thisisbabylon.net

An interesting sociological phenomenon detailed on Ynet.

When it comes to women's modesty and laws of gender separation, many of my progressive brethren (and sistren) react with a "mixture of pity and contempt". On the one hand, the covered woman "must be" uncomfortable wearing "so many" layers of clothing. On the other hand, they "must be" victims of an oppressive patriarchal society dictating how they can and can not dress. The tznua/modest woman is often forced to justify herself on two levels: "yes I am comfortable" and "yes I am dressing this way voluntarily."

A piece on Ynet sparked my interest with regard to this:

She was walking in front of me in a crowded Jaffa street, covered in black from head to toe: Shoes, socks, pants, a long dress on top, gloves (!) and of course – a veil, which revealed only a pair of black eyes.

It was steaming hot outside – over 30 degrees Celsius and terribly humid, and I immediately felt sorry for the poor woman. How hot she must be, I thought, how sweaty, how miserable it was to go through the scalding Mediterranean summer like this. And then feminist thoughts began running through my head – "How can women be oppressed this way? What a humiliation! Why doesn't she rebel against this? What a pity she's unaware of all the things she is missing out on in the world," etc. I practically couldn't take my eyes off of her.

While I was busy with my progressive thoughts, I noticed that the girl walking beside me was staring at me, and I was mortified when I recognized the look in her eyes. She was looking at me in the same way I was looking at the woman in front of me. Over 30 degrees Celsius and terribly humid, she was wearing shorts and a tank top, while I was wearing a head scarf, two shirts worn one on top of the other in order to cover my arms, a long (and hot) jeans skirt, etc.

"How hot she must be," she was probably thinking, "How sweaty she must be, how miserable it is to go through the Mediterranean summer like this…" and this is before feminist thoughts began running through her head - "How can women be oppressed this way? What a humiliation! Why doesn't she rebel against this? What a pity she's unaware of all the things she is missing out on in the world." She practically could not take her eyes off of me.

Anyone familiar with the Orthodox world knows -- and this author is no exception -- the number of converts is growing. The number of people "returning to Judaism" (chozrei b'tshuva) is growing.

As is the number of "reverts" to Islam.

The veiled "uncomfortable" woman walking down the street in her veils and head coverings in 2007 may very well have been walking down the street in the tank top in 1997. She realized that by covering up, she was elevating herself spiritually. She realized that she was doing herself a favor by bringing herself more in line with the Divine Will (as codified in halacha/Jewish Law or shari'a/Islamic law) and not by revealing more and more skin - pushing the lines of civil statutes and regulations.

What newly religious women who decide to cover up are doing is not making themselves oppressed or uncomfortable, on the contrary, they are giving themselves a sense of inner pride and beauty that they never had before.

These women should be praised -- certainly not pitied. In my opinion, the mindset of "pity and contempt" has its roots in the media.

Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan and Britney -- these women represent that which millions of girls diet and fast to achieve: the unabashed party girl who can do "whatever she pleases". Revealing 90% of one's epidermis, saying whatever, whenever, wherever (Shakira lyrics anyone?): this for some reason represents the pinnacle of the exercise of free choice.

Except that Britney lost her mind.
Paris Hilton is in jail.
Lindsey Lohan -- wasn't she getting high?

And the niqabi and the tznua walk along, silently elevating themselves and unaffected by these paradigms. They remain largely un-anorexic, and, when asked, report a very high level of personal satisfaction.

Ken yirbu and may women who become religious and seek their own spiritual fulfillment in defiance of societal "norms" be appreciated for being what they are.

Strong, independent women, revolutionary -- and in the deepest sense of the word, quite feminist.

Posted by Y-Love at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Should tech support guys have to report any underage illicit content they find to authorities?
From Recordnet.com:

Legislation to require computer technicians to report any pornographic images of children they may stumble on while fixing a machine was rejected today by the Senate Public Safety Committee.

Sponsored by Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, the bill would have extended existing law requiring film developers to report kiddie porn to computers; with the decline in film use as digital photography becomes the mainstream, Galgiani says it only makes sense.

Arkansas, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota already require computer techs to report illegal photos or movies, and Connecticut is also debating the issue.

After Public Safety Committee Chairwoman Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, said she opposed the bill, two of her Democratic colleagues chose not to vote on it, and the measure died 2-1-2. Sen. Dave Cogdill, a Modesto Republican who represents much of San Joaquin County, was one of the two “aye” votes.

