The following chillul HaShem & boorish behavior is totally unacceptable. If the man didn't want to sit next to a woman he should have gotten up.
YNet
Haredi man delays bus after refusing to sit next to woman
Bus from Kiryat Gat to Kiryat Malachi forced to wait at station for long time when passenger refuses to have a woman sit next to him, shoving her with his elbow. Man refuses to switch seats, despite other available ones
"I sat on the bus line from Kiryat Gat to Kiryat Malachi next to a young haredi man. He started elbowing me and shoving me. He also swore at me and warned me not to sit next to him," 66-year-old Evelyn Assal related Sunday, describing her experience boarding a bus on her way to a funeral
What a Chillul Hashem! I am a religious man and, should a women like to sit next to me, I simply stand or sit elswhere. There is no need to get agressive about it. To elbow that women was worse then him sitting next to her and could even be counted as physical abuse, he should have been arrested and put in a cell over night to give him some time to think about his actions!
ReplyDeleteDo you think this is an isolated incident or a problem in the charidi teaching methods and mentality?
ReplyDeleteThe halachos of derech eretz should include what to do if someone of the opposite sex sits next to you.....
ReplyDeleteWho inspires these 'warriors' in the fight to fulfill 'G-d's will'?
ReplyDeleteThe atrocities and violations committed against human rights, and human beings in general, become for those people an acceptable, if regrettable, necessity in the course of fulfilling the sacred rights and duties assumed by those who commit these atrocities.
Furthermore, religious extremists all seem to have fairly similar ideologies and world views, albeit from different perspectives based upon skewed interpretations of their respective sacred texts (Torah, Quran, New Testament).
While some of these expressions are very violent acts of terror, others are seemingly peaceful, but still very dogmatic and have the potential of causing violence:
1. Claims that it owns the only truth and that others present only falsehoods and errors. This claim of a monopoly on religious truth often results from the concept (or misconception) that it occupies a special place in a divine plan and is called upon to play a crucial role in this plan.
2. Claims that this special place has been assigned to it by G-d, Allah or Jesus and that consequently it knows what goes on in G-d's mind.
3. Claims that it has a mandate from G-d in the execution of its duties, and in the pursuit of these duties there are no human or humane boundaries to its actions.
4. Extremists all have curious end-time eschatological dramas whose actors are in alliance with the dramatic hero, i.e., G-d.
5. Finally, extremists all have varying degrees of connections with and/or influence on other major social and political forces in their communities that some secularist politicians and influential public figures have bought into or have decided to promote them to serve their agendas.
Eschatological ideology has been more pronounced and persistent in American religious history, and so have the concepts of a 'chosen people', and the 'promised land', described often as 'the city on a hill', the 'new Jerusalem', or 'this little American Israel'.
Based upon this self-image, Americans have assigned to themselves--actually taken on by divine dispensation--a special role in the plan for all of humankind.
The concept of Manifest Destiny--a term coined by John O'Sullivan in mid-nineteenth century in connection with the annexation of Texas--had actually been at work from the beginning and is still at work today.
John Winthrop's statement that G-d sifted a nation and chose a 'select few of his spirits' to establish the city on a hill in the New World (Winthorp 1929-1947), is reflected in Ronald Reagan's statement in 1981 that "When G-d put this continent here, He had a plan that it would be peopled by people who uprooted themselves from the comfort of their homes to found the most wonderful nation called Americans" (Walters 1981).
More recently, Carl Rove decided that "G-d postponed the discovery of America until after the Protestant Revolution", and Dick Cheney in 2004 quoted the historian Bernard DeVoto's: "When America was born, the stars danced in the sky" (Cheney 2000).
"Jewish" Crusaders in the Holy Land. How completely assimilated to Christian ideology!