why you and other ostensible progressive organizations do not seem to care about their enclave or crime
In NY state and in NJ it’s often secular Jews at the forefront of anti-Haredi policies. Every charity and organization designed to ‘deconvert’ (essentially deradicalize) Chareidim is funded by secular Jews, in many cases literally by George Soros. Consider that this is in marked contrast to, say, Islamist deradicalization efforts, which in the West are pretty much entirely funded by non-Muslims. It’s secular Jews who are most aggressive about lobbying the Israeli government to take away more privileges from the ultra orthodox too. In Haredi circles there are extremely common ‘conspiracy’ theories that secular Jews (who among other things they low key blame for the Holocaust) are trying to destroy their communities, both in the US and in Israel.
One of the reasons the ultra-orthodox have shifted so aggressively to the GOP in recent decades is precisely because the NY and NJ Democratic coalitions, which have a lot of senior Jewish politicians and leaders, have a fundamental contempt for them and their way of life, view them the way elite white northeastern Episcopalian progressives view Southern redneck trailer trash. They in turn spread this attitude to their Italian, Hispanic and black associates, which is why the most common complaint in Brooklyn 770 circles is that wealthy secular Jews said and did very little when eg. black people were attacking the black hats. Recently they’ve accused secular Jews of coming after the ultra-Orthodox by targeting the landlords/slumlords who finance a lot of the community.
2rafa
5d ago
With the exception of the very poor and very rich (which even most highly intelligent and conscientious people will never be), income and tfr aren't really correlated much among secular Westerners.
2rafa
5d ago
Yes, like @hydroacetylene said, when the yeshivot were in Eastern Europe back in the day a family might send only their most intellectually gifted son (out of many) to them. Adult study in a full time kollel (for married men) was even more rare, it’s largely an invention of the last 75 years. Previously yeshiva students would graduate, become rabbis, and then marry and have children and become the religious figures in their communities. The idea of a large population of married men who were not community rabbis but who studied all day and were paid for it is modern.
Modern abundance, not just welfare but even the ease with which, say, one very rich Hasid can fund a thousand students indefinitely is a failure state of modernity. Most people don’t want to live off welfare because it provides a much lower quality of life than working, especially if you’re an intelligent people. But if you think Torah study is the highest calling in life then you can override that impulse.
2rafa
3d ago
If he’s making $20m in a month I can’t see what’s so pressing about avoiding his kid’s birth.
2rafa
3d ago
Well I have no intention of voting for Biden in November, so I’m well aware of that choice. I just think that’s the reality of the American political system and why a genuine dealmaker (not merely an insider like Biden, although I’ve been surprised at what he’s done despite his incompetence and senility) is the ideal candidate for either party.
2rafa
5d ago
From 2019:
In the 2017 election, 67% of Jewish voters backed the Tories and 11% supported Labour, according to figures supplied by JPR. A poll this autumn suggested that Jewish support for Labour in next week’s election could fall to 6%.
The first and as yet only Jewish Prime Minister was Disraeli in the 1860s and 1870s.
2rafa
21hr ago
Marjorie Taylor Greene
The biography From Prostitute To President: An American Tale will be worth it.
The people rallied and there was an extensive campaign by the family. Netanyahu was always opposed to these deals and had written about it. But the mob won out. Even now there are rallies about accepting any price to get hostages back, it’s just that for once more people have a desire for revenge than are willing to help the enemy to do so.
2rafa
3d ago
Unlike you, I’m not a never-Trumper! But I’d want a conservative President with the kind of deep congressional connections and sleazy lobbying ability to actually be able to pass things, especially in the event of a trifecta. That is the primary way of achieving anything in the American political system that isn’t bipartisan. A President who deeply understands and can manipulate the congressional GOP, plus a trifecta, plus abolishing the filibuster are the necessary ingredients for civil service reform in the US.
Trump’s problem isn’t really fecklessness or his personal lack of convictions. It’s that he doesn’t seem to be able to wrangle his own faction in congress. If the US had a party-led system where Trump was head of a party and could fire/deselect reps and senators at will, that would be fine. But open primaries, no term limits and various other factors mean that he’s at the mercy of congress.
2rafa
4d ago
No, because I think in that case you’d also have to consider the downstream effects of all Jewish innovations in technology, science, medicine, engineering and other sectors of the economy, which would make it too difficult to calculate.
The Irish and Welsh have aggressively tried language revival for decades to little avail. Billions spent on little-watched TV and other media in those languages, extremely regular classes for all grades in schools starting from a young age, all official documentation, forms, street signs etc in Welsh/Irish.
