the Jewish civilization of Eastern Europe, each centered on the charismatic personality of a Rebbe. Followers would go so far as to eat the leftover food off their Rebbe's plate, to partake in his holiness. Though the Holocaust destroyed what remained of these dynasties, many had or have since relocated to America and Israel, where their practices continue.

The current Bostoner Rebbe is Levi Yitschok Horowitz, the son of Reb Pinchos. His court, known as Beit Pinchos (Hebrew for 'the house of Pinchos') now stands on Beacon street, in Brookline, Massachusetts. I grew up down the street and over the hill, in the wealthy suburb of Newton, and in the movement of American Judaism known as Conservative for its efforts to blend a modern American outlook with a solid and traditional Jewish core. In Jewish practice we were less rigorous than the hasidim, in moral opinion more permissive, and in our clothing and appearance absolutely in the American camp.

I had never actually been inside Beit Pichos before, though I had passed the beige facade with its inlaid relief sculpture of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the great ram's horn of redemption, many times. Now I loitered for a few moments, reading the signboard that announced the times of service, the portion of the Torah being read that week, and the occurrence of special events and holidays, unsure if it was time to go in and join the second shift of Shacharit, the morning prayer. Then, seeing others enter, I passed through the exterior double door, into a narrow rectangular coatroom. It was dark and dusty, with bookshelves rising to the ceiling piled with chumashim (books containing the text of the Torah,) siddurim (prayer books,) and volumes of the Talmud and codifications of Jewish law—all in Hebrew or Aramaic. I sat on a chair in the corner, and taking a chumash in hand, began to read over the sidra (Torah portion) of the week.

A tall hasid with a wide red beard came through the door from the outside, and after hanging his coat, wrapping himself in a talis (prayer shawl,) and taking a siddur from the shelf, he turned and spoke to me.

"Are you new here? I haven't seen you before."

I told him that I was. He invited me to enter and sit with him. I took a siddur from the shelf, and walked behind him through the doorway into the sanctuary. On the way in I placed my hand on the mezuza and then to my lips.

Inside, my eye was immediately struck by the endless combinations of the colors black and white in the clothing and talisim of the men praying in the sanctuary. Many wore the long black coats and the black hats that are considered the emblems of ultra-orthodox Jewry. I saw a man walk past with a pair of white stockings rising above his calves to the cuffs of his black knickers, and another with a black cord tied around his white-shirted waist, signifying the separation of the upper body from the nether regions. A few large, impressive men wore shtreimels, the round, fur-trimmed hats that have always suggested to me the crown of a pagan forest king.

I followed my red-bearded guide a few benches into the small rectangular hall, with the bimah (platform from which the service is led) and the aron (cabinet where the Torah is kept) fit in along the right-hand wall, and sat down beside him. All around the room, the men were swaying in prayer. At the other end of the room, stood a barrier of a kind of cloudy mirroring material (I later learned that these were some of the original one-way mirror panels that had popped out of Boston's poorly-built John Hancock building in the 1970s). The women of the congregation were sitting on the other side, separated in prayer from the men by the strictures of tradition.

My hasid had begun his prayers, standing and swaying with his face up against the wall to avoid distraction, but now he turned to me and asked, "Do you need some help?" "No, thank you," I said, and dove into the text, eager to prove that I knew my own way. How inaccessible Jewish prayer, known familiarly by the hybrid Yiddish-English word davening, must seem to the uninitiated. Here among the Hasidim chaos reigned, each individual making his own way at a muttering, breakneck pace through the intimately familiar liturgy. The congregation was the sum total of individual voices. All would suddenly synchronize at the few appointed moments of unison prayer.

I have heard this kind of davening before. Each time, when I close my eyes to the sound, I imagine ocean waves or the tuning of a symphony orchestra, the evocative discord of each instrument finding its own tone, until all burst together into the harmonic confluence of the music. Now, in the first swelling of feeling, I dissolved the Hebrew words of prayer in the motives of Jewish melody that came spontaneously to my throat, and felt in the company of the Hasidim the sudden freedom to improvise my emotions in song. And when all voices flowed together in common prayer, in a melody that I recognized, I sang loudly and clearly, in easy fellowship with the others.