Luke Ford

I’m skeptical of this claim. Sure, Orthodox Jews more than the less religious people I know, are apt to use racist expressions. Orthodox Jews, for instance, are far less likely to romanticize blacks and to imagine that they have a lot in common with them. Orthodox Jews more than non-Orthodox Jews are likely to believe in the validity of IQ tests and to believe that IQ is distributed unevenly among the races.

But aside from insensitive comments, Orthodox Jews aren’t going out on rampages against blacks. So why would anyone choose against Orthodoxy because they hear Orthodox Jews making vulgar comments? I suspect the only people who are so offended by the word "shvartze" etc that they leave Orthodoxy are people looking for excuses to leave Orthodoxy.

Just because people say X and Y are the reasons they left Orthodoxy does not mean that they are telling the truth. I don’t trust what people say, particularly not about themselves and why they opted out of a demanding discipline such as Orthodoxy.

Orthodox Judaism has a narrow appeal. It’s a highly demanding way of life. Converting to Orthodox Judaism gets a lot of attention but as sociologist Steven M. Cohen points out, 90% of Orthodox Jews were born into the lifestyle.

Rav Yitzhock Adlerstein has a different perspective:

“Loose lips sink ships,” went the World War II slogan urging Americans to be more discreet about sensitive security matters. Today’s advice to the frum community might be “loose lips kill neshamos.” It is more than clear that the price of using ethnic humor and racial slurs is souls lost to the community of practicing Jews.

She was witty, charming, frum, and a Harvard Law School graduate. She was also black, and living as a single woman in an Orthodox neighborhood. One Purim, she was treated in a local shul to the sight of a young mother with a few children in tow. As her Purim get-up, the mother had chosen to adorn herself and her kids with blackface and thick lips. The connection to Purim was not clear. The black Jewess, recounting to me why she eventually left that community and relocated to another state, outside of a frum area, had this comment. “What was that woman trying to tell me? What was she trying to say?”

In all likelihood, she was saying nothing at all. She probably gave no conscious thought to the message that she broadcast. She did not mean to deliberately offend anyone; it just seemed like a quirky thing to do. Her lack of malice, however, did not reduce the collateral damage of her actions.

This was no isolated incident. Frum teachers in our community use racial and ethnic slurs in the classroom; too many rabbonim still use disparaging language – or words like shvartze – thinking that they are harmless within the “in” group.

They aren’t. There isn’t an in-group anymore. Too much of what begins within quickly finds its way out. The in-group is not so homogenous anymore either. Many of those people wearing black hats have relatives who are not Jewish, and members of some of the minority groups that are mocked. They are hurt, offended, or worse when they hear words they cannot accept from those they are supposed to look up to. The very authority of those people sometimes shrinks in the process. Still more people have joined the community with some of their old sensitivities intact, and are turned off when they hear words that they stopped using in grade school. Yet others have just dropped in for a visit to a shul or a Shabbos table, and are so shocked by the language they hear, that they never, ever return for another visit. (It does not take much to convince someone just testing the waters of the observant community that it is not for them. We should be making it easier for them to stay, not to exit.)

Joe emails: The issue is that all too frequently there is a sense that because someone follows halacha or learns in yeshiva, the usual rules of society don’t apply to them. Why should you be polite when on the one hand you daven at a hashkomo minyan, and all the midrashim say that its your davening that’s keeping the world going, and on the other hand, halocho moshe m’sinai esav sonay es yaakov so the goyim a) hate you anyway and b) they are like animals compared to you who daven at the hashkomo minyan and remembered to say mashiv haruach u morid hageshem. And it devolves from there. One can justify anything as long as its balanced out by something frum. You made a racist remark? Well, everyone knows that you put a quarter in the tzedoko box at just the right time during davening al pi halocho. A rosh yeshiva rapes his bochurim? Well, everyone knows that he knows more Torah than any rabbi in LA (to quote something off your site).

The challenge is that it is becoming increasingly hard to believe that the world revolves around these things anymore, once, when the world was distant and peoples lives were more private, less exposed to the broader world in either direction. Its harder to shrug off the whole world now as "goyim" when the balance of literacy, scientific knowledge, technological achievement is no longer the way it was a century ago. The challenge will be to whether the community can grow and evolve or will it become a niche environment of rejectionism for social failures, like some of the stranger neo-Breslov groups, etc.

I lived this my whole life and always hated it. I remember a rosh yeshiva calling U Thant a "chink".

>>>Orthodox racism is like girl-girl to me. I find it cute, endearing and amusing.

Its like people say about NYC. Its great to visit but its horrible trying to live and work there. Its endearing when you come across it and can then go home, but as a sensitive 15 year old and that’s who grades your schoolwork its awful.

This is an important difference between "modern" orthodoxy and this even newer "neo-orthodoxy". The former, which was more typical of normative Judaism in Europe, delegated place to a Rosh Yeshiva, who taught but did not dictate halacha, and was more respected, and then there was the morah d’asra, less respected but decided the law; that allowed for personal integrity. However this new blind-faith movement in orthodoxy creates a harsh new dynamic and frankly, has created much of these problems.