All it does is create a small middle class of true believer left-nationalists (common in Europe see Scotland or Catalonia) who subsist of taxpayer funding and are paid to act as a kind of living museum.
It only worked in Israel because at that time even most educated Arab and Shtetl Jews did not speak English as a common language, so they could pick their (re)invented language. If most early migrants to Israel had spoken English or Yiddish, one of them would have become the language. Actually, if the later wave of 70s to 90s Soviet migrants had moved to Israel in 48 the de facto official language would have been Yiddish.
2rafa
5d ago
A January 2020 survey regarding Orthodox political views from the Nishma Research institute found that 53% of Modern Orthodox Jews identify as Democrat, liberal, progressive or left-leaning compared to 37% who describe themselves as Republican, conservative, right-leaning or libertarian.
They do skew Democratic, although the reason for this given by the head of the polling company is:
As a possible explanation for the overall leftward lean of the Modern Orthodox, Trencher pointed to additional 2015 polling data from the Pew Research Institute that found roughly 40% of the subset’s members to be ba’alei teshuva — those who adopt a fully observant lifestyle after having been raised not religious...When [those ba’alei teshuva] are asked if there’s anything that they do hang on to [once they start leading a more religious lifestyle], they say ‘liberal political views,'” Trencher said.
It's likely that as the born Modern Orthodox population expands significantly those politics will shift over time. There have also been some questions about Nishma's data on some Orthodox forums. There's other stuff like:
NEW YORK — An overwhelming percentage of Orthodox Jews in the United States plan to cast their ballots for President Donald Trump come November, according to a poll published Wednesday...The survey from the community’s Ami Magazine found that a whopping 83 percent of Orthodox Jews said they will vote for Trump, compared to just 13% who said they’d support the Democratic Party’s nominee, Joe Biden. Four percent of respondents are undecided, with just 20 days remaining until the election
Ami leans Chareidi but isn't exclusively so. It's a mixed bag, as the poll shows many people who call themselves Modern Orthodox are liberal Jews who were hooked by Chabad and started being religious later in life. They're not suddenly going to drop all their progressive politics because they become more faithful with age. But certainly it is true that being more religious is by far the single biggest predictor of conservative politics among Jews (as it is among whites and hispanics in many cases for that matter afaik).
2rafa
5d ago
I do sometimes wonder what the total Jewish balance of funds regarding US public finances is. If you count all tax contributions including capital gains, income taxes and so on, subtract all welfare and other spending (including aid to Israel), is it positive or negative? I suspect it is still positive in the long term, but I can see that being incorrect.
2rafa
9hr ago
I thought both of them had murky alleged ties to sex work but might be mistaken.
2rafa
3d ago
Sure, but that isn’t no understanding of free expression, it’s just a different one. For most of the history of the US states had various laws banning various kinds of speech, so did the federal government during the wars. Absolute free speech is a 20th century interpretation of the first amendment.
2rafa
3d ago
English law does recognize the concept, since it’s part of the ECHR which is British law. But the ECHR does caveat hate speech, dangerous speech and so on.
2rafa
3d ago
Depends on the economy, but I’d say they can if it holds. Racial hostility in America today doesn’t seem worse than it was at the low point of the 90s, between the LA riots and the OJ trial. President Newsom can spout Bill Clinton 2.0 talking points (he has no ideological principles anyway) about unity etc.
Both are also visibly happier living in the US
Ed Miliband doesn't live in the US, he's still an MP! He will likely be energy minister when Labour wins.
this is consistent with my experience of my school/university social circle where secular Jews who had the opportunity mostly moved to the US.
I would put it differently. Secular American Jews often retain some aspects of their particular ethnic identity because we don't live in a society with as much of a monoculture as the UK. The same was historically true of other groups in the diverse East Coast cities, like the Irish and Italians.
Secular British Jews assimilate very rapidly (even though the overall intermarriage rate is lower because of the higher level of Orthodoxy as you note). Those great Anglo-Jewish families of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Rothschilds, the Goldsmiths and so on, are pretty much entirely gentile now - the younger Rothschilds were raised and baptised in the CofE. Even the 20th century secular Jews of more recent shtetl heritage assimilate quickly - look at how quickly Gerald Ronson's and Philip Green's (who himself married a gentile iirc) children have deserted the faith. And Ronson is a committed Jew! He donates to charities, sat on the board of various things and so on. But even then, it wasn't enough.
