I posted this on my facebook account and unfortunately people weren’t too sympathetic, I understand that people usually don’t want to get involved in fights, but to say nasty things is uncalled for. I don’t care why someone is getting harassed or bullied, it’s wrong and someone should be a good Samaritan, just not me. I don’t think the video shows anything too extreme, but would you walk away if it was one of your own? If you saw a Jewish kid getting harassed on the street would you walk away? This reminds me of the long island railroad stabbing that happened a few years ago while people looked on, but no one intervened.
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Could, would and have.
Would def join in on that.
Sure.
Yes.
Interestingly enough my husband was recently surrounded by a group of young arab men and harassed in plain view of people on their lunch break in the central business district. No-one tried to help him, to his credit (and stupidity) he just stood there maintaining eye contact until they got bored and left, he then picked up his yamulka (which they had knocked off) and walked to the nearest police station to report them .
On a different but still related note, I was thinking Heshy that maybe you should do a “It gets better” video for all the gay frum and jewish kids out there. I know you aren’t gay but you are frum and young and openmined and I think they need to see that such people exist and accept them just the way they are.
I agree with you, Heshy certainly would be in a good position to be an advocate for frum Jewish kids. They exist and could certainly use a word of support.
What should I do in the video – give me some tips – or just a rant on my support for Jewish gays
I’d say rant, and perhaps also say that you know people who are religious and gay and “life gets better” for them.
Look up Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project”. Watch a couple of the vids. You’ll get the idea. You’d do a great job, and it could be the one that saves some kid’s life.
Ooh I’m excited thanks for the ideas guys/gals
I would love to say that I’d jump in to help. I can honestly say that I’ve never really seen any type of overt bullying/harassment. Maybe I’m just oblivious to my surroundings. So that’s why I say I’d like to think I would, I’m just not sure because I’ve never really been in that situation.
I was bullied so bad in high school that I moved into home education for over a year. It never stopped when I went back, but I’d grown old enough to realise I was only spending another 6 months in that town and low and behold, who is doing better for themselves today? The disabled girl from the city (who could talk!!! WTF!?!? Disabled girl talking!?!?) with the woggy eyes and big nose. However I never had that perspective at the time.
But it’s awful. There is nothing worse than being bullied, it kills. There have been a spate of adolescent suicides in Australia over the pSt few years and whilst I’d never condone it I can certainly understand.
I urge you guys to step in, to question and not allow Your own indifference to a situation to feed someone elses hurt. Jewish, not Jewish, alien, weve responsibility as a Jew (and by the Law of Lee-Anne, simply as a human) to quell injustice.
To quote A. Nuran, “could, would and have.”
I’ve been bullied, loathed it, made a vow I’d never be “one of the crowd” that stood or walked by and… did nothing.
Why, Heshy, would you say, ” someone should be a good Samaritan, just not me”? Why not you?
I have no balls when it comes to fighting, I don’t want to deal with confrontation, if a bar fight breaks out most people watch, I scurry out the door – of course it depends on what’s happening, but like the video showed, most people walk on by because they are too afraid to get hurt.
I was bullied growing up, I had a terrible stuttering problem, no mother and my family was poor – it was rough times, but it’s all deep in the subconscious now.
You don’t have to stand up and fight. All you have to do is stand up and speak up.
Hey Heshy, I used to get bullied a lot too because I was stuttering when I was a kid. (I had no mother and my family was poor too. :)). In those respects, we were very similar.
I have a different take on why some people just passed by. I think, adults (as most passersby in the video here) would just dismiss what was going on as nothing harmful and just kids’s stuff. Since I am a victim of severe bullying in elementary and high school, I am so averse to bullying too. But the actions exhibited and words uttered by the “bullies” in the video, in my opinion, would not really call for intervention by the passersby. It seemed that the ‘bullies’ even had to provoke passersby by saying “No one would defend you” and other such things.
Perhaps I am an optimist but I would like to believe (as my everyday experience seemed to have shown me) that people are predisposed to helping a fellow in distress should they judgment calls for it. I do have numerous experiences of getting unsolicited help from strangers in unknown, even hostile, environments. But then again I live in a certain community (Manila, Philippines). Communities and its inhabitants vary, of course. Thanks.
