Two New York Newspapers Spread anti-Jewish Hate In 48 Hours

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Not for the first time are the people who are protesting most loudly against religious Jews, Jews themselves.

   On Friday, New York Times writer Shmuel Rosner wrote an Opinion piece entitled “Ultra-Orthodox Jews Greatest Strength Has Become their Greatest Weakness,” in which “feel[s] an urgent need to advise ultra-Orthodox Jews to adapt to a new reality, one in which ultra-Orthodoxy’s great success — its ability to thrive in a modern world — has become its great challenge.”

   The topic on which Rosner wishes to advise Charedi Jews is that they are, in his telling, “playing with fire.”

  “Haredi Jews are well practiced in defying the larger society in which they live, and defiance is the tool they pulled out when new pandemic rules were dictated,” Rosner wrote. “They did it by using political clout and harsh rhetoric, arguing that the authorities were being discriminatory.”

   As some part of Rosner’s soul reminded him that “Jews and gentiles must be careful not to single out the ultra-Orthodox, who look different and act different from most of us,” he gave lip service to the following: “I will try my best to be cautious. I will also state that I see much to admire in the ultra-Orthodox way of life: the sense of community and mutual responsibility, the emphasis on study, the devotion to tradition. “

   That said, Rosner promptly trotted out every hackneyed accusation against Charedi Jews both in New York and Israel: They are suspicious of science, they don’t serve in the army, in pandemics, they send their children to school, and they attend funerals and weddings, and they “use political clout and harsh rhetoric as they argue that the authorities were being discriminatory.”

    Rosner even described Jews’ lack of engagement with the mainstream culture as, “stiff-necked mentality,” a phrase I have not heard since working at an office with non-Jews in the Midwest. Strange to read it coming from a New York Jew.

   Rosner’s “sage” advice for us? We are old fashioned and need to assimilate as soon as possible to make secular Jews more comfortable.  

    “Haredi leaders to realize that their model of isolation from the larger public is becoming archaic,” Rosner wrote.

  Then, yesterday, Leslie Kendall Dye, also a Jew, used her space in the NYDailyNews to criticize the Jews of her “beloved neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan,” for staying silent or speaking out against the city’s arrangement to contract three “boutique hotels  to house homeless men who had been in… shelters downtown.”

   Although Dye calls the hosting of homeless men in the Upper West Side “a tidy arrangement,” other residents decried what Dye minimized as “bad behavior on the streets.” When the residents who objected to the disturbances on their streets started a Facebook Group called “Upper West Siders for Safer Streets,” raised money, and hired a lawyer, Dye called those residents proponents of “segregation.”

    “I was raised by two Jewish parents who had an ambivalent relationship with their heritage,” Dye writes. “My mother grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the 1940s, a time and place where Jews were seen as déclassé outsiders at best. I was taught that my ancestors’ finest achievement was assimilation.

   “I have often asked what it means to be a Jew. Now I know.”

   Wow. Actually, Ms. Dye, I don’t think you do.

   Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein called out the unfortunate repetition of history of Jews speaking loshon hara about other Jews in public when he tweeted, “Only in NYC would two leading newspapers print “blame the Jews” op-eds within 48 hours of each other. Of course, both writers are Jewish, so that makes it “okay” for them to slander “other” Jews.” 

   Curiously, one topic on which I did not see an Op-Ed in any New York newspaper last week, was the Tuesday night BLM “protest” over the death by police in Philadelphia of Walter Wallace Jr, a knife-wielding African-American man, whom his own family said had severe mental disturbances.

  Although on Wednesday at a press conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio described the evening's events as “a mostly peaceful protest,”  WNBC reported that the “Protests  turned violent in Brooklyn Tuesday night, resulting in more than two dozen arrests, multiple officers hurt and damaged police vehicles.”

 WNBC continued to report, “The protests in Downtown Brooklyn quickly turned violent, as protesters broke the windows of businesses, mostly stores and banks, and started small fires in garbage cans.”

    By the end of the night 39 businesses were vandalized, many car windshields were broken, and many Brooklyn residents reported to feeling “terrified.”

   Despite the anger and fear of Brooklyn residents, reporters at the major newspapers did not see any need to perhaps call out “weaknesses” of BLM protests that often end in destruction, looting, vandalism, and violence.

  The newspapers didn’t seem to mind that Brooklyn businesses were left to repair costly damages and left to clean off anti-capitalism graffiti. Many residents reported that felt threatened and terrified and said that the atmosphere on the streets during the protests “felt dangerous.”

  The New York Daily News reported on Thursday that Brooklyn restaurant manager, Mahmoud Alsafarini, 25, “hours after a violent borough protest marked by shattered glass, trash fires and 39 damaged businesses, suggested the demonstrators give peace a chance.

   Alsafarini, had arrived at the Hadramout Restaurant for his Wednesday morning shift when he saw the “smashed windows at a Starbucks and a Bank of America branch on Court St., along with the windshield of a green taxi”

   “These businesses don’t belong to them,” said Alsafarini in the aftermath of the wild Tuesday night march. “Say what you need to say without violence. I was worried initially because the employees were still here. They didn’t have anything to protect themselves.”

   When asked on Wednesday by a reporter whether the situation in Brooklyn Tuesday night compared to that of the one in early June with the George Floyd protests, Mayor Bill de Blasio predictably responded, "The overall reality was peaceful protest that was managed and facilitated by the NYPD."

  As a side note, the mayor added that “violence against people, property and fire setting is unacceptable.”

  But for a group of people who mostly have antibodies against COVID-19 and sometimes do not wear masks, fingers need to be pointed.