A similar bill died in Senate Public Safety last year.

Galgiani’s bill had passed the Assembly 73-0 last month.

Posted by Y-Love at 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not that I have any particular affinity for writing about China.

What happens in Southwestern China usually doesn't cross my mind.

But then there's this.

From China Daily:

Local police have detained a man in southwest China suspected of disseminating pornographic information involving children on the internet, the Ministry of Public Security has said. Police in Nanning, capital city of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, cracked the website run by a man surnamed Liu on June 10.

Liu is accused of posting more than 30,000 porn items on his website, mainly obscene pictures and movies of kids, as well as adult pornographic pictures, films and articles. Local police seized a computer used to maintain the website in Liu's home as well as bank cards used to collect membership fees.

Liu has confessed to the charges. He said he had raked in over 80,000 yuan (about 10,500 US dollars) in illegal gains from the website's 120,000 registered members.

By mid-May, Chinese police had cracked 244 cases and detained 270 suspects involved in online pornography, the ministry said.

Is this the next scandal waiting to happen?

Posted by Y-Love at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dayenu 2007. Shanxi style.

If it were just children enslaved and not being forced to bake bricks....it would be enough.
If it were just slave children being forced to bake bricks and not murdered workers....it would be enough.
If it were just murdered workers and not parents searching for their kidnapped children....it would be enough.

But the Chinese slavery scandal just keeps expanding and worsening.

From the Middle East Times:

China's slavery scandal widened Tuesday with the state-run press reporting that young girls had been forced into prostitution at a brickyard work camp where abuse and beatings were routine. The latest reports come as the slavery ring that was initially reported only in Shanxi and Henan provinces in north and central China had in fact been operating elsewhere around the country for as long as a decade.

According to the government, police have so far rescued up to 570 enslaved workers, some of them children, and detained nearly 170 people suspected of trafficking, beating, and enslaving workers in Shanxi and Henan. ...

As authorities focused on ending the slavery, a report in the Communist Party magazine Democracy and Law said that some female slaves had been forced into prostitution.

Two girls aged 17 and 16 had been forced into prostitution at the Wangjiang brick factory in Hebei province, immediately to the north of Henan, in 2004, according to the report that was picked up by the Xinhua news agency.

The girls were lured from their village in Shanxi province with the promises of high wages and good jobs at a tile factory in early 2004, but soon discovered that they had been tricked.

At first the girls worked alongside other laborers 16 hours a day, receiving regular beatings for not working hard enough, it said. But soon the brickyard boss began prostituting the girls to the workers, many of whom were handicapped or mentally ill, deducting portions of their meager salaries each time they took one of the girls, it said.

Meanwhile, the China Daily newspaper said that factories had been operating as far south as Guangdong province where workers had received tiny salaries but complained of routine beatings and unsanitary and prison-like work conditions.

Xinhua said in an earlier report that one man lost a toe from frostbite after running barefoot to escape a labor camp in China's far northeast Heilongjiang province.

Now it's toys. Every single toy recalled this year for safety reasons was, you guessed it, made in China.

From the New York Times:

China manufactured every one of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the United States so far this year, including the enormously popular Thomas & Friends wooden train sets, a record that is causing alarm among consumer advocates, parents and regulators.

The latest recall, announced last week, involves 1.5 million Thomas & Friends trains and rail components — about 4 percent of all those sold in the United States over the last two years by RC2 Corporation of Oak Brook, Ill. The toys were coated at a factory in China with lead paint, which can damage brain cells, especially in children.

Just in the last month, a ghoulish fake eyeball toy made in China was recalled after it was found to be filled with kerosene. Sets of toy drums and a toy bear were also recalled because of lead paint, and an infant wrist rattle was recalled because of a choking hazard.

Over all, the number of products made in China that are being recalled in the United States by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in the last five years, driving the total number of recalls in the country to 467 last year, an annual record.

It also means that China today is responsible for about 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000.

Much of the rise in China’s ranking on the recall list has to do with its corresponding surge as the world’s toy chest: toys made in China make up 70 to 80 percent of the toys sold in the country, according to the Toy Industry Association.

Posted by Y-Love at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Russian-Israeli billionaire Arkady Gaydamak has reportedly bought the Israeli Tiv Taam supermarket chain for an undisclosed sum, and is doing what some consider the unthinkable: he's making the entire chain kosher.

