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A dear friend of mine related the following story to me this past Shabbos.
He was in the Pomegranate Supermarket last week, and a fellow wearing a kipa sruga, and sandals approached him. He asked him about the hechsher of a certain product, to which my friend gave him some information. My friend asked him where he was from, since he clearly looked like he had just arrived from Israel. He said that he made aliyah 17 years ago, but needs to spend 2 years in NYC for school. He then related something very disturbing.
He said he rented a home in Kensington, along with his wife and 4 kids, and had moved in two weeks ago.
“I find it highly insulting”, he said, “I moved in from Israel two weeks ago with children onto a block packed with Frum people, and not one person came over to myself, my wife, or my children to welcome us, or ask if we needed anything”….
He continued:
“The only 3 people who said anything to me, approached me and said, there is no Eruv in this area and you can’t carry on Shabbos”.
Does anyone else find that disturbing?
I do.
Disgusting.
PS: My friend invited the entire family for the Yom Tov of Sukkos, since he mentioned that he might need someplace to go.
of course it’s disturbing,
however if he wanted a community he should’ve moved to a place that has one
I don’t believe the kippa style has anything to do with it. New York City isn’t Suburban America, where they come over to new neighbors with warm cookies. If he had been wearing a heimishe yarmulka he would have gotten the same treatment.
Editor
I am disgusted. Its scary. It seems like we are so into our own lives that we can’t bother to have time for someone else. I really don’t know what to say but it hurts.
Coffee addict
Which is where?
Y.W. Editor
Of course people are disgusted with this treatment.
But it has nothing to do with kipa sruga, IMHO, and in Stamper’s.
The question is, what do you suggest we do to change this shabby treatment by others? How can we get Brooklyn to join the out-of-town mentality regarding guests and greeting others?
Only there two weeks, maybe no one realized yet, especially in the summer when everyone is up in the mountains.
real-brisker
Hopefully that is the case.
I get funny looks for my kipa sruga all the time. It might not have caused the issue, but it certainly didn’t help. If we plan on bringing mashiach at some point, we may want to consider doing something about this achdus issue…
i had somebody pass me the other day when i was outside with my neighbor and the greeted each other when i asked my neighbor who that was she told me oh she moved down the block a few months ago i honestly never saw her before never knew there was an apt avail or that somebody moved out
then a couple wks ago after lecht benching a bunch of ladies were sitting out and sb introducted a “new” lady and everybody was so frendly to her so nice to meet u… were do u live and when did u move in ..she said 2 yrs ago i thought the lady who asked would fall thru the pavement
so she appoligized and sorry i never saw u before i guess we are all busy with our lives…its so true we are all runing here and there i dont think pp mean to be mean we just done have time so “smell the roses”
Stamper: Whether or not it is because of the Kippah he wears there is still an issue.
My grandfather once visited a Shul. No one said Shalom Aleichem and the only time anyone spoke to him was the Gabbai who asked him if he was a Leivi. He jokingly and insultedly (yes, I just invented that word) asked why he didn’t ask if he was a Kohein. The response was “We have a Kohein of our own.” Disgusting might be over the top, but Jews have been known for hundreds of years for welcoming guests warmly. That should be a Kal Vechomer to new neighbors.
I find this ironic. When the editor wants to bring out something bad, he can. Just recently, s/o posted a story and I wrote disgusting and not only was my comment deleted, but the topic was closed!
Yes chief it is disgusting and b”h we are not as blind and selfish in my neighborhood, we are a real community here. The shuls are at the forefront with new neighbors. They send a welcome package, and the neighbors are all very helpful and all get in line to invite the newbies for Shabbos Meals. Sometimes it can take 2 months or more before they have to make a Shabbos meal on their own. Hachnosos Orchim does not just apply to inviting your own friends and relatives.
WIY,
Come to Kew Gardens, My first week there I got two invites
Health,
does the king have to follow his own rules?
Maybe we can be dan lkaf zchus for Kensington, the town must be very on edge in general.
My feeling is that he was viewed as “nisht unzerer”. The story is hardly new or surprising. I don’t expect anything to change, but it’s worth a try.
do the people on the block even know that they moved in? maybe the people who saw them on Shabbos thought they were just passing through. I live in Kensington and we are excited when we get new frum neighbors but sometimes people move in to basements or attics as tennants and to be honest i have no idea that they even moved in for a long time.
Is this the best we could do in Elul?
WIY – No reason why not to.
