Imagine if you read this paragraph in your local paper:
To my mind, that is not being a good neighbor. In Dearborn, the Shia community is taking over, buying property and converting many of the large homes into mosques.
Or this:
To my mind, that is not being a good neighbor. In Atlanta, the African-American community is taking over, buying property and converting many of the large homes into Southern Baptist churches.
That would likely get the reporter fired, would it not? Well, here's the real version:
To my mind, that is not being a good neighbor. In Bayswater, the Satmar community is taking over, buying property and converting many of the large homes into synagogues.
Orthomom fisks the entire piece, top to bottom; a commenter basically made the same comments as above. It's a great piece of work by OM, dissecting and discarding every point in the piece.
Yawn.
ReplyDeleteThey both come across as shrill and arrogant with obvious axes to grind.
--not that I mind, I have always enjoyed eating my popcorn while watching useless jewish politics from the sidelines.
To my mind, that is not being a good neighbor. In Dearborn, the Shia community is taking over, buying property and converting many of the large homes into mosques.
ReplyDeleteOh, please. You don't think that sort of thing isn't in local papers all over the country? Ann Coulter says something far worse every day.
Here's a story about many in a Houston suburb objecting to local mosques. One guy wants to run pig races next door on the Muslim holy days just to piss them off.
They're both wrong, of course, but your argument was ridiculous.
BTW, it can be argued that Satmar...or Judaism in general is a religious, not racial affiliation. Without the garb and beard, a satmar is (usually)as white as anyone....all a MO has to do is bag his beanie...and he is no longer a minority in anyone's eyes.
ReplyDeleteHuh? What argument? And yes, both are obviously wrong. That article seems to be talking about blatant hatred for Muslims.
ReplyDeleteI just read the thread again and could not help but recall my favorite line from Anchorman:
ReplyDeleteBrick: LOUD NOISES!!!!!!!!!!!
This argument:
ReplyDeleteImagine if you read this paragraph in your local paper... That would likely get the reporter fired, would it not?
And it was an editorial, not reporting, from what I can tell.
JA - Right: If a reporter would write such an editorial in most papers, there would be an outcry. (The reporter in the Houston story merely related over the story and the feelings in the community, not his own feelings.)
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't agree with her righteous indignation. Just yesterday something of that nature happened to me--me hearing a lengthy diatribe about how the Orthodox are taking over--and I actually shed tears. I didn't even know it was happening until it did--the crying, I mean. The non-Jewish storeworker--it was in a bakery in Monsey--apologized to me and the tears kind of welled up more. I guess I just felt pain that my people don't act humble and behave calmly and respectfully. We really do take over a community. Now, that said, we will always be hated by some or many no matter how we behave and neighborhoods do change (my neighborhood of origin did), but the righteous indignation, the "Magiah Li" of OM's tone is kind of part of the problem as I see it. P.S. I don't like newspapers that publish venom and inaccuracies so I'm not okay with the article in question either.
ReplyDeleteI didn't get that at all. I don't see that OM thinks anything is coming to her. More that the writer is just not credible and has an axe to grind.
ReplyDeleteOrthomom- whats so annoying is that we can write whatever we want on the blog but non of the waive readers will see what you wrote back. Its really annoying. That said- I am in no way agreeing with the article nor do I think there was any basis for what was said. However we do, especially Jews in the NY area, have at times a mentality that we own the place. We always have to be careful with making a kiddush hashem, sometimes even over-extending ourselves a bit, because we slightly piss of a guy like Mr. S, even by doing something not relevant to anything he wrote about and we suffer getting an article of the like written about us, and we cant even defend it!
ReplyDeletethanks for the link, ezzie.
ReplyDeleteAs far as some comments here go, I'm sorry if I seem "shrill", or that it's "magiah li". I do think that it's "magiah li" to correct falsehoods and call people out on what i think is bigotry. The question here is not whether every member of the five towns community has to be thrilled with the demographic shift that has occured. The question is whether those who are less than pleased with those changes can find a way to express their displeasure without resorting to dishonesty and intolerance.
There must be a way.