I mean, kids’s stuff, not kids’s stuff. Sorry for the typo. 🙂
the bullies seemed more gay than their victim! i would have thought it was a lovers-tiff.
I’ve never seen anybody harrassed by a group for no reason. i would intervene with a mugging but not with a fight.
Actually, you’re absolutely right. A couple interesting studies have been done in the last few years on men who had strong negative opinions towards gays. Subjects were hooked up to plesmographs (look it up) and shown dirty movies with boys and girls and dirty movies with just boys.
The ones with non-violent opposition to gays had the same reactions as men with neutral or positive opinions. The ones with opposition that included violent acts or language “stood at attention” watching the two boy stuff.
hey frumsatire I voted in your website poll but I think I voted for the wrong category by mistake! I’m really 18-25. sorry if i subverted your market research! :-/
don’t worry it’s just for fun, I don’t even know any grant writers
When a Jew was bullies Christians, one blogger congratulates him, http://esseragaroth.blogspot.com/2010/10/christian-hutzpah.html, and in the comments someone else complains that Jews didn’t help the harasser.
The guy’s a crackpot. Who cares.
Sometimes you need to force yourself to “grow balls.” I was bullied as a kid for being Jewish, and I fought w/fists against both boys and girls. No one ever bothered me again. Sometimes you’ve got to fight fire w/a nuclear attack, or you’ll forever be a doormat.
Psshk, I was bullied for a kid for being disabled, poor, a cityslicker at a country school, and not having a father. To top it off I had a big nose. I had kids try to cut my tyres, pour water into the wheelchair battery, etc. The school told them that that’s not very nice, they snickered, and got on with it. Once a fat kid tried to push me down a staircase, so I pushed the chair backwards and ran over him. Even though it was recorded that the kid constantly harrassed me, and people had seen him try and push me, I was suspended from school, his parents demanded an apology from me, and my name was trashed around town. Many stories like this. I had balls, gave it back but it never stopped.
In hindsight being relatively successful now is the best payback. I can go back there, roll my off-the-flight suitcase past the guys from high school still sitting in the same pubs and laugh in their face when they ask if I’d like a drink. That town is the only place in the world where I feel I have the right to be a conceited cow.
Glad you’re doing better for yourself. But having those fantasies of rubbing your success in the bullies faces just means they’re still getting to you. Time to move on.
I’m the first to admit that. In reality I’m a whole lot nicer.
I guess I would, although I think the cops tell you to report it and stay out for your own saftey.
THIS phenomenon has been studied since the 60’s. This incident is an example of something social psychologists refer to as the “Bystander Effect”. Google it (or look it up in a social psychology textbook). “Two specific reasons as to why bystanders fail to act in emergency situations are feelings of pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility. Both of these occur as a result of social influence that is contingent upon the presence of others. Pluralistic ignorance refers to one’s conclusion that help is not needed from monitoring the inaction of others. Diffusion of responsibility occurs when observers assume that another party will intervene and as a result, they feel less responsible. Both of these factors help explain why bystanders in groups fail to act in emergency situations.”
Informally known as the “Kitty Genovese Effect”. It’s amazing how little it takes to do something. If one person stands up and gets involved others will, too. And if they don’t, to hell with ’em.
While I was overall sad to see that most people did not intervene on the victim’s behalf, no matter what religion or race he was, I was very disappointed in the Jewish religious couple that clearly saw what was happening and decided not to do anything.
When interviewed, the husband simply said that the level of violence had not escalated to the point to getting involved.
I sat stunned watching yelled at the screen “Did you not have any Holocaust education?”
I understand that this was only verbal, but why is it that verbal abuse is any worse than physical, and what makes us think that the abuse will stop at verbal?
If that religious couple is reading this, I say that you should think long and hard about discrimination in the past, today, and what will come. And you should think about all those Jews that could have been saved if more people stopped the VERBAL abuse on the street at the beginning instead of walking on by and ‘waiting’ for it to escalate. Shame on you.
Agreed. I was thoroughly disgusted by the weak character of the Jewish couple. I suggest they reevaulate what Judaism entails. It certainly involves far more than kashruth and tznius. Ever heard of Menschlichkeit?
