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Jul 25, 2017

you cannot live amongst us but we must be able to live amongst you

The Haredi news sites are carrying to unconnected, but connected, stories about Haredi communities around Israel.

Both stories are about local askanim, in each community, setting the tone for the community and saying only people who fit a certain model can live within. Anybody else has to leave and if they stay or buy within the community, without conforming to the rules, will be kept at arms length until they give up and leave.

1 story is about the community in the Haredi community of Har Yona (Gimmel) in Upper Nazareth. It seems there is some tension between the local Chabad community and the local Litvishe community. Despite having supposedly come to a working agreement, the Litvishe neighborhood council has decided to chase out one of the Chabad residents, Michal Ifergan, saying she does not dress modestly enough for the neighborhood. Her family is both sefardi and Chabad, a double whammy, and is being chased out of town.

Ifergan's opponents claim they are not upset at her because of her being sefardi or because she is a Chabadnik, but for tzniyus issues as she is "charedi lite". They say, there are various streams of Chabad in the area and their hashkafa is far from Chabad. As if they have the right to decide who is close and who is far from the belief system of someone else and of a different group. They also say "would you want your children to be living next door to a family who's father can be seen taking a television out of the car? These people are not appropriate for our lifestyle.

The 2nd story is about a community in Givat Zeev that is making rules that will keep out people who do not follow them, and the rules naturally exclude sefardim. The rules include items such as the wife must wear a specific length wig, another that limits what newspapers can be read -  with the sefardi shas-affiliated paper not included in the list, and more. Acceptance into schools will have to go through the acceptance committee - meaning, even if someone buys or rents in the area circumventing the acceptance committee and does not follow the rules, their kids won't be accepted to local schools.

Right? Wrong? Bad? Good? I am not going to talk about that. What do I know? Self-appointed rulers deciding who is and who is not kosher, who can live where and who cannot live where, is not to my taste.

The only thing I will say is that I shake my head when I see this all too common phenomenon and then read about the Haredi community complaining about how other communities refuse to agree to build housing projects and neighborhoods for Haredim so as not ruin their city and community. Haredi communities feel perfectly fine blocking out everyone not like them, even Haredim who are slightly different, but do not like it when other people block them out.






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1 comment:

  1. Both communities should be nuked from orbit. Just to be sure. I'd rather have a 1000 Arab neighbors than even one Charedi of this stripe.

    ReplyDelete

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