I actually think the question and it's a biggie is how can we be a light unto the world? How can we get the word out to our "community"--by that I mean all those who appear Orthodox to those who are not--that we need to make a better impression, we need to deal honestly in business, drive respectfully, put our best foot forward to non-Jews or non-orthodox Jews that we work with...This may not be your problem, OM, but it is collectively all of our problems. I have outed myself as a Monseyite and I just feel that you struck a nerve with me because here we are absolutely hated by the non-Orthodox pop. Is it everyone? No. But the air is ripe with the stench of disgust. Sometimes I wax nostalgic about the five towns because I'm a Queens person and wish I still lived around there, but now I see that we are causing this kind of crap to be thrown at us wherever we congregate en masse and I feel sad about that. I get that it would be nice if he could have expressed himself with less vitriol and less fantasy, as it would have been for Feldman, but we cannot control someone else's misjudgments. We can control our own collective behavior. Thanks, Ser, for the back up.
ReplyDeleteListen, I'm the first to speak out when I see bad behavior from members of the Orthodox community. But that doesn't give a free pass to people like Mr. Schach to cast aspersions on his Orthodox neighbors by giving disingenuous examples of our alleged misbehavior. A little honesty would have given Mr. Schach a heck of a lot more in the way of credibility.
ReplyDeleteAnd trust me - the Five Towns "old guard" is far from immune to putting on airs of entitlement. That's part of why the clash between the different segments of the community is so intense out here.
Credibility in whose eyes? Who is going to be moved by a well-documented, heartfelt piece about the changes in the neighborhood? Will it move the people who need to be moved? Nope. They don't read those publications. I guess I feel really raw about the fact that we deserve nothing but a roof over our heads and a job in this country of freedoms and if we can afford more then we should be freakin' quiet about it and if we can get a few kosher restaurants in there, cool, but let's reign our people in a little and make sure everyone straightens up and flies right before we bemoan the anti-Semites for hating us. Even the Jewish anti-Semites. If we give them reason to hate, then we need to work from within to change that. If we don't do anything wrong as a Klal and they still throw crap at us, then so be it in the chain of crap. But among our people--and I still call all of my frum friends of different stripes my people and take responsibility for them not just in the way of supporting those who need Chesed or Tzedakah, but just plain identifying with them and among my people of all stripes are those who are rude, loud, sometimes dishonest in business, sometimes too pushy when we should be polite, and some of us so out of the secular world that we don't know how to behave with others who are not like us and don't give a fig what they think and...they freakin' notice. Like I told my 5-year old recently, I want my people to start behaving better in public.
ReplyDeleteanon mom - This isn't the conversation we are having. Can we behave better? Of course. Is the author of this piece presenting valid gripes about our behavior? No. He is addressing falsehoods and non-issues in a hate-filled piece. Do you really believe that people of that ilk need justification to be bigoted? That if we behaved a bit better in public then a guy like him won't make up stories about us? I'm just not buying it.
ReplyDeleteanon mom- I guess we have a mutual misfortune- i too was a monseyite and I can totally relate to what you are saying. I live in Queens now and I always say that putting asthetics aside, of all the places in NY to live i like Queens the most in terms of people- its a very live and let live community, where more or less, no- body gives a crap what "stripe" you are, and people say good shabbos. The reason I am digressing here, is because almost all the non- Jewish neighbors I have encountered here, in Queens, only have good things to say, and the reason, I believe is because they see that amongst one- another we have respect,curtosey and are good to one another here. When they see we are like that amongst one another, they have no complaints against us- what is there to complain about. (This is all a generalization there are always "yotzeim min h'klal").ObviouselyI am not from the five towns and I don't want to get stoned for what I am about to say- but I have heard and seen (as well as experienced) people there who are not nice to their fellow Jews. They compete with one another, don't respect people of different stripes, or who are not from their "clique" and so on. (The same holds true for Monsey, btw). By doing so we are giving the non-Jews reason to say things, be them true or not,while we can be upset at Mr. S for how he put things on paper we can not be upset at him for seeing what he does, if amongst one another we have no acceptance and tolerance than how much more so amongst someone def. of a different "stripe". We gotta remember, how to act toward our fellow Jew, that way we don't lose meaning of how to act to every human being- until we do, there will be plenty more justified Mr. S's out there!
