Why would there be unease over hundreds of Orthodox Jews moving into a neighborhood? Are you saying that different groups have different interests? That sounds unAmerican to me.
The influx, however, has provoked tensions with long-established residents, as the ultra-Orthodox seek to establish a larger footprint for their surging population. Residents complain that investors or real estate agents representing the ultra-Orthodox community have been ringing doorbells persistently, offering to buy properties at “Brooklyn prices.” Jersey City, Toms River and Jackson have all passed no-knock ordinances barring such inquiries under the threat of fines or have banned solicitations altogether.
The mayor of Jersey City, Steven Fulop, said his town took pride in its diversity but had been concerned about “very aggressive solicitation.”
…New York City and the surrounding suburbs are home to the largest concentration of Jews in the country and because of their high birthrate — five or six children are common — Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox Jews represent the fastest-growing subset. They are now estimated to number about 330,000 in New York City alone — one-third of the city’s overall Jewish population.
They have become a more muscular political and social force and have turned the generally liberal profile of the area’s Jews more observant and conservative. Lakewood Township, near the Jersey Shore, voted for Donald J. Trump last year by the largest margin — 50 percentage points over Hillary Clinton — of any New Jersey community, according to an analysis by NJ Advance Media.
Squeezed out of their traditional neighborhoods, ultra-Orthodox Jews have taken steps that have raised concerns as they settle into new communities.
Michele Massey, a former Jersey City councilwoman who is the executive director of an organization that oversees a commercial corridor along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, said Hasidim had opened a synagogue on the avenue despite a recent zoning change forbidding new houses of worship.
“It’s not because they’re Jewish,” Ms. Massey said of her opposition. “It could have been any other religion or group. It was simply the zoning law. I’m a person of color. Obviously I don’t care who lives where.”
The Hasidim contend that they have been primarily buying boarded-up or vacant homes and that solicitations have come from outside investors, not from the families that have moved in. They support the city’s no-knock law and point out that the Hasidic families that have moved into the Greenville neighborhood are a minuscule fraction of the area’s 47,000 people, half of whom are black…
Underlying the objections of many municipalities is an often unspoken worry that ultra-Orthodox Jews will transform the character of their communities. The ultra-Orthodox may not explicitly raise the specter of anti-Semitism, but they do see a bias against their unconventional lifestyle, modest dress and customs. Orthodox Jews, in general, live in tight-knit communities because of their need to cluster around an infrastructure that includes a synagogue within walking distance, kosher butchers, yeshivas for boys and girls, and ritual baths.
Posted inOrthodoxy|Comments Off on NYT: ‘Uneasy Welcome as Ultra-Orthodox Jews Extend Beyond New York’
* Anyone using social media must be aware that others such as the unReasonable people do not play by the same rules. Do not expect fair play or civil discourse. The Marquis of Queensbury was obviously part of the dreaded Patriarchy so his influences must be eliminated.
* Shouldn’t this be an example of Sailer’s first law of female professionals: They can’t stand criticism!
Or is it: They can be vicious when someone makes a silly remark they don’t like but they expect their mistakes to be instantly forgiven.
* Libertarianism is a Jewish ideological plot to atomize and destroy the European Christian ancestral core of the United States.
* Libertarians have always been heavy on the (selective) libertinism and rather light on the liberty. Someone once described them as “closeted homosexual pot smokers who like low taxes” and the type seems to have some truth in it. Their gambit is ratifying leftist social war victories (no matter the means or the implications for conflicting liberties) while not putting their shoulders behind the right’s push back against creeping left wing authoritarianism. They seem to get off on opportunities for finger-wagging to their right with “neener-neener, I told you so” (e.g., the bizarro-world where if government was never “in the marriage business” we wouldn’t be forcing pizza parlors to cater gay “weddings” at gun point).
* It’s remarkable how eager so many “libertarians” are to play the identity politics game, and most viciously, when it offends their own favored groups.
Cathy Young will be the first to call something “anti-Semitic” and “racist” when it suits her. This other woman at Reason is happy to sic her dogs on anyone who disrespects her “feminist” needs. I see also that Reason is seriously bent out of shape over Trump’s transgender ban.
How different are these people, really, from the PC left? How can they not see that their own behavior is just more of PC gone wild?
Frankly, as usual, these “libertarians” just give me the creeps. Like all ideologues, they lack entirely any sense of proportion.
