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Sep 9, 2019
treating people like zoo animals
According to an article in the NY Post, Orthodox Jews in New York are sick of being photographed like zoo animals.
It seems there are tours now that specialize in taking groups into hassidic and ultra-orthodox neighborhoods of New York and showing the tourists the hassidim and talking a bit about their lifestyle (whether accurate or not). The tourists, understandably, snap lots of pictures of the people dressed in garb that looks a couple hundred years old, as if in a ghetto or shtetl, making the residents feel like they are a tourist attraction, which they basically have become, or like animals in a zoo.
Shtisel hitting screens worldwide on Netflix is likely one of the causes of the interest in Hassidim.
Seeing their response, that they feel like zoo animals, makes me wonder how bothersome it is when people go anywhere and snap pictures of the locals. The Old City of Jerusalem is a tourist hot zone, though not necessarily for the photographing of local residents, but people travel the world and take pictures of the locals wherever they go in places that people dress and look differently. I am thinking of people traveling to India, to places in Africa such as Ethiopia and other countries, Japan, China, and many other places. Even religious Jews do it in other Jewish neighborhoods when we see interesting looking people, such as in Mea Shearim or Bnei Braq.
Is it invasive and treating them like "zoo animals"? Are we being bothersome and annoying?
It seems there are tours now that specialize in taking groups into hassidic and ultra-orthodox neighborhoods of New York and showing the tourists the hassidim and talking a bit about their lifestyle (whether accurate or not). The tourists, understandably, snap lots of pictures of the people dressed in garb that looks a couple hundred years old, as if in a ghetto or shtetl, making the residents feel like they are a tourist attraction, which they basically have become, or like animals in a zoo.
Shtisel hitting screens worldwide on Netflix is likely one of the causes of the interest in Hassidim.
Seeing their response, that they feel like zoo animals, makes me wonder how bothersome it is when people go anywhere and snap pictures of the locals. The Old City of Jerusalem is a tourist hot zone, though not necessarily for the photographing of local residents, but people travel the world and take pictures of the locals wherever they go in places that people dress and look differently. I am thinking of people traveling to India, to places in Africa such as Ethiopia and other countries, Japan, China, and many other places. Even religious Jews do it in other Jewish neighborhoods when we see interesting looking people, such as in Mea Shearim or Bnei Braq.
Is it invasive and treating them like "zoo animals"? Are we being bothersome and annoying?
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and chasidim do it when they go to see the Amish in Pennsylvania
ReplyDeleteanother good example, though everyone does it
DeleteSome Amish don't mind, some do.
DeleteThe Old City, to my mind, is different from other places. That has many important sites that people visit, so it is not surprising that tourists come there to take pictures. If you live there, that is part of what you bought into. IOW, it is not a purely residential area, like Williamsburg or Meah Shearim, where the residents legitimately might say, we just want to be left alone to live in peace.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Yeshiva, I had a friend who used to take pictures of the tourists at the Kotel.
ReplyDeleteWhen my mother paid her first visit to Israel, I took her to the kotel via the old city. On the way down the steps, she saw 2 chasidim talking on the steps, and asked me to take a photo of her with the Kotel and the chasidim in the background. After the shot, the chasidim noticed us, and proceeded to ruin the whole event by putting out their hands and shouting "Tzedoka!!". My mother wanted to know to know what was happening, and I told her they were shnorrers, and gave them some money.
ReplyDelete