ReplyDeleteWe gotta remember, how to act toward our fellow Jew, that way we don't lose meaning of how to act to every human being- until we do, there will be plenty more justified Mr. S's out there!
ReplyDeleteDo really think that Mr. S's diatribe, wherein he compares orthodox jews to terrorists, justified? I think the original post makes pretty clear that several of the events he recounts are at best severe distortions of reality. I suggest you re-read the editorial before concluding it's justified.
ObviouselyI am not from the five towns and I don't want to get stoned for what I am about to say- but I have heard and seen (as well as experienced) people there who are not nice to their fellow Jews. They compete with one another, don't respect people of different stripes, or who are not from their "clique" and so on.
I'm sorry, I think that this characterization is inaccurate and I take offense as a five towns resident. While there certainly is an excess of materialism in the five towns, there is plenty of respect between the different "stripes" of orthodoxy. The shuls accross the orthodox spectrum regularly cooperate on communal matters and you will find everyon from the most modern of modern orthodox to the right wing yeshivish interacting respectfully whether central avenue or at charity functions. I'm afraid to say that your comment exhibits the same sort of stereotyping and broad brush judgmentalism that characterizes the editorial.
anon- I have been to the five towns and have had friends there, on several occasions, in diff shuls and not a single person walked over and said good shabbos or introduced themselves. It is extremely "cliqey" (NY in general is like this, but %towns i have been too and can ascertain that fact). I suggest you re-read my previous post you would see that I wrote I do not think what Mr. S wrote or the exagerations he used were justified. I simply said that I can see, from a diff perspective where he comes from- in terms of how Jews can st times behave and how we must be extremely careful to always act, al kidush Hashem, between one- another, too, so that there is not even the slightest bit of anything bad that can be said, until then, we asked for it (not that HOW Mr. S decided to display that criticism on paper was correct, but CRITICISM like that will occur, if we dont rectify the situation).
ReplyDeleteInteresting piece, but with all due fairness, many of us feel the exact same thing if our neihborhoods would be overrun with Blacks, Mexicans or muslims. The only difference is, he got his thoughts printed.
ReplyDeletePC gone crazy?
ReplyDeleteVery interesting and well-written comments so far. I'm with Orthomom *and* anonmom/serach on this one. I think that this goes both ways: Obviously we need to figure out and understand what it is that is so upsetting our non-Jewish (or even Jewish) neighbors, and fix all situations where we are at fault. At the same time, articles such as this which use anecdotes - questionably true ones, at that - and proceeds to make broad generalizations about Jews, religion, and how they are everything that's wrong, deserve to be called out about.
ReplyDeleteSurely the slew of letters to be printed next will include both of the following: Letters demanding an apology from (or the firing of) Mr. Schatz for his bigoted piece, and defenders of Mr. Schatz for "telling the truth" about "those Jews". It simply opens up the flood of anti-Semitic or anti-Orthodox views, disguised as concern for the welfare of the community. I was discussing "The Tipping Point" with The Half-Heretic over the weekend, and this is the type of action that is exactly what the book is referring to. By breaking this little window, and allowing Schatz to publish such a thing, it allows anyone else to start saying the same type of thing. Kudos to OM for calling him on it.
wow! ezzie agrees with me- this calls for a "she-hechianu"!
ReplyDeleteJust got back from KGH a little while ago. Well worth the traffic. I'm glad the two of you see the problem within. I'm not sure, Ser, if it's so much the frum on frum negativity as the frum on non-frum and non-Jewish or just the way some of us carry themselves, but I do reiterate that we need to emphasize cleaning up the inside of a wonderful, warm home that we have in Orthodoxy and not worry so much about the crap being thrown at the outside of it. People who throw crap at other people's houses aren't worth the energy. Cleaning up inside would be well worth the effort. And we all know that largely our home is such a great place full of great people. It really is.
ReplyDeleteSend your post to the editor, Ez!
ReplyDelete