Judaism hates gays. maybe you should re-evaluate your judaism. maybe they would have intervened if the fight was on anything else but for this they decided to let the fag learn his lesson.
if they were bullying a rapist, would you intervene? Torah-wise, being gay is just the same.
Kiddush Hashem-wise, they probably came up with an excuse why not to intervene because saying that jewish law forbids gays would have started a whole other problem.
Be Dan Lakaf Zechut… (Pirke Avos 1:6) that’s for sure part of Menchlichkeit
You’re so stupid it hurts…what about if the guy was a habitual shabbos breaker? Would you support harassing him then? Gtfo moron.
Personally, despite my personal issues with homosexuality, I would intervene if I felt that I could – I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I, even passively, was responsible for another human’s hurt. I was bullied for a few months when I was about 13 by two separate kids (mostly for being short and having the audacity to be more intelligent than them), and dealt with each in the way that I felt best; to the one who was openly hostile I stood my ground – he eventually stopped when I threw a pot-noodle in his face; to the one who was more subtle, I was fortunate to have the support of a group of wonderful friends – they managed to put an end to it when, after the bully had physically assaulted me (covering it up as a tackle in a game of football), one persuaded a teacher than I needed a doctor, and another persuaded the teacher that the doctor needed was the bully’s father.
After having gone through it, I like to think that I would at least try to help someone else in whatever way I could, whether it be actual assistance or just calling the cops.
As an aside, I’m actually quite friendly now with one of the bullies – just goes to show.
Strike back enough times and see how the bullies start to act. They used to beat up black kids, but they now fear retribution.
I got picked on for being Jewish growing up, but it wasn’t anything particularly savage; why? because they feared retribution – either from the evangelical pro-Israel authorities or maybe just parents and teachers. Who knows.
Make them fear retribution for picking on gays. Make them piss themselves at the thought of acting on their depressingly paleolithic, barely reptilian impulses.
How do we do this? Easy: crack a few skulls. Pull a weapon if you see someone being harassed without reason and make them fear for their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
That may not be the Halachic solution, but I must admit that I don’t really care. These cretins are unworthy of the Breath of Life.
I don’t know man, I kind was kind of a bully to bullies. I hated people that picked on weaker kids in high school. I always went out of my way to befriend people that didn’t have many friends or were odd, or dorky, or whatever.
I think in this case though, (esp the religious couple in the video) people generally dont know when it is socially appropriate to step in.
I had this one situation a few months ago outside my apartment in the courtyard a latino guy was out there yelling at his wife in spanish. and I mean really berating her, I wanted to do something but didnt know what to do.
In order to try and diffuse the situation I opened the window and yelled at the man Callate’ (shut up) which worked, he stopped publicly yelling at her, it probably made him feel stupid that I Alpha maled his Alpha Male-ing, & popped his ego ballon for a while. but I felt weird for getting invovled at all. was It the right thing to do. this guy isnt a bad guy he’s not a drunk “just from the rio grande” mexican. they are both 2nd generation, usually happy, middle class, nice looking family. should I have yelled at him? I dont know, All I know is I would never yell at my wife like that in public so I stepped in.
Abuse can be relative, and that is the problem, because we don’t know the parties involved its hard to judge what is overboard and out of line.
that being said I am pretty sure given my personality and general love for confrontation both verbal and physical, I would have loved to dish it to three douche bags in cargo shorts.
“I don’t know man, I kind was kind of a bully to bullies. I hated people that picked on weaker kids in high school. I always went out of my way to befriend people that didn’t have many friends or were odd, or dorky, or whatever.”
I am proud to share the same religion as you.
I think most bystanders in the video didn’t get involved because of fear. 3-4 teens that look like they are ready to kick this dude’s ass, I may not want to get in the middle either, especially not in New York where people are often armed.
Ugh! I couldn’t even finish the video. This kind of stuff happened daily for me from the age of 13 til the end of my senior year of high school. I went to a small school with about 450 students total, there was no such thing as anonymity. The teachers knew what was going on and they ignored it. My counselor would tell me to suck it up. Regardless of what your religious convictions towards homosexuality may be to watch somebody suffer to the point that they hope each day will be their last is simply absurd. I’m glad I pulled through, but I’ll tell you, if it wasn’t for therapy and lots of anti-depressants, I wouldn’t be here today!