Thousands of Chareidi families are currently vacationing in Europe, in the mountains and in resort towns, sometimes causing tension between them and the local residents.
While some think that it is anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews by the locals, despite the fact that chareidi Jews support them during the summer, the hatred continues to grow. Others however will argue that it is causes by bad behavior of individuals from the chareidi community; those who do not follow the rules of conduct in these countries, and repeatedly violate them, leaving dirt and causing noise and environmental damage.
[RELATED: Are Chareidi Visitors To Davos Creating A Major Chilul Hashem?]
In recent days, the chareidi residents of Vienna have hung a sign in a fishing park in the St. Anton area of the Austrian Alps that the owners complain of abuse of fish, damage to tools and failure to pay.
“This is a Chilul Hashem! Please adhere to the instructions, please behave with respect!” The sign reads, posted by “Jews living in Vienna and Austria”.
According to Kikar Shabbos News, the owner of the venue complained to local Jewish residents regarding the behavior of some of the chareidi tourists, who they claim are leaving dirt and damage, as well as theft for permitting themselves to benefit from services that have not paid for.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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18 Responses
Residents of Vienna Call on Vacationing Chareidim to be Respectful There is only 1 respectful act possible for a country that gave birth to the biggest menace on 4/20/1889:- Boycott and stay far away from there. Anything else, is a Chilul haShem to 6 Million Kedoshim.
Sadly, there have been similar episodes in other European resort towns in Switzerland and France and also in some cases in U.S. communities where there are concentrations of Chareidi visitors on chol hamoed or bein hazmanim. I disagree, however, that this is anti-Semitism nor is it boorish behavior by the Chareidim. It is largely the result of the failure of some Chareidi parents to educate their kids about social norms in public parks and resorts since they are not regular users of these facilities. We sometimes hear of similar allegations lodged against Afro-Americans in resort areas where the same debate over racism versus good manners exists. I think we simply have episodes of groups not being familiar with the cultural norms of the regular users of these facilities.
#147,
Doesn’t justify the behaviour of my fellow Chareidi community,
This article contains many grammar errors.
Why any Jew from reform to Satmar would want to go on “vacation” in one of the most Jew hating countries in the world is mind boggling.
In a way having these poorly behaved people vacation there is a minor punishment to these grandchildren of the baby killers.
The sign reads, posted by “Jews living in Vienna and Austria”
Last time I checked Vienna was in Austria. Perhapas they meant “Vienna, Austria” or “Vienna and other parts of Austria”…
Kako, you are the sort of oiberchochom who the locals are complaining about.
@gadolhadorah: you wrote ” It is largely the result of the failure of some Chareidi parents to educate their kids about social norms in public parks and resorts since they are not regular users of these facilities.”
I live on a dead end street in monsey. On shabbos, the people on my street walk thru the small section of woods to the other side. For many years, this was a pleasant path. Other than some leaves and fallen branches, it was clean. A couple of years ago, a chasidishe yeshiva purchased a couple of houses on the other side of the woods. I cannot tell you how disgusting this has become. First of all, they build play areas using old pallets. over the past year, they keep pushing further out of their property to the point that its almost impossible for us to go to shul. Also, many of these boards have nails sticking out of the, It is an accident waiting to happen, Second, they allow the kids free reign. It would take 10 people 2 or 3 days to pick up all the garbage that the kids dumped everywhere. potato chip and another bags, cups, plastic cutlery etc. It is despicable.
So its not just the parents, its the rebbeim running this school. There is no respect or common decency anymore.
BoysWork:
If you are so refined ,Instead of publicizing the problems you have with your neighbors, why don’t you discuss this with the Yeshiva administrator ?
BoysWork
August 6, 2018 1:33 pm at 1:33 pm
@gadolhadorah: you wrote ” It is largely the result of the failure of some Chareidi parents to educate their kids about social norms in public parks and resorts since they are not regular users of these facilities.”
I live on a dead end street in monsey. On shabbos, the people on my street walk thru the small section of woods to the other side. For many years, this was a pleasant path. Other than some leaves and fallen branches, it was clean. A couple of years ago, a chasidishe yeshiva purchased a couple of houses on the other side of the woods. I cannot tell you how disgusting this has become. First of all, they build play areas using old pallets. over the past year, they keep pushing further out of their property to the point that its almost impossible for us to go to shul. Also, many of these boards have nails sticking out of the, It is an accident waiting to happen, Second, they allow the kids free reign. It would take 10 people 2 or 3 days to pick up all the garbage that the kids dumped everywhere. potato chip and another bags, cups, plastic cutlery etc. It is despicable.
So its not just the parents, its the rebbeim running this school. There is no respect or common decency anymore.
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I can totally relate to your dilemma.
But complaining about it here wont solve your issue.
Either put up a fence or take legal action or even a simple lawyers letter can go a long way. This is assuming hou tried speaking to the schools admin.
es vet helfen vie a tote bankis. it would be easier to ask them to grow 2 feet overnight. such behavior has consequences.
Avreimi, and you know me from…
Calling other people names, without knowing them, a few days before Chodesh Elul… What does that make you?
Not all who admit to being Jews are actually Jews.
I have a suggestion. Instead of getting defensive as sometimes happens, I think people should take these complaints seriously and try harder to behave in the expected ways.
