A big reason that genetic testing is so popular among Amish is that they have significantly increased risks for genetic disorders due to long-term inbreeding. Most white people in the US are a mix of many different ethnic groups from various migrations (e.g. a Puritan here, a Scots-Irish Appalachian there, a few Swedish merchants, a Welsh tailor, a Polish carpenter, etc.). The Amish rarely intermarry with non-Amish and they receive few converts, so the gene pool remains mostly stagnant.
Amish people are by no means dumb. The vast majority of them learn two languages (German and English) from childhood and are native bilinguals. They are renowned for their agricultural prowess and their ability to farm even the worst land. What they don’t have is a lot of what most people consider a “general education” nowadays. I once asked an Amish man about Einstein’s General Relativity. He had no idea what I was talking about. His lack of knowledge on physics, however, wasn’t a barrier to the life he wanted to live so in the end it really didn’t matter to him.
My cousin has a great job simply driving Amish workmen to construction sites. Where, once there, the Amish men use power tools in order to erect a building, and then when they are done, they all go out for beers. Not allowed to drive though!
Another vote for it’s a BS story concocted to make a point at the expense of reformed Jews being somehow inferior. Once that is understood, there is really no need to discuss further.
So, discussing further - no, I would have no trouble telling the difference for all of the reasons mentioned by others: chinbeards vs. beard & moustace, tailored clothing from finer materials vs. rough cloth, difference in quality of headgear, side curls vs. none, tan from working outdoors vs. not…
In their Sunday garb and more formal clothes its a lot closer.
I’ve spent a lot of time among the Amish and related orders. I may sometimes confuse an actual OOD Amishman with a Mennonite or something like that but to mistake a Orthodox Jew for any of them? Don’t see it happening.
People think its tech that they shun; it isn’t. What they avoid by rule is becoming reliant on anything other than God, themselves and their community. And it all comes down to the “ordnung” (or rules) for your particular community. I know several Amish who can drive, and when helping on an English farm may drive a tractor for example, but would not drive a car on the roads or hold a drivers license. I know others who couldn’t figure out how to get a drink from a water fountain without help from a passing English. It depends on how their exact local community operates and what their Parson allows.
Some also has to do with being able to disable the tech on Sundays when nothing should be doing “work”. Which is why you may see Amish with cell phones (you can remove the battery on Sunday) but not landlines into their homes. It is a very complicated life with what looks to outsiders to be tons of contradictions but it isn’t nearly as bad once you spend time inside it all and get to know it better. And it works for them so who am I to say its wrong?
I’ve kayaked Keystone Power Dam Lake, which is close enough to Smicksburg for Amish men (the women stay home) to trailer their rowboats behind their buggies to fish. They’ll explain about how they are fishing for the table, not for recreation.
There was a thirty-something dude I’d talk with whenever we crossed paths. I once asked him if he ever had second thoughts about his lifestyle. He had a very solemn look as he told me, “pretty much every day”. But, he thought he was “too old” to change at that point.
I find it implausible that a non-Hasidic Jew would berate a Hasid as described. I know there are various jerks in the world, but that confrontation doesn’t ring true to me.
Nobody says “thee art.” The word “thee” is objective case, like “him”; “thou” is the subjective case like “he”. So one might say “thou art” or “I love thee,” but saying “thee art” is like saying “him is.”
…and then the Rabbi and his accuser sat down at the same table in the waiting area to do their crossword and sudoku puzzles. The rabbi decided he was feeling peckish, so he opened the packet of cookies he had bought in the vending machine earlier*, and ate one, which for some reason, made the aggressive stranger uneasy and perhaps a little angry, because he snatched one of the cookies for himself and proceeded to chow down…
*I know, the likelihood that a Hasid would buy and eat cookies from an airport vending machine is so small as to be effectively zero, but it’s just another UL, so go with it.
- no, I would have no trouble telling the difference for all of the reasons mentioned by others: chinbeards vs. beard & moustace, tailored clothing from finer materials vs. rough cloth, difference in quality of headgear, side curls vs. none, tan from working outdoors vs. not…