I spent neilas hachag with some perushim. As much as they claim not to be chassidim, they generally remind me of chasidim. It's not just the streimels and long coats but their manner is warmer, more easy going. They sang, they gave food, they told a few divrei torah that i didn't understand at all because it was all in yiddish. But it seemed they were talking about the yom tov and the mitzvos of it. A few funny things happened - no idea what - but there were lots of genuine and innocent smiles. It was haimish.
Then a down hat guy in a frock coat spoke, also in yiddish but he seemed like a different life form. It was all talk about gadlus of torah with references to the chazon ish the ponivitcher rav, rav chaim shmuletivsz, bene brak. He yelled. He was intense. He smacked the table. Supposedly he also talked about how you need good middos. Why? In order to be worthy of Torah. It's all about Torah.
I tensed up as this guy spoke. Maybe it's a legitimate path of life but it's not my path. It's so rough, so aggressive, so masculine. All din and mostly negativity. And I'm sure if I said that to him he dress me down. Who do you think you are, you nobody. That sort of thing.
In America you don't have perushim. There's only yeshiva guys like this guy and modern orthodox. There's a small remnant of German Jews who are different than the yeshiva guys, the old timers are anyway. But there are very few of them. There are chassidim but it's a tough world to penetrate, except for lubavitch but the problem there is the meshichism just ruined the whole thing.
So where do you go for old time yiras shemayim, mitzvos, emunah, humility, chesed, a sense of the collective?