Shlomo Greenwald blogs for The Jewish Press:
It is just me, or does it seem like The New York Times has been running more than a handful of articles about the Orthodox Jewish community lately–from a 24-hour shul in Boro Park to billboards in Williamsburg to a haven for frum Jews with doubts–often in the City section.
Still, it’s rare to see in the Times or any other mainstream newspaper, for that matter, such a detailed quote from the Mishnah, as this one from one of the Times’s metro columnists, Clyde Haberman, on Tuesday:
"But first comes the question of New Yorkers’ will to act. That was the point of the mayor’s traipse through history. And whether or not he meant to, he borrowed from Hillel the Elder, a Jewish sage of 2,000 years ago. “If I am not for myself, who will be?” Hillel said. “If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” Mr. Bloomberg’s formulation went this way: “If we don’t act now, when? And if we don’t act, who will?” That echo across two millenniums earned him the biggest applause of the day."
(That column was about the mayor’s new driving into Manhattan proposals.)
If the New York Times doesn’t quote Hillel, who will?