MIKE WRITES TO RAV ADLERSTEIN: You focus on the effect of these words on the listeners. You should also consider the effect on the neshoma of the speaker. In the first place, the speaker lessens his respect for the Tzelem Elokim in whole classes of people; in my experience this contemptuous attitude tends to broaden from the original target. This is despite Ben Azzai referring to recognizing that we all descend from Adam and Chava as a central principal (”clal gadol”) of the Torah. Further, the contemptuous attitude often leads to further aveiros in not treating people according to the Torah’s standard of honesty in business, as we have seen. And this contempt spills over into contempt for Jews who the speaker assumes are less devout than he or she. Finally, whenever we assume we are inherently superior to others, we are on the way to gaiveh.

SARAH SHAPIRO POSTS:

Thank you, Rabbi Adlerstein.

Ever since becoming observant more than thirty five years ago, the eagerness on the part of certain of my brethen to indulge unashamedly in a primitive brand of racism is the one feature of the Orthodox world which has consistently caused me to cringe in embarrassment. The zeal with which some of us seize on lines of Torah as license to demean and dehumanize other human beings on the basis of race or racial characteristics is a reliable measure of one thing only: the unrecognized (and therefore malignant) sense of inadequacy to which Rabbi Adlerstein refers.

For an apparently Torah-observant Jew to derive enjoyment and self-aggrandizement in this manner serves as an indictment of us all. It demeans the speaker far more than it could possibly demean the object`of his scorn, and any sense of tribal solidarity thereby aroused is unkosher, and bogus.

I’ve noticed through the decades that those who demean others on the basis of race can inevitably be heard denigrating their fellow Jews, for the character traits that make such condescension possible cannot be compartmentalized. I assume that in their heart of hearts, such persons are equally cruel to themselves.

RISHONA POSTS:

This is a very frightening topic to discuss and bring to light; but it is important. What you spoke about in your second paragraph is simply horrifying. I am also bothered by something else (and I am sure there was no malice intended); but how is the fact that she is a “Harvard Law School grad” relevant. The single most relevant fact is that she is a Jew. Rather if she is smart, or pretty, or rich or poor…none of that is relevant — and neither is her race. Simply the fact that she is a member of the nation of Israel.

The second issue is that “Black people” are NOT a homogenous group. I am described (self and by others) as a “Black” woman. However my father is 1/2 East Indian (ancestors from Calcutta, India); my mother is 1/8 Native American (Cherokee & Creek). Although it’s not true in my case, many Black people have European ancestors. Some of which might even make them 100% halachaic Jews! Let’s also not overlook the fact that many adherents to non-Orthodox sects of Judaism are not halachaic Jews. But their last names are Rubenstein or Goldberg and they “look Jewish” (read “Eastern European”) so they are easier for the frum community to accept.

This behavior is clearly anti-Torah. What bearing do ancestors have on a person today? Wasn’t Avraham Aveinu the son of an idol worshipper? Didn’t Dovid Ha’Melech decend from the products of incest? Slavery in the Americas (the worst form of slavery that ever existed) thrived on the false notion that “negros” had no souls. Are frum Jews also buying into this horrible myth?

There is another African-American who just recently made history. Alyssa Stanton is the first African-American woman to become a [Reform] Rabbi. But the tragedy here is that she had an Orthodox conversion. She left because of “acceptance”. What a loss. A halachaic Jew off the derech; and the frum community was partly responsible.

I thank Hashem that I have found people and a community that make me feel like an equal. Also most of the frum Jews I have met have behaved much better towards me than the secular society at large. My community and my Rabbi are genuinely concerned about my feelings, my life, and my future (something that is key when you don’t have a Jewish family of your own). Sadly, not all Black frum Jews can say this.

Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik z’tz’l, in *Logic of the Heart, Logic of the Mind* (p. 61) presents the Torah position on racism:

From the standpoint of the Torah, there can be no distinction between one human being and another on the basis of race or color. Any discrimination shown to a human being on account of the color of his or her skin constitutes loathsome barbarity. It must be conceded that the Torah recognizes a distinction between a Jew and a non-Jew. This distinction, however, is not based upon race, origin, or color, but rather upon k’dushah, the holiness endowed by having been given and having accepted the Torah. Furthermore, the distinction between Jew and non-Jew does not involve any concept of inferiority but is based primarily upon the unique and special burdens that are incumbent upon the Jews.”

DANIEL SHAIN POSTS: "I think that racism in our communities is part of the larger phenomenon of disrespect of all non-Jews. Terms like shegetz and shiktze are disrespectful, and I have heard prominent rabbanim use them. One supported his use of the terms as a geder to prevent intermarriage, so his children would know that the “shiktze” is off limits."

Yitzi777 writes: I’m curious if anyone who is a more MO/Liberal type feels uncomfortable with the Rav claiming that a Granparent-Grandchild relationship is unique to the Jewish People & his admitting to being a Jewish Chauvinist?