News Roundup – Thur. 1/28
They come, they clean, they leave. Occasionally they’ll be given a few Ostreicher’s chocolate chip cookies and some apple juice in a plastic cup. (“Chas v’shulem, not from my dishes!”) But here’s the human side (and a bit of history) to what goes on every morning at the corner of Marcy and Division, right at the BQE overpass in Williamsburg. “They’ve been coming here forever and they clean fast,” said a Hasidic woman who introduced herself as Ms. Katz, 30. She came to the shape-up pushing a baby carriage: “I have six children. I need help.” One wonders if Mrs. Katz ever bothered to ask the cleaning woman about her children, or the family she left behind in Ecuador, or just sat down to join her over that paper plate of Ostreicher’s cookies.
This article by Rabbi Abraham Twerski is notable for both its content and the implied worldview of its readership. Twerski, in his benevolence, doesn’t blame the Haitian victims for there sinfulness. He blames it on other non-Jews, those the world over who don’t follow the Noahide laws. That it might be blamed on Jews who don’t follow the Jewish laws seems to have escaped his kabalah-cosmology-based worldview.
The piece is also notable in that it implies his readers need some supernatural explanation for the Haitian crisis—not so notable in itself, except that the prevailing attitude he addresses seems to be of the Pat Robertson/Avi Shafran sort, i.e. there must be someone, somewhere to blame. So to sum up the trio of God-spokespersons on Haiti: Pat Robertson blames the Haitians for their sins; Avi Shafran blames Jewish cartoonists for lashon hara; and Abraham Twerski blames non-Jews all over. Someone ought to organize a conclave of religious authorities so they can synthesize their sin-blaming; the public, after all, is bound to get confused by the lack of a coherent theory. Consenus, my dear Godly friends, is crucial.
Someone find the Sambatyon river quick, because Israel is running out of lost tribes. Israel is preparing to repatriate 7,000 members of a supposedly “lost Jewish” tribe, known as the Bnei Menashe, currently living in a remote area of India. The new immigrants will be settled in areas of the West Bank close to Palestinian areas where most Israelis won’t venture. Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail, who has been involved with the tribe since the early 1980s, says we are nearing the biblical prophecy of a coming apocalypse – one shared by “End of Days” evangelical Christians – in which “all the world is against Israel” in a battle to be decided in Jerusalem. “We must prepare by making sure that all the Jews are in the Land of Israel,” he said. “There are more than six million among the lost tribes and they must be brought to Israel as a matter of urgency.” Someone’s gotta fight Gog Umagog, so what if they’re Indian Shinlung or Ethiopian Falash Mura. One can’t be too choosy in gearing up for epic battles.
A group of seventeen Chasidim is alleging discrimination by the New York City Housing Authority for being excluded from public housing. They brought a lawsuit against the Housing Authority on the grounds that the percentage of housing allotted to Chasidim does not accurately reflect their representation in the community. The lawsuit was thrown out for lack of documentation. I’d say who needs documentation when you can just watch the shtreimlech going in and out of the Division and Clymer Avenue projects.
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Some of my patients do ask me about my children and I wish they’d leave me alone. I’m there to work.
But one thing absolutely horrified me once a Jewish pt (chabad) came in complaining about how exhausted she was because cleaning lady didn’t show up. Jewish ladies, please, don’t do that in public in a hospital in New York. The person in the chair right next to you could be a cleaning lady. And they rarely complain about it, though they’re just as pregnant as you.
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Lost tribes… if there’s anyone who we should be reaching out to it’s our Arab brothers, many of whom descend from Jews of the second temple period and later.
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very unwise of the chasidim to bring the lawsuit. The Last thing they want is for a governement office to start digging for evidence.
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Maybe this statement reflects my outsider status, but it seems to me that it would be considered taboo by the chasidim to be living in public housing…much less bringing attention to it through a lawsuit.
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