* I saw this Twitter exchange too. I was appalled, thought about it for a minute, and decided that mob violence is intellectually consistent libertarianism, and continued to be appalled.
Imagine a guy who says: I was born a rapist, but–no no, don’t worry, don’t freak out. I’m not a practicing rapist, thanks to years of the preemptive conversion therapy literally blasted at me from every public institution in the West. So, I’m just celibate.
Should I come out? I know a few guys who are public about their depraved thoughts. One guy even celebrates it! Rape pride, he says. We are the world.
Posted inRape|Comments Off on Should Rapists Have Pride?
Humor, like eroticism, contains hostility, sometimes disguised.
When you tell a joke about someone, it is rarely praise. When you really want to f*** someone, it is quite distinct from making love, and it is always always for someone you don’t know well. As soon as you know someone well, it destroys erotic attraction (because you can’t objectify them anymore and objectification is essential for sexual arousal, per Robert Stoller). The half-life of a sexual relationship is six weeks.
To be Jewish is to be permanently dissatisfied.
WASPs tend to be straight forward. Jews tend to be complicated.
Forward: “Only 50% Of Forward Staffers Get This Seinfeld Joke — Do You?”
Steve Sailer writes: Here’s a video of Jerry Seinfeld telling a joke about two gentile businessmen to Norm MacDonald and his sidekick Adam Eget, the meta-point of which is that Norm, an extreme gentile, won’t understand why the joke is funny to Jerry and his fellow older Jews:
I think I can figure out why the joke is funny …
If I am correct, you can use economics jargon to describe the implied ethnic difference in business behavior, or you can use my usual terminology about glasses.
Comments at Steve Sailer:
* The joke is that jews always find something to complain about. Hi-larious. Or something.
* Jewish businessmen would kvetch (I think that’s the right spelling) about how terrible business was. Complaining is a form of social bonding in Jewish culture, as is (friendly) arguing.
* A Gentile is in a clothing store. “How much for that jacket?,” he asks. “$500,” the salesman says. “OK, I’ll take it,” the Gentile says.
A Gentile calls his mother”: “Mother, I know I was supposed to be coming for dinner tonight, but this girl I’m interested in is free tonight and I’d like to get together with her instead.” “OK, have a nice time!,” says the mother.
You get the idea.
* Protestants like me, who had to deal with New York Jews in the garment or diamond district would get it immediately.
The joke is, the response was straightforward. It’s considered a weakness. Perhaps even hateful.
* My guess is that it’s always told to a Gentile by a Jew, the joke being that there is nothing to get, which makes the Gentile feel clueless. In other words the joke is on the Gentile. Other Jews get it.
* OK, to get Jerry’s joke, you need to know that “How’s business” is the theme of other Jewish jokes; it’s almost a joke genre. And in all those jokes, the answer is never “great”. The answer is that business is bad, and the punchline is about the way business is bad. For example…
Yankel: “Nu, Shloyme, so how’s business?”
Shloyme: “Horrible. The suppliers are gouging me. The customers aren’t coming in the door like they used to. The Czar has upped my taxes… I’m losing money every day I stay open.”
Yankel: “Then why don’t you close up shop?”
Shloyme: “Close shop? Then what would I live from?”
More generally, traditional Jews are worried, even when things are good, about jinxing themselves. And so, just as “great” is the wrong answer to “How’s business”, it’s the wrong answer to “How is your health?” This is covered in depth by Michael Wex, in his wonderful _Born to Kvetch_.
* Jewish kids don’t get the old Jewish jokes. I learned this one way back when at Brandeis: Question: “What do you call two Jews walking down the street together?” Answer: “An argument.” I recently told it to a young friend and she just looked bewildered.
* Less a “Jew” joke than a geographical joke. Tri-state Gentiles know only too well that Tri-state Jews have a long established reputation of complaining about absolutely everything that happens in the tri-state area (New Jersey; New York; Connecticut).
I actually had this conversation with the owner of a New Haven shoe store (I had mailed him a $500 check for three pairs of English shoes that was his store’s stock-specialty for the Yale U. crowd) :
OWNER : You sent me a check. I’m gonna need your credit card number. Your check might bounce.
ME : Hold the order until the check clears – – – I’m in no hurry.
OWNER : Why are you in no hurry? Is there something wrong? Maybe you should be in a hurry.
