New York City’s Mayor de Blasio, with intemperate and angry remarks targeted “the Jewish Community” (and not only the Jewish community) after 2,500 Hasidic Jews gathered for the funeral of a Rabbi. The gathering violated the social distancing rules that are badly needed to keep flattening the curve of New York’s Covid-19 crisis. This gathering and the Mayor’s remark sparked a conversation about the relationship between ultraorthodox Jews and Jews who are not at all orthodox.
Danielle Ziri reported on the Hasidic reaction to the non-orthodox claims of solidarity. She reported that Hasidim saw the non-orthodox response to Mayor de Blasio as anger at being included in a group with the Hasidim. She quotes Yosef Rapaport “I don’t feel the love and I don’t feel the solidarity, and I would dare say that neither do any of my friends and compatriots….. even from sincere, anti-bigotry people in the way they react there is never the full-throated, indignant reaction. It’s always measured and it always has an ‘escape hatch’ feeling.
Rapaport has a point.
Arnold Pfeffer’s May1opinion piece in Haaretz begins by saying that de Blasio was wrong to call the members of one tiny ultra-Orthodox sect ‘the Jewish community. He explains that the vast majority of Jews would not agree that a peripheral Hasidic group constitutes “the Jewish community”.
Pfeffer explains: “If we don’t want ‘the Jewish community”’ to be singled out for collective shaming, we have to make it clear to ourselves and to others that there isn’t just one Jewish community. We most certainly still do have a duty of care and a level of responsibility for members of other Jewish communities, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying that not every Jew living in the same neighborhood or town or country is a member of the same Jewish community.
Even if it makes the ultra-orthodox angry, Pfeffer has a point.
What the ultraorthodox and the not at all orthodox decline to remember that those who truly hate Jews have no problem with contradictions. They hate Jews who are conservative capitalists and make a lot of money. They hate Jews who are left wing enough to oppose capitalists. They hate Jews who wear black hats. They hate Jews who decline to wear skullcaps.
Jews are perfectly capable of analyzing the differences among themselves. Those who hate Jews don’t bother much with analysis.
There are also those who envy Jews. Not necessarily for Jews’ success. For Jews’ ability to integrate into society, for Jews’ ability to choose not to integrate and still be treated with respect. African-Americans see that a mob of Jews who violated the law dispersed. No one was shot. No one was beaten. No one was even arrested. African-Americans legitimately envy that treatment.
Not a Jewish issue? It is white privilege? I suppose. It is not a privilege to be taken away. It is a privilege that African-Americans deserve, that all Americans deserve. To be treated with dignity, even while behaving badly.