From the New Zealand Herald:

With robust insouciance for the sensitivities of all three great monotheistic religions, Hermina Schlinger eyed with satisfaction her large purchase of pork frankfurters at the checkout counter of Rishon Letzion's Tiv Taam supermarket in Rishon Letzion just south of Tel Aviv this week and declared, "There it is: the Last Supper".

What Schlinger, 60, was referring to was the weekend announcement by the Russian-born billionaire Arkady Gaidamak that he has bought the entire Tiv Taam supermarket company and he proposes to make its famous food counters kosher from now on.

No more highly convenient - if defiantly non-religious - opening on Shabbat. No more ham, salami, shellfish, pork sausages and all the other non-kosher food - that has brought Schlinger and tens of thousands of her Israeli fellow shoppers to the 24-store chain over the past 15 years.

The shock waves sent through Israel by Gaidamak's purchase and plans are underlined by the urban myths it has already generated. Schlinger, whose origins are Romanian Jewish, is from Tel Aviv and confesses to being "very angry" about the impending transformation of her favourite supermarket chain.

Either "you're damn skippy" or "it's about damn time".

Gaidamak was not at Rishon Letzion to hear these complaints. But he flatly gave his answer, in an interview to Army Radio on Sunday. "I believe that in a Jewish state," he declared, "in which there is a large Muslim minority, selling pork is a provocation."

Pork will still be legal, no one has criminalized shellfish, and indeed, anyone is free to open their own ham- and sausage-laden deli counter. The, as Time Magazine reported, "Jerusalem delicatessen counters brimming with bacon, pork chops and pate of wild boar" (chalila) will still be there, just not under the name "Tiv Taam". No one has made any serious run to criminalize pork in Israel since the 90s.

Columnist Uri Orbach calls those who oppose the move fundamentalist secularists. I am inclined to agree with this -- no one is forcing anyone to buy anything. One can order pork online, have it imported, buy it from "mom-and-pop" stores, or raise one's own pigs. This is not religious coercion, this is an attempt to make Tiv Taam more inline with "Jewish tradition" as Gaydamak says, and as Uri Orbach says:

The fact that an ideological group of Jews makes a living by producing and marketing pork, is horrifying. The children’s studies, the dining hall, the extra-curricular activities, the cultural events, the assembly hall and the lawns – were all obtained through the same thing - pork.

The people of Aristobulus, while sieging the Temple Mount, sent in a pig as a sacrifice instead of the kosher beasts they used to send till then. Following the shock aroused by the act, it was said, “Damned be the man who raises pigs in the Land of Israel.”...

Even if it’s unpractical to use state laws to ban the production of pig meat, surely the national heritage and Jewish instincts should arouse the necessary repulsion.

If you don't want Israel to be Jewish, stop calling it such.

Tiv Taam. Kosher l'mehadrin. Ken yirbu.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Arkady Gaydamak is not going to buy the chain. But it would have been a huge kiddush Hashem (literally, sanctification of the Divine Name) if he would have.

Posted by Y-Love at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

"So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with back breaking labor. And they embittered their lives with hard labor, with clay and with bricks." - Exodus 1:13-14

"So, on that day, Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, 'You shall not continue to give straw to the people to make the bricks like yesterday and the day before yesterday. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks they have been making yesterday and the day before yesterday you shall impose upon them; you shall not reduce it...Let the labor fall heavy upon the men and let them work at it, and let them not talk about false matters.'" - Exodus 5:6-9
From MSNBC:

Police in central China have rescued 217 people, including 29 children, who had been forced by human traffickers into effective slavery at brick kilns, state media reported on Thursday...

On Wednesday, the People's Daily newspaper reported on its Web site that at least 1,000 children in Henan had been kidnapped near train and bus stations and sold to work as slaves at brickworks in neighboring Shanxi province. Children as young as 8 were forced to work up to 14-hour days, and were often subject to beatings and given little food, the report said...

Yang Aizhi, a 46-year-old mother, whose son went missing on March 8, was one of the people who had alerted the public, Xinhua said, after she heard that her son had escaped from a kiln in Shanxi during her search of more than 100 kilns in the province.

"When the children were too tired to push carts, they were whipped by taskmasters," Xinhua quoted Yang as saying, adding that she had still not found her son.

