Funny. As I write, I’m listening to our local NPR station report on last night’s Simchat Torah celebration.
They sent a reporter to Borough Park. She observed large indoor gatherings of men in shuls and synagogues, almost all without masks. She observed a total lack of social distancing.
And she reported groups of men surrounding and threatening a news photographer.
And then she recorded (audio) a group of men surrounding and threatening her, and ordering her to leave the neighborhood.
This is not acceptable behavior. And, as I said above, people are going to die because of this shit. It must stop. Immediately.
I’m learning a lot from this thread, so … many thanks to those who are contributing.
But Brooklyn’s Hasidic community may or may not represent the universe of Hasidic Jews. I guess that’s the point. I grew up with a Hasidic rabbi as a next-door neighbor. His temple was down the block. None of this behavior sounds like his tribe.
I cringe when people extrapolate from
the Muslim mass shooter to a billion Muslims
from the murder committed by a Latino in this country illegally to all 20,000,000-ish undocumented immigrants
from the black guy that jacked you at the ATM to every African-American
And, though nobody ever really extrapolated from Anders Breivik to all white Christian males, I would have (had a good laugh, and then) cringed at that, too.
So even when an overwhelming percentage of a particular community in a particular area has banded together and acts in lock step … I’m hesitant to extrapolate beyond that group.
And I agree with the poster above who pointed out why: it often leads to … in this case … anti-Semitism.
Or prejudice of one kind or another.
I think there are likely no end of issues of insularity, tribalism, and community taken a few miles too far … in the cases being talked about above.
But I think the behaviors we’re looking at aren’t endemic to the ultra-orthodox Jews as much as they’re what happens when tribalism runs amok, and when confirmation bias and groupthink are taken to the extremes.
When all you ever do is hang with people like you … when all you ever consume, intellectually, is that which you already firmly believe … the road to zealotry is downhill and slick.
I couldn’t agree more. I think (I hope) I’ve been careful to refer to the Borough Park Hasidim. There are many Hasidic sects in Brooklyn, and most of them aren’t involved in the current disturbances, as far as I can tell.
But it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the behavior of the Hasidim in Borough Park right now. Yes, it is possible that any criticism of them may be used as ammunition by ant-Semites. I’m sorry about that, but it doesn’t mean that those creating a serious, life-threatening problem where I live should be immune to or above criticism.
I think you’ve done an excellent job on that, and on making your larger points.
And you’re definitely closer to this one than I am, but you’re supporting the same cautionary tale that you’ve already subscribed to: be cautious with labeling entire groups when – at a granular level – those labels may not hold up At. All.
Agreed. Totally.
As I said earlier, my beloved Uncle may be an asshole, but it isn’t because he’s gay
It was made pretty clear to me on this message board: apart from the pit, we address the argument, not the person who made the argument.
Great rule.
I think you’ve done a great job at something very important: address the action, not the actors – at least not so broadly. In going broad, one may not always be wrong, but … why risk it ?
You’re correct that it not something intrinsic to their religious beliefs. It’s all those issues - but it’s not just those issues. It’s also very much a matter of the political power @Saintly_Loser mentioned. The following incidents/issues don’t happen in the absence of political power : A New York City Bus Gives Women the Back Seat | TIME.com (public bus route run by a franchisor requires women to sit in the back)
Again, there’s nothing wrong with them having political power - and in truth, I blame the politicians more than anyone for the current state of affairs- because perhaps if they had not been pandering for the last few decades, things might not have gotten to where they are now. But I’m not at all sure the ultra-orthodox have that sort of political power anywhere other than the NYC area and possibly Israel.
OK, but they are responsible for at least three outbreaks that I know of in the NY area – Rockland County, Far Rockaway, and Lakewood, NJ. At some point, you have to start thinking that there’s an anti-science streak. I’m not extrapolating from one Hasidic Jew to all Jewish people – I’m extrapolating from at least three distinct groups of Hasidim.
No, they’re not. Our local Ultra-Orthodox Jewish family (They’re Chabad-Lubavitch, which is a different version of Very Orthodox) does not act like that.
On the other hand, there was a group in Rogers Park, Chicago, that caused a kerfluffle a few decades ago with wanting the gentiles to stop using Touhy Avenue (a major road) on Saturdays to “respect” their Sabbath. And wanting the gentiles to adopt Jewish Sabbath rules within their eruv. None of which happened because they don’t have the political power in Chicago they do in Brooklyn.
Nobody cared they had an eruv (most folks weren’t even aware of it, or would even know what one was if you pointed it out) or walked to services on the Sabbath and didn’t answer their phones or carry things and so on - live and let live, right? Until their little community nestled in the middle of the second or third largest city in the US started wanting to impose their rules on the rest of us. That’s where the problem lies.
Most Jews don’t do that - they want to live by their rules, but have no interest in imposing their rules on the gentiles. A Sabbath goy can be handy to have around, after all.
Religions become problematic when they acquire political power - yet another reason to separate church and state.
If the Hasidim wanted their separate enclave out in the hicks where they could set up a small town of just their own kind it might less problematic (although problems still arise with arrangement involving those in the communities) but you just can’t do that in the middle of densely populated city. It’s not compatible with city life, certainly not modern, multi-cultural city life.
And I maintain that this is a self-imposed separatism and isolation - nothing I’m aware of in most forms of Orthodox Judaism mandates such separatism from the world. Maintaining Jewish customs, yes, but not a bar with interacting with non-Jews and operating in the gentile world.
Which one? Slacker being a racist and a misogynist, or the one about the fascist in the White House? The first one I am dead serious about (and we have a whole thread full of accumulated evidence in this very forum). The second was, of course, sarcastic. The fascist in the White House is a much bigger threat in my view.
This is an utter lie. You made a thread about how you were concerned that your daughter watched a TV show where a girl beat a boy at basketball. That this could not actually happen in the real world.
You even said that you told your wife this, and that she just rolled her eyes at you. And now you’re trying to tell me she’s some sort of feminist? That she heard your blatant misogyny and didn’t at least explain to you why it was wrong?
Furthermore, there were those posts where you went on and on about white culture being erased by multiculturalism. They are why I put you on ignore on the old site.
It would be one thing if you’d ever had a “come to Jesus” moment and explained why you were wrong about all these things. But you haven’t. You just assert they never happened.
You have maintained that separation. But the posters where their bigotry is in question have not. Rittersport attacked all Hasidim, and SlackerInc went even wider with all “ultra-orthodox” Jews. And how you talk about them is different, too–in a way that seems to treat them like human beings who you reluctantly have to come out against because they do bad things.
I much prefer the way you discuss the topic to the way Rittersport did, and I consider the OP full out bigoted. (I won’t say antisemitic, because I’m not sure that can include only hating some Jewish people.)
Sounds like they should go out and live off by themselves like the Amish, rather than trying to live among secular society and fuck around with its institutions that are already in place, expecting to be catered to. I have more respect for groups like this if they just keep to themselves.
