Gitty Grunwald Aside; Mr. Jacobson, Why The Hate?

As I was reading this article in the New York Magazine, I felt very hurt. Hurt in a way only the power of the written word can make someone feel. Its not the fabricated lies put down as facts, or the strange Chasidic way of life blown out of proportion that bothered me, it’s just the obvious hate behind it.

No one can really blame Gitty Grunwald herself for smearing the Chasidic community where she had to spend her confused youth. coming from a broken family, its understandable for her to hate her past and thus the environment she spent it in. my problem is with the writer Mark Jacobson, who as I understand from his article has yet to spend more then 10 minutes with a Chasidic Jew anyway, so if he doesn’t really know us, why does he hate us?

Now I know we are different, strange, weird, and maybe creepy to the outsider, but are we bad or dangerous? It reminds me of what Jackie Mason says “did you ever see 4 black people walking down the street saying ‘watch out! There is a Jew over there’… you ever see anybody afraid to walk in to a Jewish neighborhood because he might get killed by an accountant”? I don’t think anybody fears Chasidic people.

So we are weird people with a bizarre way of life and odd habits; but how about the fact that Chasidic neighborhoods have the lowest crime rates than anywhere else, in fact KJ has a 0% crime rate.

So we have arranged marriages at a young age; is the divorce rate in the Chasidic community hire than somewhere else? No its lower. Is the domestic violence and abuse rate in the Chasidic community higher than anywhere else? No its lower.

So we have large families with tons of children; did you see any homeless Jewish boy on the streets of late? Were you recently stopped by a Jewish boy under the bridge asking for food or money?

So our large families have a lot of us using government benefits to support their families; on the other hand, the government doesn’t have to spend too much on our community for drug or sexual addiction rehabilitation.

So some of us don’t understand that it’s nice to keep the door open for another person at the post office or a store; on the other hand I don’t think you are afraid too much that a Chasidic guy will break open the door of your house in the middle of the night and rob you.

So we don’t have TV or watch movies, and we don’t really know about sex before marriage, and our woman are dressed modestly; honestly now, is that so bad?

Point is, we may be weird but were not bad; we may be strange but were in no way dangerous; we may be different but were not asking you to be the same. So, cut us some slack Mr. Jacobson, would’ya?