COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
Stamford Hill's
ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is moving to Canvey Island – as a rabbi, I'm
cautiously optimistic
The early signs have
been positive, but the long-term outlook may be less rosy
They are strange people, the ultra-Orthodox, at least as
strange as any far-out group you care to name.
If you are familiar with some of their customs around women
and cleanliness and eating, you cannot but wonder how an entire group of people
can manage to adhere to such practices?
I do think, as a comment below suggests, that in-breeding is
involved here, and that is not intended as an insult. The constant swaying and
nodding movements when men study Torah, suggest classic extreme ritual
neurosis.
The nature of the "uniform" the men wear also
points this way. It is almost literally a uniform, an odd assemblage of garb
resembling stuff from early 19th century rural places in Eastern Europe.
Why would you fix on such a time and place as a definitive
style of dress? Were all believers before that time, somehow condemned for the
wrong garb and habits?
Conservative orders of Amish and Mennonites, also very small
in-bred communities, follow a similar pattern.
Always in such relatively tiny communities, finding a mate,
who is not closely related, is a serious difficulty. A very great deal of
intermarriage must have occurred over the last century or so.
I have nothing against people who choose to live in this
fashion, but in many communities where groups of them live, great difficulties
arise as they spill over their private boundaries into the lives of others.
They cause great troubles in Israel, and there have been
many violent confrontations over the years. There were even cases of
pedestrians assaulted on the street - as a woman walking where she wasn't
allowed - and some incidents of extreme violence.
The violence included two women, reportedly prostitutes
living in or near their neighborhood, being burned alive when their home was
set fire to in the night. Of course, there was also the terrible case of the
vicious attack on a Palestinian family in the West Bank.
Liberal Temples also have been vandalized in Israel. People
like Reform Jews are not even accepted as Jews by this group.
