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| Is this woman an antisemite? (Matzav) |
On the surface, that might seem to be antisemitic. But when I heard exactly what she said, I actually had sympathy for her position. What she specifically protested were residential homes that were being converted into Shuls or Shteibels. She asked that in the future - converting homes into Shuls should be prohibited by law.
I can certainly see how this would be upsetting to neighbors. Honestly - it would upset me too if I weren't Orthodox. But then she then went on to compare what she saw happening now to what happened to her home town of Cedarhurst.
Now I have been to Cedarhurst. Spent a Shabbos there a few years ago. It is a lovely community that looks nothing like Boro Park. But the way Michelle described what happened made it sound Cedarhurst was the new Kiryas Joel. Which it clearly is not. So is she an antisemite? Hard to know but her description of what happened to Cedarhurst did not ring true.
On the other hand I have no clue what Cedarhurst was like when she grew up there. Nor do I know if the reality matches her description of what took place. For example were shops asked to be closed on Shabbos as she claimed? Were existing homes gobbled up by Orthodox Jews making inflated unsolicited offers to the non Jewish population at the time? Did Cedarhurst change as raidically as she implied? Again, I Don't know.
On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with offering to buy homes from residents of any community. No one was being forced to sell. On the other hand there is something unsettling about a group of people with a religious agenda taking over a town for their own purposes. Purposes that inevitably change the character of the town. Even if they do it legally. Like I said, converting residential homes into Shuls would bother me too if I weren't an Orthodox Jew. Does that make me an antisemite?
Being upset at deliberate attempts to change the character of a town in order to satisfy an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle should not be seen as antisemitic. That is what I suspect Michelle was protesting. Not the fact that Jews were becoming her neighbors. To claim this is antisemitic has little merit in my view.
One might argue that the antisemitism of our day is not against Jews as a group. It is only against Orthodox Jews. Because our lifestyle often entails changes to a community that secular Jews have no need for. Like Kosher food stores, Kosher restaurants, and Shuls that are walking distances from our homes. Change is hard for anyone to accept.
If someone wants to live in a community like that he can do so without making enemies. There is a place called Bnei Brak that can easily accommodate all their religious needs. The same is true in Boro Park, Williamsburg, Kiryas Joel and New Square. If they are overcrowded (which they probably are) they can always start a new village in an unpopulated area. If Satmar and Skvere can do it, so can any of the rest of us. Or maybe we can just try and live with compromise and not have every religious whim satisfied.
I actually feel sorry for that woman. Not so much because of the changes she feels are being forced upon her town. I just think she is unfairly being accused of antisemitism. Now it is of course possible that she may in fact be an antisemite… and that this is the real motive behind her complaint. But it is just as reasonable to assume that this is all about fearing drastic change to a neighborhood she has been living in for 20 years, loves, is used to, and wants it to stay that way.
This is not the first time Charedi mouthpieces like Matzav have raised the antisemitism card. It would be nice if the people at Matzav stopped thinking only about their rights and thought a bit about what exercising those rights might mean to people that have been living there for decades without ever expressing a hint of antisemitism
My advice to those who reacted to this woman the way Matzav did is to stop and listen to what really bothers people like Michelle and work out an acceptable compromise that everyone can live with. Ending the practice of turning homes into Shtiebels would be a good place to start.