Sorry to say this, but we all know that Kensington residents in particular may have reason to feel suspicious about newcomers of any origin.
Even when I moved to my very welcoming community abroad a few summers ago, I hardly met anyone until mid-Elul because everyone was away – here people go to EY for the summer but in Brooklyn the summer trips to the mountains have a lot to do with it.
On the other hand, a very yeshivish friend of mine from out of town said that he doesn’t know most of his neighbors after 2 years in ‘da hood (some part of Midwood-Flatbush).
Come to my shul, we wIll greet you.
My mother brought welcoming gifts to evey new neighbor until the mid 1980’s when she started to get stares and feel unwelcome as new neighbors started to wonder what she was up to.
I lived in Kensington for a while after getting married, while I was finishing college. When we were packing to move out, to NJ, we realized that we had packed something that we needed for dinner – some ingredient, I don’t remember exactly what – let’s say an egg. My wife went to a neighbor to get some. She knocked next door, but nobody was home. She went to the next house (only two doors down from us!) and knocked. A woman opened the door, and my wife said hello, and said, “I live two doors down – is it possible I can borrow an egg?”
The woman looked at her, and said, “Oh, did you just move in? I don’t remember ever seeing you.”
Of course I find this disturbing. Disgusting, actually. It makes no difference whatsoever how busy we are or where we live.
We, as frum Yidden, must make it our business to notice a newcomer on the block. And honestly, WHO CARES WHAT HIS YARMULKE LOOKS LIKE???
All we can do is teach our children by example.
DELETED.
Please don’t go off topic.
I got married almost 4 years ago, & moved into the house in Midwood, where my husband had been living for quite a while. It was very obvious to the neighbors that a woman was now in the house, even if they never saw me, as the outside was now kept orderly in a way that it had not been until then. I live on a block with only frum people. One neighbor sent over a child with a welcoming basket, & invited us for Shabbos. Until now, after all this time, that one neighbor is the only one who acnwledges my existance. I have sent Shaloch Manos to the others, but am still ignored. And we are at the same level of frumkeit as the whole group. The kippa seruga is not the reason – people in Brooklyn have a lot to learn about menchlichkeit. I had to spend many Shabbosim & Yom Tovim in Borough Park near Maimonides. When I would pass the local ladies & wish them a Gut Shabbos or Gut YomTov, they would look at me oddly, & not respond.
Though I still make an effort to be warm & friendly & welcoming, it doesn’t help when you feel that you are the “odd man out”,
P.S. – I am from Toronto, where EVERYONE welcomed new neighbors, & was friendly & warm to all – old friends or new acquaintances.
Disgusting, yes. Surprising, no.
I hate to say this, but Brooklyn has this reputation of being VERY unfriendly. They never say Good Shabbos unless they know the person. There is no out of town community that behaves like that, and the further you go from Brooklyn, the friendlier they get! I think individual people just have to start being nicer, in order to change Brooklyn’s reputation. Then maybe we can expect Mashiach!
In Brooklyn you can have over 100 frum people living just on your block alone! Out of town you can sometimes hardly have that many frum people in your entire town, depending on how big it is. So the comparisons are irrelevant. When the 101st person moves on the block, it is not always noticeable just by the nature of how many people live there, plus there is constant moving in and out that it isn’t practical for 100 people on the block to come with a cake every time a new person moves in every other week or month.
See my screen-name?
That’s what I think of the neighbors.
Stamper: Even in the heart of the frummest neighborhoods, you don’t find new people moving in every week.
I hate to say this, but Brooklyn has this reputation of being VERY unfriendly. They never say Good Shabbos unless they know the person. There is no out of town community that behaves like that, and the further you go from Brooklyn, the friendlier they get! I think individual people just have to start being nicer, in order to change Brooklyn’s reputation. Then maybe we can expect Mashiach!
actually, to tell you a story I had over Shabbos while I was in Flatbush, while I was walking home from Hashkama (around 9) and people were going to shul, I said good Shabbos to people as I passed them by, some people didn’t answer me but others did and one person even greeted me before I had a chance to say good Shaabos
Can we please stop this negativity and bashing of large communities of Jews? This topic has been discussed numerous times. Instead of bashing Brooklyn Jews lets do our best to try and do what’s right REGARDLESS of what others around us do.
We must try to be welcoming to all (I know I try to wish others a good Shabby even if we don’t know each other, believe it or not once in a while you get someone who is down and your friendly good Shabby can give them a pick up)
We must try to keep our eyes open for new people on the block and do our best to be friendly to them and make them feel welcome. Every little bit counts.
