Low Profile

Excellent question PY. I posted something similar on the news page but it hasn’t appeared for some reason.

If a secular Jew took aside a Jew who dressed frum in an office and asked him to tone it down with the beard, the tzitzis, the kippah and try not to look so Jewish we’d probably think that’s horrible and call him a self-hating Jew. But if a frum Jew tells others that publicly displaying a menorah is wrong because it will anger the goyim here in galus, we don’t think there’s any self-hatred there.

I’m personally not a huge fan of the large public menorah’s, but if they anger goyim and cause hatred, its because there’s something wrong with them, not with the Jew who’s displaying it. Moreover, I trust Chabad’s methods and techniques of reaching out to other Jews, as nobody, anywhere, does a better and more courageous job than they do.

wow, does that mean that because the “goyim” do something, well it must be ok for us as well –

Don’t we want to be just like the “goyim”?

They put their decorations outside… they dress extremely weird…uh so what!

I am different! B”H

I don’t think the issue is only chilul hashem, there is certainly an inyan of keeping a low profile even if what you’re doing is perfectly ok I’m not sure what the mekor for this is [I can try to find out) but when we are in Galus we are not supposed to do anything which might anger the goyim unless of course it’s a specific mitzva. Dressing like a frum yid probably goes into the catagory of a mitzva and is a personal thing which can not be compared to lighting a public menorah, there’s no reason a goy should be angered by the way a yid dresses, however a huge menorah is inescapable and can be very annoying to a goy to see juadiasm glaring in his face like that. besides that this is something new and has never been done in history before certainly not by any gedolim whereas dressing like a yid has always been a part of yidishkeit.

(most of us even light indoors today because in Europe the goyim were hostile towards us and so it wasnt safe to light outside, Kal VaChomer a huge public Menorah.)

*counting on fingers…*

:)He got off lucky!

😉

Thinking Jew wrote “there’s no reason a goy should be angered by the way a yid dresses, however a huge menorah is inescapable and can be very annoying to a goy to see juadiasm glaring in his face like that.”

I don’t understand this at all. First, I don’t understand why a goy whose going to be annoyed by a menorah would feel that there’s no reason to be angered by the way a Jew dresses. If you’re going to be an anti-semite, and hate Jewish people and stuff, you’ll have a problem with his dress.

But second of all, I don’t understand the idea that it can be very annoying to a goy to see judaism glaring in his face. Sure, that may be so. But that is because he is a rotten anti-semite. There is something wrong with him, not the Jew who he hates. Yes, there is a general practice of keeping a low profile in general and being modest, but the idea that we need to be sensitive to how enraging a menorah can be to an anti-semitic goy who hates Jews and can’t stand the sight of them is silly and ultimately self-destructive.

If you think a goy who has a problem doesn’t have a problem with distinctively Jewish dress, you are wrong.

Why look for equality, who are you looking to be equal to? The goyim? You gotta be kidding?!

If we don’t want to put up a large public menorah because that is not the proper way to celebrate Hanukah, that’s fine. If we don’t want to put up a large public Menorah because we don’t want to imitate the xtian ways of celebrating xmas, that’s fine too. But we should not decline to put up a large public menorah because we believe that our very existence is so revolting to others.

edited

To Pashuteh Yid: Have you read Shtickshift by Simcha Weinstein? Interesting take on the impact of Jewish humor in America.

Many Jewish groups objected to the Seinfeld show precisely because he WASN’T openly Jewish. His character never identified himself as Jewish, none of the girls he dated ever were identifiably Jewish, and there were no signs of jewishness around his home.

I stand corrected.

Ok, I still stand corrected on Seinfeld. In 9 seasons, and 180 episodes, there was only a bit of jewishness in the show.

But, Dear Pashuteh, I think your premise may be wrong.

Most people would say that the worst decade for Jews in the US was the 1930’s. Father Coughlin was spewing his antisemitic vitriol from Detroit over the nationa airwaves, Hitler’s propaganda machine was supplying anti-Jewish organizations in the US with first-rate propaganda.

Yet, during that time, even before that time and after that time, what was the most popular show on radio? The Goldbergs, also called “The Rise of the Goldbergs,” and “Molly.” It was a show about a loving Jewish family living on East Tremont Avenue in The Bronx, the parents and elders speaking with Yiddish accents, living in a tenement, using Jewish words, celebrating Passover and Yom Kippur, all the while generally being funny and positive. They occasionally addressed more serious issues, such as Kristallnacht, in an episode where a stone is hurled through the Goldberg’s window during their Passover seder.

Most of the action took place in the kitchen, where neighbors and friends and others would come to visit (*does this sound like Seinfeld at all?*) It was a revolutionary show, and the forebear to “I Love Lucy,” “The Honeymooners,” and also “Seinfeld.”

The only 15-minute comedy that had a longer life than “The Goldbergs” was “Amos and Andy.”

An article in SLATE magazine in 2007k, a Jewish educator said, “This series has done more to set us Jews right with the ‘goyim’ than all the sermons ever preached by the Rabbis.”

So, here was the worst period in America for Jews, yet one of the most popular shows on radio was about Jews.

Today, when antisemitism seems to be at a low, there are only shows like Seinfeld, where we have to grasp at little straws of jewishness.

I guess my point is that there is not a relation between Jews on TV or Radio, and acceptance of Jews in America. If you take the two examples of Seinfeld and The Goldbergs, you can see that there may actually be an inverse relationship (I don’t really hope so.), and that Seinfeld may not be as significant an indicator of jewish acceptance in the US as he first appears.

I also recall an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show, written lovingly and somewhat autobiographically by Jewish actor, writer and director, Carl Reiner, where there were characters that were proudly Jewish. I recall one episode where Buddy, brilliantly portrayed by Morey Amsterdam, one of the comedy writers, was sneaking out in the afternoons. His coworkers thought he was having an affair, but in fact, he was sneaking out to see a rabbi about Torah lessons, so he could become a bar mitzvah. Now, that’s a character who is clearly Jewish and self-identifies.

Oomis1105- for better or worse, there are actually lots of people like that in the real world, i.e., no frum dress, public school and college educations, partial observance of Shabbos, and no lobster, pork or meat and dairy together. Where and how I grew up, that was pretty common.

ronrsr: Where did your fact-checker get that? I’ve seen that episode numerous times and I was sure it was a rabbi, but I could certainly be wrong. (Wouldn’t be the first time.)