The Eyes are the Window to the Soul

This summer, I was in Monsey for 10 days. Monsey is a town in upstate New York where a lot of different types of observant Jews live - both Litvishers and Chassidim, and different types of Chassidim, all in the same town. Next to Monsey is a town called New Square. I had the opportunity of taking a guided tour of New Square this summer.

For those of you who don't know, New Square is an all-Jewish town marked by two main things: its separation of non-married men and women (which is evident even on the streets), and its isolation from the rest of the world. The level of the first is controversial, to the point where the second is often overlooked.

Yet the isolation is fundamental to their way of life. An example to explain this: Our tour guide told us the history of New Square - how when he came to America, the Skverer Rebbe was shocked at the ads on the streets and what people wore, so he started a community out away from the city, on a plot of land that hadn't been built on before. In the middle of this, our tour guide mentioned the phrase "the eyes are the window to the soul", a phrase that commonly means "you can see someone's soul through their eyes". This seemed out of place, until she explained the Skver interpretation:

What you see, enters your soul.*

This is why they built themselves a shtetl in America, isolated from the rest of the world. Yet our tour guide also said that she admires the strength of Lubavitchers - that they go out into the world for the sake of others, despite all the things that they end up seeing.

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* This idea is not unique to the Skverer Chassidim - there's a phrase, even in popular internet culture, with the same idea - "There are some things you can't un-see."