Thursday, August 22, 2013

Growing hasidic population in N.Y. causing conflicts

NY Times   Needing to abide by their tribe’s traditions of modesty, Hasidic women want the city to post a female lifeguard during a women-only swim session at a municipal pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and have lobbied a local councilman to take up their cause. 

On another front, Hasidic matzo bakeries, citing ancient Jewish law, have insisted on using water from groundwater wells rather than from reservoirs in preparing the dough used for matzos and have found themselves tangling with health officials worried about the water’s purity. 

And on a public bus service that plies a route between the Hasidic neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Borough Park, Brooklyn, men sit up front and women in the back, hewing to the practice of avoiding casual mingling of the sexes, even after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg condemned the arrangement. 

While these episodes may not have reverberated beyond New York’s Hasidic enclaves, taken together they underscore a religious ascendancy confronting the city’s secular authorities in ways not seen in decades. 

The remarkable rise in the population and the influence of Hasidim and other ultra-Orthodox Jews has provoked repeated conflicts over revered practices, forcing the city into a balancing act between not treading over constitutional lines by appearing to favor a particular religious group and providing an accommodation no more injurious than suspending parking rules for religious holidays.[...]

10 comments:

  1. Hasidim have also been pressing public libraries in their neighborhoods to open on Sunday, just as the post office and banks now do, since they cannot patronize them on the Sabbath.

    a shanda, going to the library!

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  2. What happened to "Shhhh, just be compliant with what the goyim do and don't complain"?

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    1. No, that only applies for their attacks on (and hate for) Israel, zionism and zionist Jews. It doesn't apply to themselves and their peculiar desires in NYC. For their needs of comfort they can shake the world and try to persuade the nonJews.

      Don't mess with the goyim and their rule is not an operating principle but just a slogan to throw at political rivals and to call others violators of. Judaism.

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  3. In the New York Area, there are 239,000 chassidim & and 97,000 yeshivish -- for a total of 336,000 "charedim" ... out of a total population in New York of 19,570,000 ... which means that "charedim" are a grand total of ... 1.7% of New York's population!

    If the majority population doesn't like the "charedi excesses", then let them take-care-of-business ... after all non-chareim are 98.3% of New York's population.

    Same story in Israel. There are only about 800,000 charedim in Israel -- 10% of Israel's population - and 13% of Israeli Jews. If the majority population doesn't like the charedi status quo of the last 35 years (since 1977), then let them take-care-of-business. The secular-national religious are 70% of Israel's population - and 87% of Israeli Jews... It appears that change is coming...and now the medina is finally slashing funding and welfare and subsidies to the charedi community... The cuts go into effect NOW, starting in August...

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    1. Your numbers are way off. There are closer to a half a million Hareidim in NYC. NYC's total population is 8 million and Brooklyn's total population, where the vast majority of Hareidim live, is 2.5 million. So Hareidim are an increasingly large percentage.

      And other Orthodox Jews, who constitute hundreds of thousands more in NYC and millions more in Israel, identify with Hareidim far more than they identify with Reform, Conservative and secular/chilonim.

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  4. Folks are simply going to have to get used to the fact that Hareidi Judaism is not only the face of the future of Judaism it is increasingly the strongest fact of modern Judaism.

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  5. These conflicting views will come to an apex and anger/hostility and intolerance will grow. Sort of adopting the Israeli life to the shores of New York. Can not see this being good for Toras Hashem or for Israel!!

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    1. Jews have always been hated. The practice of Judaism has always been hated.

      There is no reason to expect Hareidim to be hated less, or their practice of Judaism to be hated less, than Jews have been for millenia.

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  6. Let Them Move To Lakewood, N.J. There are More Than 2000 Chasideshe Families Living in Lakewood, Belz is Right Now in The Process of Building Their own Kirya In Lakewood

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  7. Hasidim today constitute approximately 50% of American Orthodox Jewry. Non-Hasidic Hareidim constitute another 30% with the Modern Orthodox constituting the remaining 20%.

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