No Modern Orthodox Jew Would Ever Do Anything Like ThisNobody seems to have picked up the serious point of my parody of Harry Maryles' latest post, so here it is:
Of course, Harry is right that charedi hooliganism must be unequivocally condemned, without offering any rationalizations for the perpetrators. The behavior he describes is a shameful chilul hashem.
My objection is to Harry's concocting a scenario in which it was actually a modern Orthodox Jew who acted in such a manner, and then declaring that of course:
I made it up. This scenario did not happen and could not happen... and will never happen. No Modern Orthodox Jew would ever do anything like this.
Really? Didn't a graduate of Yeshiva of Flatbush, Yeshiva University, and even Albert Einstein College Of Medicine shoot dead 29 Arabs?
Wasn't it a Bar Ilan University student who murdered the Prime Minister of Israel?
Who are the extremists who use violence against IDF soldiers and Israeli police officers, and curse them, calling them Nazis?
Perhaps Harry would respond that "modern Orthodox" in North American terms is not exactly identical to "dati leumi" in Israeli terms. The fact that violence occurs in Israel does not mean it would occur here.
Notwithstanding that Baruch Goldstein was American, and that Harry did not limit his "no Modern Orthodox Jew" declaration to enlightened Americans, it is, in any event, equally true that charedim in Israel are generally far more extreme than those here.
Every day, women walk around Boro Park dressed as they wish. Nobody bothers them. When the female rabbi of Boro Park's Reform temple was asked how she liked the neighborhood, the only lament she could muster was that people do not say "good shabbos" to her (as though they say good shabbos to anyone). In Williamsburg, hipsters, yuppies and Hispanics coexist with Satmar chasidim. There may at times be some tension, but there has not been any violence committed by chasidim.
Harry invariably defends his bashing of charedim by reminding readers that his children are mostly charedi (though he takes pains to point out that they are "good" charedim who rejected their modern Orthodox upbringing but were never "indocrinated" by those awful charedi teachers), and that, in any event, he is just as angry at modern Orthodox Jews who act wrongly.
Alas, Harry's declaration that only charedim are capable of behaving violently, in spite of the contrary facts, has greatly undermined his credibility.
posted on 10/27/2006