About 120 people were detained in a crackdown after more than 35,000 police from Henan province who were sent to make checks at 7,500 kilns, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"We must do everything we can to fight human trafficking and rescue those held captive," it quoted Qin Yuhai, a Henan vice governor and the province's police chief, as saying.

Last week, state media reported the rescue of 31 people, forced to work for a year as slaves at a brickworks run by the son of a local Communist Party official in Shanxi.

Among them, eight were so traumatized that they were only able to remember their names, and one laborer was beaten to death with a hammer for not working hard enough.

Government attention follows an online petition drive started by parents of kidnapped children.

State-run media on Wednesday reported that the online campaign included parents forming teams that rescued 40 children recently.

According to the petition, 400 fathers of missing boys from the central province of Henan had banded together to find their sons at kilns hidden deep in the mountains of neighboring Shanxi province. It added that boys were sold for $65 each to kilns.

"Our children's safety is everything, but who will help us? With governments on both sides passing the responsibility, where can we go for help?" the petition said.

Reports on the petition were carried on numerous Web sites, including one run by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper. Some carried photographs and television images appearing to show boys working in the kilns and parents rescuing children.

If China starts finding hemoglobin in municipal water supplies, I, for one, will be completely nonplussed.

Posted by Y-Love at 06:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The very anti-globalization August Review has a chilling list of actions which are "leading up to" the disappearance of Canada as we know it.

The North American Union, already old hat to many of us, with its Amero currency proposal, is, according to the August Review, destined to make Canada "disappear".

While I don't know about the veracity of all the statements, the prospect alone remains fearsome to many.

Posted by Y-Love at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Anwar Hussain in last week's Baltimore Chronicle:

President Bush is in Europe flaunting, in a hard sell pitch, his brand of democracy to the world at large and to Russia in particular. He is known to have said: “We believe that the voice of the people ought to be determining policy, because we believe in democracy.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is as fallacious a statement as any that the President of United States has been giving since he took over the reins of his great country. Fallacious too because the American President is selling a product that America does not have....

The President’s statement is fallacious because corporate corruption of American politicians and government has shredded to bits whatever semblance of democracy America was left with.

Fallacious too because instead of having democracy in the decision making institutions of America it is rather the fine art of corporate corruption that now stands democratized and institutionalized with all now having a chance at equal opportunity corruption. All it takes is money.

Corporate corruption in America is now at a stage where it has become a bipartisan, open, and legal practice with Americans finally coming to accept it as a status quo, an integral part of a dollar-driven, cheating culture.

The American President is selling a product that America does not have.

The President’s statement is fallacious because it is now plain for all to see that misrepresentative government and corporatism has oppressed American citizenry to the extent that their democracy has become nothing more than a corporate theocracy, a fascist feudal state in which “the serfs” serve the corporate state as voiceless workers, voracious consumers, submissive citizens and pliant subjects.

The President’s statement is fallacious because we the world can see that for us at least, American democracy has boiled down to nothing more than that of a lynch mob who vote on the fate of their victims even as the rope is being readied to carry out the inevitable verdict.

If that's how we look from Dubai, I can't imagine how we must look from Baghdad.

Posted by Y-Love at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In this past week's Jewish Press, an anonymous Op-Ed piece decries the tzedek hechsher being advocated by the Conservative Movement.

The Conservative movement has long proclaimed its fealty to Torah and mitzvot and the authenticity of Conservative dogma as an expression of halacha. Yet its wanton revisionism has been such that the Conservative claim to halachic legitimacy has been recognized only within its own ranks – and even then not universally. And movement leaders have long chafed at the rejection.

So it should not come as a surprise that the Conservative movement would try to burnish its credentials by establishing a halachicniche of its own by way of a “hechsher tzedek.”

The principal advocate for this effort is Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights, Minnesota....

To Rabbi Allen, wrote JTA’s Sue Fishkoff, this means “paying attention not only to what kinds of foods are consumed and how the food is prepared…but also but also how those who produce the food are treated: Are they paid appropriately? Are their working conditions safe? Is their dignity as human beings respected?”

“The new label,” wrote Ms. Fishkoff, “isn’t intended to replace existing kosher certification, which is under Orthodox supervision, but it constitutes a broader definition of kosher food that incorporates ideas of social justice from the Torah and Talmud.”

In other words, according to Rabbi Allen it is no longer sufficient for kosher certification to be granted solely on the basis of proper Jewish methods of inspecting and slaughtering animals.

