Friday, December 10, 2004

Hirhurim

Reb Simcha posted a very interesting piece today that is worth reading and thinking about.

posted by A Simple Jew @ 11:21 AM   1 comments

1 Comments:

At December 11, 2004 at 6:53:00 PM EST, Blogger Keren Perles said...

I agree that it's an important thing to think about, to realize how it looks. But at the same time, I wish that we could put a disclaimer on people who use those words. While I understand that some people (like those quoted in the article) use them out of spite, others just use them the way that we would use the modern-day "African-American."

My Zayde, for example, calls them "coloreds". I'm not ashamed of writing that, because there are no hard feelings behind it at all. He calls them that because he grew up in a different era. He still calls random guys that he meets "Doc," which people think is strange as well. He calls my mom's cellphone her "faxphone". He uses words all the time that we, as his grandchildren, think are odd. But that's what things were called when he grew up.

My mom, on the other hand, turns red when he uses words that seem discriminatory, even though she knows he doesn't mean it. But she still calls them "blacks." Why? Because when she grew up, on her college campus, there were huge movements to stop the derogatory names that blacks were being called and simply to call them "blacks." She hasn't stopped. My father does the same (went to the same college). And yet my father (who I love SO dearly) is the most loving person I've ever met, and grew up in a very African-American neighborhood. In his words, he spoke Yiddish and ebonics as first languages. He still gets along with all people now, regardless of color. The head police officer on Patrol (which is a solely Orthodox-run practice in Baltimore that protects the whole community--why doesn't someone write about that) was "best buddies" with my Abba for a while, we have a black neighbor two doors down who stays in the neighborhood purely BECAUSE of the Orthodox community here and the "nice neighborhood" that their presence creates...

And yes, my father's mother calls them "Shvartze"s. But it's as derogatory as my mother and father's "black"s or my zayde's "colored"s. Shvartze means black in yiddish, and, for that matter, in german. I wonder what they're called in Germany?

I absolutely did not have time to write this long manifesto, and y'all most probably did not have time to read it either. But it really bothers me when people pick on problems in the Orthodox community and write about them as if they apply, blanket-like, to all frum Jews out there. It's just not true. If you want to write about a problem, fine, write about it. But what's the point? If you want to change the way that people do things, then write about it in an Orthodox publication (and don't say that they won't post it--if it's written the right way, they will. Try the Baltimore WhereWhatWhen. Honestly.) But if you just want to bash the yeshivish community and you post online how much of a "chillul Hashem" they're making, "Let your ears hear what your mouth says."

Feel free to throw the rotten tomatoes now.

 

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