The store owner wasn’t pulling my leg, at least to my Gentile ears there was no hint of mockery in his voice. But maybe he was putting me on because he shipped my order before my check even cleared. To this day, his behavior towards me is a mystery wrapped in an enigma!
* Yes, you’ve got it. The answer “Great!” is sweet and direct and Boy Scout-ish and positive and uncomplaining… Without guile or irony or neurosis.
You know, there’s that old joke about how a WASP is someone who steps out of the shower to pee.
Okay, that’s not exactly the same thing, but I like it.
Or how’s this? Back in 1993, when my friend and I (both Jews) went to see the movie “Gettysburg,” we stumbled out of the theater exhausted, impressed, awed, as if we’d actually witnesed the great battle, all that nobility and self-sacrifice, that indefatigable energy, that incredible bravery, charging in the face of those bullets, etc. etc…. and my friend just shook his head and said simply, “Gentiles!”
* The joke is that a Jewish businessman would never answer “great” to the question, even if objectively speaking, business were going great for the Jewish businessman. The Jewish businessman would always complain about something. Whereas a gentile businessman may answer “great” even if things were going terribly.
* The inside knowledge that Seinfeld is implicitly referring to in his Jew-joke is the victim culture business, which is orchestrated by you know who.
Norman G. Finkelstein has written a book about it and refers to it as the Holocaust Industry.
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering is a 2000 book by Norman G. Finkelstein, in which Finkelstein argues that the American Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Nazi Holocaust for political and financial gain, as well as to further the interests of Israel.[1] According to Finkelstein, this “Holocaust industry” has corrupted Jewish culture and the authentic memory of the Holocaust.
* In order to understand the joke you really have to understand the concept of the “evil eye”, which is not specifically Jewish (and which is superstitious rather than religious) and is shared by many Mediterranean cultures. If you admit that things are “great” then you will draw the jealous attention of the evil eye to yourself and this will result in misfortune. So it’s better to say “I’m doing OK” or “I’m keeping my head above water.” At the very least you have to ward off the evil eye by qualifying it with the Yiddish incantation “kayn ayin hora”usually slurred as “kaynnahora” (literally “no evil eye”) . “Business is great, kaynnahora”, meaning “may it not draw the attention of the evil eye upon me for saying this”. But even safer not to admit that it’s great.
* A lot of gentile businessmen complain about business when asked. Businessmen are generally competitive and so they see flaws that need to be fixed wherever they look. They have a perfectionist streak. How to achieve perfection? Fix or avoid imperfections. It’s why good lawyers are depressed generally. They find flaws.
The other reason is that if you are making money, you don’t want your competitors to know how, or that you even are. It also invites any supplier to gouge you on price.
Jews have a refined version of business culture. Hence the joke, even if it’s not so true of gentile businessmen in general. There are exceptions to this though. I bet Larry Ellison doesn’t kvetch so much. He probably points to his car, his mansion, the babe on his arm, his yachting trophies…
* Larry David is told he was adopted and flies to Arizona to meet his real parents; discovering a life-changing religious revelation. S05E10.
Posted inJews|Comments Off on Trying To Explain A Jewish Joke To A Goy
DUBLIN — The Sunday Times of London has fired the writer of an op-ed article denouncing the campaign by women of the British Broadcasting Corporation for equal pay after the column sparked widespread accusations that it was anti-Semitic and misogynistic.
The move came after the article, by Kevin Myers, an Irish journalist with a record of provocative right-wing statements, was pulled from its website and the editor of The Sunday Times and the editor of the paper’s Irish edition apologized for the column.
Framing his piece as an attack on the push to close the pay gap at the BBC, Mr. Myers wrote:
“I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC — Claudia Winkelman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted — are Jewish. Good for them. Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity. I wonder, who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in their marketplace.”
Elsewhere he wrote:
“Only one woman is among the top 10 best-paid BBC presenters. Now, why is this? Is it because men are more charismatic performers? Because they work harder? Because they are more driven? Possibly a bit of each. The human resources department — what used to be called “personnel” until people come to be considered as a metabolising, respiring form of mineral ore — will probably tell you that men usually work harder, get sick less frequently and seldom get pregnant.”
The column, which had been commissioned for the print version of the outlet’s Irish edition, also attacked “the PC traitors who run BBC News and current affairs, which have stifled and corrupted all useful debate on national identity, immigration and race, thereby doing irreversible damage to British society.”