My children and I once went on chol hamoed Pesach to Nyack Beach on the Hudson River. By the afternoon the beach was littered with kosher l’Pesach wrappers and empty plastic cups. Often the knee-jerk reaction in our community is to say, “We’re not the only ones who litter!” or some other defensive reaction. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Not just at Nyack Beach but wherever we go, it should be common sense that garbage belongs in the garbage can, and if there’s no garbage can, take your trash out with you. (There were garbage cans at the park, and my children and I spent the rest of our chol hamoed trip cleaning up those wrappers.)
Yes, there is anti-semitism in the world. That doesn’t justify degrading ourselves by acting this way. I once witnessed a chassidishe lady change her baby’s diaper in a restaurant on the chair next to her. That’s just not okay. Dirty diapers can harbor e. coli, which causes severe illness and can be deadly. It shoudl be common sense that a diaper should be changed away from a food area, and the woman should wash her hands. (Even a wet diaper – it’s that part of the body that harbors e coli.) I did explain it to her, though it had little effect. She and her friends all looked confused. I’m relating the story here for general awareness of not only social norms, but hygienic standards.
Instead of attacking me for relating these stories, why doesn’t everyone think of ways to do better. Everyone has areas in which they can improve, myself included. Don’t attack the messenger for delivering a true and important message.
It may be a unique combination of the following factors:
1. failure to integrate into society
2. ….partly as the result of minimal secular education
3. a perception that everyone else will do for me, as evidenced by extremely high rates of welfare enrollment and lack of gainful employment
4. a perception that cleaning up is for die anderen, nisht fur uns, as evidenced by the way we treat our own properties, let alone public ones
5. the idea that gashmius, like cleaning up, is not a yiddishe zach
This letter makes about as much sense as this one, vehamaivin yovin…
The New York Times
Opinion | OP-ED COLUMNIST
What Iran’s Jews Say
Roger Cohen
FEB. 22, 2009
At Palestine Square, opposite a mosque called Al-Aqsa, is a synagogue where Jews of this ancient city gather at dawn. Over the entrance is a banner saying: “Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from the Jewish community of Esfahan.”
The Jews of Iran remove their shoes, wind leather straps around their arms to attach phylacteries and take their places. Soon the sinuous murmur of Hebrew prayer courses through the cluttered synagogue with its lovely rugs and unhappy plants. Soleiman Sedighpoor, an antiques dealer with a store full of treasures, leads the service from a podium under a chandelier.
I’d visited the bright-eyed Sedighpoor, 61, the previous day at his dusty little shop. He’d sold me, with some reluctance, a bracelet of mother-of-pearl adorned with Persian miniatures. “The father buys, the son sells,” he muttered, before inviting me to the service.
Accepting, I inquired how he felt about the chants of “Death to Israel” — “Marg bar Esraeel” — that punctuate life in Iran.
“Let them say ‘Death to Israel,’ ” he said. “I’ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I’ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.”
The Middle East is an uncomfortable neighborhood for minorities, people whose very existence rebukes warring labels of religious and national identity. Yet perhaps 25,000 Jews live on in Iran, the largest such community, along with Turkey’s, in the Muslim Middle East. There are more than a dozen synagogues in Tehran; here in Esfahan a handful caters to about 1,200 Jews, descendants of an almost 3,000-year-old community.
Over the decades since Israel’s creation in 1948, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the number of Iranian Jews has dwindled from about 100,000. But the exodus has been far less complete than from Arab countries, where some 800,000 Jews resided when modern Israel came into being.
In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iraq — countries where more than 485,000 Jews lived before 1948 — fewer than 2,000 remain. The Arab Jew has perished. The Persian Jew has fared better.
Of course, Israel’s unfinished cycle of wars has been with Arabs, not Persians, a fact that explains some of the discrepancy.
Still a mystery hovers over Iran’s Jews. It’s important to decide what’s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations — or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquillity.
Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.
That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous.
I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew.
Among minorities, the Bahai — seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel — have suffered brutally harsh treatment.
I asked Morris Motamed, once the Jewish member of the Majlis, if he felt he was used, an Iranian quisling. “I don’t,” he replied. “In fact I feel deep tolerance here toward Jews.” He said “Death to Israel” chants bother him, but went on to criticize the “double standards” that allow Israel, Pakistan and India to have a nuclear bomb, but not Iran.
Double standards don’t work anymore; the Middle East has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Iran’s scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel’s bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force. Iranian language can be vile, but any Middle East peace — and engagement with Tehran — will have to take account of these points.
Green Zoneism — the basing of Middle Eastern policy on the construction of imaginary worlds — has led nowhere.
Realism about Iran should take account of Esfehan’s ecumenical Palestine Square. At the synagogue, Benhur Shemian, 22, told me Gaza showed Israel’s government was “criminal,” but still he hoped for peace. At the Al-Aqsa mosque, Monteza Foroughi, 72, pointed to the synagogue and said: “They have their prophet; we have ours. And that’s fine.”
What on earth is wrong with catch-and-release? Maybe it’s the locals who should adapt themselves to the standards of the rest of the world, and stop expecting visitors to pander to their peculiar expectations.
#Milhouse,
Are they asking something extraordinary? they’re quite right, unless you’re not used to clean after your …