Furthermore, we have already seen one hechsher be removed for extra-culinary infractions, such as having alcoholic beverages and music too close together.

I have only one question for Mr. Jewish-Press-Editorial-Board -- why can't Hooters in Tel Aviv get a hechsher, then? Were one to import Beit Yosef Glatt meat (one of the highest standards in the world for slaughtering) and clean the kitchen of any remnants of dairy or dairy utensils, would we see -- just by virtue of having fulfilled the Divine obligations to separate meat and dairy and to have properly slaughtered meat -- kosher certification on a place with half-naked servers?

Yet Mr. Editorial-Board continues, and places his foot squarely into his esophagus with this next line, which I hope "did not come out as intended":

Moreover, this effort will serve to dilute the place of halacha. Working conditions are fundamentally matters of economics, sociology and labor negotiations. Are issues such as minimum wage, vacation, sick leave and health coverage properly viewed as matters of halacha? Are they on the same level of halachic application as shechita, mixing meat and dairy, soaking and salting, etc.?

Hours are "working conditions".

Granted, no one would suggest full EEOC or Dept. of Labor audits, and also granted, American Labor Law contains minutiae and legal considerations which are external to Torah. Yet, even so, Rav Weiner said that a kashrus certification requires that one fulfill ALL of their civic obligations, which would include OSHA safety regulations as well as labor laws.

But to, with one fell swoop, doom an entire chapter of the Talmud to invalidity is unconscionable. What makes Yoreh Deah (the volume of the Code of Jewish Law dealing with food and forbidden mixtures) more valid than Choshen Mishpat?

I don't think the "Editorial Board" realizes the far-reaching implications of what they are saying. For instance, Chiquita Brands International was forced to pay a $25 million fine for the actions of its Colombian subsidiary from which it divested in 2004.

The agreement ended a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels the U.S. government deems terrorist groups.

Prosecutors say the Cincinnati-based company agreed to pay about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

The author of said piece needs to wake up and smell the corruption. There is such a thing as mesayei'a l'ovrei aveirah. We are not supposed to assist sinners in committing sins. Exploiting one's workers or leaving a blood-trail behind one's product is patently sinful. (And if one of the workers is Jewish, it's also a question of standing idly by one's brother's blood, forbidden explicity in Scripture in Leviticus).

Everything matters. And to restrict kosher certification exclusively to what goes on in the kitchen is an egregious violation of, not the nebulous "spirit of the law", but of codified case law in the Code of Jewish Law.

It's either halacha -- the whole halacha -- or kosher Hooters. And I invite the anonymous op-ed writer to make his or her choice.

Posted by Y-Love at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

...the erev rav, the "mixed multitude" who left Egypt and were responsible for the Golden Calf -- the worst national show of idolatry in the history of the nation of Israel?

Is this a true statement?

“Before the coming of the Mashiach most of the Rabbanim will be from the Erev Rav etc. Because Israel in themselves are holy, but the Erev Rav work only for their own benefit as we can clearly see that the Rabbanim and the Chassidim and many regular Jews of the generation are, due to our many sins, mostly from the Erev Rav and want to rule over the public, and all their actions are only for their own sake, to acquire honor and money, and one should therefore only join with those who truly serve, who sacrifice themselves to Hashem not in order to receive any benefit”.

And their site, while not wholly on the same page with me (for instance, his views on family court and feminism are drastically different than mine), definitely has a revolutionary spirit worth checking into. The site contains stingingly critical PDFs which decry much of the goings-on today's generation of Orthodox Jews.

At a minimum, Mishpat Tzedek and I have three things in common.

We're both fed up. We both love Hashem and His Torah (as codified through halacha/Jewish Law, the practical manifestation of His Will), and we both know that, if the long-awaited Redemption is to come now, we're going to need to get it together.

Posted by Y-Love at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today The Los Angeles Times ran another perspective on Jerusalem's demographic shift, that of Richard Boudreaux, an LATimes columnist. He writes, looking back on Jerusalem's recent history:

Forty years ago, when Israel captured East Jerusalem and absorbed the Arab neighborhoods, it set out to maintain a large and sustainable Jewish majority in the city it was declaring its eternal and undivided capital. Instead, Jerusalem is gradually becoming more Palestinian and less Jewish.

Thousands of Jews leave the city each year, many of them alienated by an ascendant ultra-Orthodox minority that is asserting its socially conservative values and political power. Even as Jerusalem attracts a growing number of Palestinians, polls show that many less devout Jews are becoming estranged from it and are more willing to consider dividing it again.