There is almost a kind of standard assimilatory narrative for British Jews who make some money. The parents send them to Eton or Harrow or Cheltenham and then Oxbridge, they do well in the city (perhaps in a Jewish firm, perhaps not) or in the arts or something else, then they marry a gentile Sloane Ranger (or a male aristo in the case of the women). In two generations, any residual Jewishness is a family memory, they celebrate Christmas, they have essentially fully assimilated into the British upper-middle or upper class.
The same happened in a different way with working class secular Jews, who largely joined the white exodus out of East London and headed toward Essex. Those who remained religious still exist in large numbers in places like Gants Hill, but many who weren't had within one generation fully assimilated into normal southeastern working class English culture. An example of that is Katie Price's family, or even Stacey Solomon's to some degree. The secular Jewish intellectual culture that exists in the US doesn't exist in Britain. Jews who stay Jewish are overwhelmingly Orthodox, those who don't become English very quickly.
2rafa
4d ago
Secular Jews may want some of the Haredim to become more secular, but by and large they are allied politically, culturally, and religiously with them, and do zero to combat their corruption. Meanwhile, Chabad houses are becoming the center of religious life for non-orthodox Jews in America.
Who do you think funds efforts like this (given an extensive write-up by a Jewish journalist for NPR), where non-Haredi Jewish journalists are hired to dig up stories on political and financial corruption, sexual abuse and so on in that community, founded by an ex-Haredi guy who hates them?
Moster says the stories on the Shtetl website aim to present what's often missing in the Haredi press: stories about contentious issues such as corruption, white-collar crime and sexual abuse. One recent Shtetl feature details how Haredi Jews took over a village in the Catskills by claiming it was the primary residence of Jews who spend most of their time living in Brooklyn. Another, written by Hakimi, describes a series of anonymous ads for a family court judicial candidate in one of the Haredi towns in the suburbs north of New York City.
I see how secular Jews (not just leftist or even progressive ones) talk about the ultra-orthodox. Many advocate Xinjiang-level re-education, completely unironically. They hate them, especially those that live near or alongside them. In New Jersey, the reality of state politics and the fact that the Democrats don't have a supermajority means that the ultra-orthodox can ally with the state GOP to stymie legislative measures against them.
Okay, so are you referring to the slumlords that have gotten away with corruption / discrimination so far? What helped them get away with it for so long?
NYC slumlords have always gotten away with it, the occasional lawsuit etc excepted, especially when it comes to simply having poor conditions rather than discriminating based on race. All these guys were sued dozens of times, pursued by the city. Again, that's true for all slumlords historically, including the many, many gentile ones. The aggressive pursuit now is arguably because the largely progressive Jewish donors who funded Bragg's DA campaign care about it a great deal.
That’s again not true. Their secular advocacy groups made it a national news story. There were statements made by every politician. Their politicians secured them more security grants.
The ADL lobbies harder about a swastika on an elite university campus than they do about dozens of attacks by black people on Jews in NYC. The biggest complaint is typically that they don't even, uh, 'name' the perpetrators, so to speak.
2rafa
4d ago
Language definitely creates a strong barrier to departure although most Haredi communities still teach their children passable English. Not to any kind of secular world standard, but they still speak it better than plenty of first-gen immigrants who do fine in the lower levels of the economy.
2rafa
4d ago
Oh sure, I think for gig workers it’s still tough. But for, say, a full-time fry cook or security guard I think life has probably improved even adjusted for inflation over the last 10 years.
2rafa
5d ago
It’s a big failure mode for radical organizations. Say what you will about BLM activists, the leader embezzling millions in donations wasnt a positive for their cause.
2rafa
5hr ago
Again though, this is attacking the system rather than the rationale. I don’t agree with using this kind of thing to harass random gun owners, but do think this kind of analysis could help track down actual terrorists, or people undertaking illegal gain of function research or things like that. The problem is more that the entire federal government was co-opted by the enemy and the right went along with giving it the tools to do this.
2rafa
8hr ago
This is just cons complaining about the lib version of 'noticing'. Pattern recognition applies to everyone. If they've detected specific transaction patterns highly predictive of possible mass shootings, why is it wrong to acknowledge that? Would you have the same sympathy with some Muslim garden supply business owner regularly profiled and investigated for his high-volume fertilizer purchases? I know for a fact that this kind of transaction analytics is responsible for preventing a lot of successful terrorist attacks, and I also know that conservatives don't care when it's used on their outgroup.
Surely there are ‘virtually no Jews’ in the vast majority of the US. What were their negative experiences with Jewish people if you asked?
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