There are plenty of good excuses I can give for why people aren’t friendly in Brooklyn and many of them are very valid excuses but they won’t help the situation. The only thing that will help is if enough Yechidim make the effort to be different.
Ferd – Thanks, you made me laugh.
When we were oleh to EY, we moved temporarily to neighborhood X ( a close copy of Brooklyn). We were off loading the ten cartons from a Nesher van, when a yid walking into the same building asked “are you moving in?” That was about the last casual conversation that we had for that month that was not initiated by us. When we moved to our apt in other area (mostly chiloni and DL at the time) we were greeted with cookies, and we had Shabbos invites unill we tired of them. I don’t recall the type of yarmulka I was wearing.
twisted: A (many years belated) mazal tov on your aliya.
ok so reverse the senirio.
My parents moved into a mostly DL apartment building in EY close to thirty years ago and it took a year for the first person to say shabbat shalom and another two years for some other neighbors to do the same.
I do not write this to say lason hara but to say that there are people who are menschen and people who are not in every society and the only ones we can change are ourselves. By changing ourselves PERHAPS we can cause others to change. If all we do is say disgusting then we have not even tried to change ourselves.!
This reminds me of a song that I was thinking about yesterday by Abie Rottenberg on Journeys about a sfardi and a chosid who try to ignore each other but sing the same song and realize because of it theyre both jewish
I do not accept that this behavior stems from the kipa sruga.
Proof is that many black yarmulkes complain about the same treatment.
Now HOW do we go about changing it? Or is the point of this thread just to vent negativities during Elul?
How do we go about changing it? Answer is simple. Veahavta Leraiacho Komocho – Be welcoming to new faces in your community and street, and invite them over and help them if you are able to within your economic means and time etc…
thats a good question AYC
I don’t know if it could be changed until Moshiach comes
(Yehuda won’t hate Ephraim and Ephraim won’t be jealous of Yehuda)
mr taxman,
that’s like saying how does someone break an addiction?
simple, just do it
I don’t think anyone will because they already have an aversion for it
Only in Brooklyn is there an aversion to it. Lakewood, Passaic, Clifton, Monsey, Stanforf, Waterbury are very welcoming communities and friendly even though some people are not the bubbly open type personality, but they welcoem you and greet you with a smile becasue it is the normal thing to do and nice thing to do. Nothing to do with whatever you mentioned Coffee Addict.
the topic at hand was how to fix it in Brooklyn
So i am telling you that we are all capable of changing – just try. Your telling me that people can’t change? That’s not true. If none of us can change and improve then it’s a very sad state of affairs. Aversion, Addiction – people can change!!!
It seems to me that if the new neighbors didn’t think they were frum enough for their neighborhood they should make a special effort to invite them – an opportunity for kiruv. Even if he had no kippah, it doesn’t cost a thing to smile and say hello. I welcome all of my new neighbors – Jewish or not, with a cake or some cookies. You never know when you may need the help of another person, even if it is just to change a very high light bulb. It costs nothing to be on good terms with your neighbors and makes life much more pleasant. My gentile neighbors help me out a lot since I am alone. I have often purchased something too heavy for me to bring up from my car – placed there in the first place by customer service at the store. I put a note up on the bulletin board and within a half hour, somebody helps me out. That is what “community” is all about.
mr taxman,
so ur saying you can do it if you want to
I’m saying it doesn’t seem like people in these communities in Brooklyn want to
the question is how do we get them to want to
Right Coffee – Personally i have no clue why its not in people’s mindset to greet and welcome new people or even to say good shabbos etc. on a weekly basis to anyone.
How do we get them to do it? Need Rabbi Frand . Rabbi Krohn, etc… to reiterate theimportance of welcoming new faces and greetign your fellow jew in the street.
I was thinking that might help, like getting the CCHF to make a video about it, but I think it will fall by the wayside like all videos right after Tisha B’av
what I think is needed is have their rav give speeches with all the other ravs (1 sfardi, 1 ashkenazi, 1 lubavitcher, 1 MO)
or have the rav make it a point to do it then everyone will see it
Thats also a good idea – have the Rabbi Dovid Cohens, The Rabbi HIllel Davids, and other rabbonim from the shul sin the community reiterate this issue on a monthly basis if need be….that may work….But your right about these speeches on tisha b’av – better to come from local rabbonim in the respective shuls.
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