…Born in England to Irish parents, Mr. Myers has long been a strident and at times deeply controversial voice in the Irish news media, first as a columnist for The Irish Times (which is not connected to The Sunday Times of London), and then later The Irish Independent group.
In 2009, he wrote a column for The Belfast Telegraph, part of the Irish Independent group, which said, “There was no Holocaust, and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich.” The article accepted that there had been a deliberate mass genocide against the Jews of Europe, but said that the term “holocaust” was inaccurate and that the exact number of dead could not be known.
According to the Irish Independent group’s website, that article was also taken down from archives on Sunday.
In 2005, Mr. Myers was widely criticized for a column in The Irish Times in which he referred to the children of single parents as “bastards.” Writing about foreign aid to Africa in The Irish Independent in 2008, he said that in contrast, “Africa, with its vast savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.”
* Modern Irish seem to be much better speakers than writers. I find modern Irish writing, the sort in the press, to be pointlessly effusive. There’s a foaming at the mouth vibe to it. Americans like plain talk and hate phonies, so the English and Irish can strike us a bit false, but Irish writing today is turgid.
* His language is a bit flowery to decipher, but his position seems to be that
(1) if men are paid more than women, it’s because men work harder and are more deserving;
(2) if Jews are paid more than non-Jews, it’s because Jews are pushy and demanding.
So it does seem that he is doing more than just “mentioning Jews,” it seems he is applying a double-standard and invalidating Jewish accomplishments, which is a pretty common trope among anti-Semites.
* Here is his logical argument, which is sorta weak I think, even aside from the reliance on stereotypes:
1. W and F are Jewish.
2. Jews are noted for their hard bargaining and are no doubt represented by the best, most hard bargaining talent agents.
3. Other lesser paid female reporters are no doubt represented by these same agents who drive equally hard bargains and achieve the best possible results on their behalf .
4. Therefore, these lesser paid females are already being paid a market rate and their lower pay is a reflection of their actual value and not a result of gender discrimination.
The weakness, aside from the stereotypes, is in “no doubt” qualifications – he is assuming facts not in evidence. Maybe the nice goyish lady reporters are too reticent or too anti-Semitic to hire hard driving (Jewish) talent agents. Their bosses offer them 70 cents on the dollar (70 pence on the pound) because they hate women/ think they can get away with it and they take it because they are too nice to bargain. If Jews are noted for their hard bargaining then non-Jews must be noted for their not-hard bargaining, I guess.
Bringing Jews into the thing was really unnecessary. Points #1 and 2 could have been that W and F are top paid and no doubt represented by the best agents without bringing their ethnicity into it at all. The mark of the anti-Semite is that he brings up Jewishness when it is not really germane to the subject at hand. Here we are talking about gender discrimination and suddenly he brings Joos into the argument for no particularly good reason.
Regarding nepotism, you could conceivably argue (though he doesn’t, because it would actually undermine the point he is trying to make) that the agents try harder for their coreligionists (assuming that the agents are also Jewish, which he doesn’t state either) and this explains why they make more than other female reporters. It’s at least as strong as the argument that he is trying to make.
* Occam’s Razor dictates that the reason lady presenters are paid less is that they have a sharp career trajectory (the rise faster than men in the industry and fall faster than men as well) and that it is relative to their years of peak attractiveness.
This was the likely explanation for why female movie leads are paid less than their male counterparts and why the hullabaloo is nonsense. Bradley Cooper was paid more than Jennifer Lawrence because Lawrence is eminently more replaceable by the next early twentysomething ingenue. But the flip side is that while Bradley Cooper was toiling in obscurity in bit parts in television shows and straight to DVD movies (remember him as the psycho boyfriend in Wedding Crashers?), Lawrence’s rise to prominence was meteoric. She didn’t have the ten plus years of couch surfing and supplementing meager acting income by waiting tables like Cooper and Clooney. Also note the cannibalistic nature of female leads – the new one on the scene tends to push out her elder sisters when they are deemed too old to play the female leads (think Ashley Judd, who complains about not getting roles like she used to do). It’s a bit hypocritical to take advantage of Hollywood’s favor for young female leads on the front end (while pushing out the old gray mares) and then complain about not getting roles when you get pushed out in favor of the new girl.
Posted inAnti-Semitism|Comments Off on NYT: Sunday Times of London Fires Writer Over Article Called Anti-Semitic
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
