I have gotten many emails in the past that go somewhat like this.
“Hey can you do a post on how the frummer people and communities have worse hospitality then the more modern ones.”
No I cannot do a post like this because it contains no truth whatsoever. I felt that since so much wrong is done by sinas chinam (baseless hatred) and I myself am guilty of this even though I don’t realize it, I would chime in my two cents.
.I have written some things that I would definitely call sinas chinam, and although I do not necessarly think that way, I have a great tayva to write stuff that makes people laugh, sometimes at the expense of others. I thought that erev yom kippur would be a great time to tell you that based on my experiences in differences communities, I have probably stayed in more communities then almost everyone reading this blog, I have to say that the friendliness or lack of hospitality within a group of people or a community usually has nothing to do with the entire group.
Let me list for you the communities I have stayed in. If there is a star after the community that means I have stayed there 3 or more times. Let also say that when I go to a community I almost always go to other shulls besides the one my hosts daven at, I always want to see what happens at the other places, and give me a feel for the whole community.
Birmingham, Al
Monsey*
Kew Garden Hills*
Flatbush*
Tenack
Phily*
Now many of you may be asking, “but what about the Chassidim, because I probably didn’t stay with any Chassidim.” I would say to that, that you are absolutely right. However for 3 summers of my life I worked for the state as a camp inspector for the state of NY. The highest concentrations of camps in our program, which was one that offered children free food during the summer is located in the Catskills and most of what I did was in this area. I would go in and spend several hours sometimes as much as 6 with one camp. I would audit their food receipts and records and count their children eating in the lunchroom. I could usually tell within 5 minutes of speaking to someone at the camp or bungalow, as whether they were friendly or not. The funny thing I found and my collegues would all agree, is that the sect or group had nothing to do with whether they were kind to us or not.
I have visited literally hundreds of Chassidic and Litvishe bungalow colonies and camps and have found that many of them were friendly and many of them nasty, but it made no difference if they were Satmar, Square or Viznitz. We would go to one of the
With regards to the communities I have stayed in, I also find the same thing to be true. I have to commend
I should note that by friendly, I mean when many people realize you are not from the area and introduce themselves and offer you some sort of hospitality. Also when I walk into a shull I have never been someone shows me where to sit and get siddur. It also makes no difference if it is a small community or large one. The really small ones that don’t have minyan tend to be very friendly. But the medium sized ones, for instance ones that have 100 frum families- may not necessarily be friendlier.
With that said, I would like to ask mechilah from all those who were offended, or who felt very strongly that some of the stuff I wrote was sinas chinam. Hopefully I will be able to beat the yetzer harah in the future and try and bring a more positive slant to this blog. I think it is positive, but I can definitely do better.
Great Post,
I come from a non-religious background and for the past year or so, I have been spending Shabbatot and Chagim at various places in New York and New Jersey. (Albany, Chestnut Ridge, Airmont, Boro Park, Crown Heights, Passaic)
Here’s my 2 cents:
Whoever wrote you e-mails as such have no idea how lucky they are to be Jews. In what other community (religious, ethnic, whatever) can complete strangers (and I mean in the English sense of the word, not the translation of ‘gerim’) do the following?: come to a house, sit down and eat with a family, and spend a night or two. Not to mention, all for free. (If I pass by a liquor store, I’ll buy a bottle of wine)
I hope that whenever (B-Ezrat HaShem) I’m married and whatnot, I will be as great a host as all the people who I’ve ate by and whose houses I’ve slept at.
Shana Tova! to other Frumsatire readers.
Thanks for that great comment man. I always note that orthodox Judaism is one of the few institutions that allows different socioeconomic classes to meld together.
For instance I can eat by someone who happens to be a multimillionaire, but unlike other communities- this is no big deal. In fact its almost the opposite of the movies. Rich Jews are friendly with poor Jews just the same.
yay jews
a gmar chasima tova shanas geula vyeshua v’hisromos keren yisroel.
nice 🙂
very very nice 🙂
Great post, but I haven’t seen anything on your blog that I’d call sinas chinam. I think one of the greatest strengths of the Jewish people is our ability to laugh at ourselves, or at the world around us, even when things are dark. The moment we start being unable to crack wise at our collective foibles, we lose something really important.
You don’t foster sinas chinam- you keep us on our toes. Maybe even keep us honest.
I said borderline and some others have said that they think it is sinas chinam. Especially when I made fun of the Gedolim for banning some stuff.
I have to say, having been to a large number of communities as well, I think your post is missing one crucial piece of information – in the larger communities, it is sometimes very difficult to identify who is new/who ‘belongs.’ In congregations larger than 30-40 families, you aren’t necessarily ignored, you just aren’t always noticed.
A lot of how we perceive a community actually has a lot to do with how we present ourselves in it. Any shul I know of will help you to find arrangements if you make your needs known. However, the larger to community, the more you need to make your effort before you can ‘judge’ the warmth of a community.
SMILES
I need to spare you the inconvenience of reading (or skim) through the very specialized and extensive exchange of record name length impediments that is the initial segment of the article.