Israeli analysts say one reason many Israelis would accept dividing Jerusalem is their estrangement from the city. The Jerusalem Institute poll showed that nearly two-thirds of Israelis thought of their capital as "a city of the ultra-Orthodox," nearly half said it was poor, and one-third considered it "scary to live in."

"Jerusalem is dismal, depressing. People there are nervous, agitated and cross," said Sharon Daya, 38, a swimming instructor who lived in the city all her life until she moved five years ago to a western suburb with her husband and three children. "I miss nothing about it. I go to great pains to avoid going there."...

They tend to be repelled by the city's poverty, threats of Palestinian violence and tensions with haredim, who have thrown rocks to stop Jerusalem traffic on the Sabbath and burned clothing stores for selling "immodest" attire. These less devout Jews often look to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities as more attractive alternatives.

"More secular Israelis are beginning to relate to Jerusalem as culturally alien," said Yossi Klein-Halevy, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute.

"That is potentially devastating for Jerusalem's centrality in Israel and within world Jewry," he said.

"The more Jerusalem turns haredi, the more secular Israelis will turn away, and that will have political consequences as future Israeli leaders decide whether to keep the city intact."

Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox community is like no other in the world. And while it is only fitting for the Holy City to have a different air than, say, Arkansas, the haredi world itself is fragmented, and is radicalizing out even many of its own members.

I have lamented, numerous times, the fact that my conversion may or may not be recognized in the state of Israel. I always joke: in America I'm ultra-Orthodox, in Jerusalem I'm barely frum. My a cappella album, kosher for sefirah in America, was rejected by Israeli distributors, who told me that the use of beat box disqualifies it for sale in Jerusalem.

The LA times article states:

The city is relatively staid, but on weekends, secular residents visit bars, cafes, restaurants and discos — places shunned by haredim. More such establishments are open in secular neighborhoods today than a generation ago.

American olim are flocking to neighborhoods like Nachlaot, which is becoming a bohemian melange of culture where acoustic guitars and jam bands are much more likely to herald the coming of Shabbos than a Chassidic boys' choir.

In America, only in the most heimish of neighborhoods -- a Williamsburg, Brooklyn or a Lakewood, New jersey -- would one find this blanket eschewing of kosher dining and kosher entertainment. Even the Chassidic neighborhood of Boro Park has its own version of "chulent night" -- the Midtown Manhattan Thursday night gathering already being made famous by New York Times articles. The Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush has had numerous -- kosher l'mehadrin -- bars grace its streets.

The haredi world is deprived of its diversity and its vibrance when entire 2007 municipalities are turned into 1857 Poland. It is not to be expected -- nor should it be advocated -- that every person, upon putting on a black hat, would become prone to joining "tznius patrols" or beating female bus passengers. The anti-parade demonstrations which rocked Jerusalem last year went on against the wishes of rabbinical court leaders: the "haredim" which are making "Jerusalem a scary place" are doing so as a frenzied, radicalized public, not out of any "shift in Orthodoxy".

For us, the charedi Jews who see halacha as a beautiful way to serve G-d, as opposed to an ever-growing list of forbidden conveniences and "alien influences" to be eschewed, these things can be disheartening.

But we stay in Jerusalem because we know of the city's immense holiness and connection to the Creator. And we slink out to internet cafes -- where we are far more likely to see forbidden materials than in our religious homes -- to check our email, because Heaven forbid, someone should be utilizing the most significant media invention of our generation. And we maintain incognito cellphones in case we have relatives who want to send us a text message (and hope no one sees that the phone has SMS).

We fight to keep the "4 cubits of halacha" an actual 4 cubit by 4 cubit area, instead of a rapidly shrinking pigeonhole. We fight to keep at least our 4 cubits a place where we enjoy living, rather than eke existence out in. And we create a culture of hypocrisy and lies -- because if you're hiding A, you might as well hide B and C while you're at it (even if you would have otherwise never dreamed of doing B and C).

The modern haredi Jew does exist and to give modern haredim a legitimate voice could mean the continued viability of a united Jerusalem. Perhaps then the word haredi itself could become destigmatized.

But as long as the word "haredi" is attached to "the people who beat that poor woman", the divisions aren't going anywhere for a while.

Posted by Y-Love at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)