#hassidim

[porterdavis]

I guarantee you the Hassidim are up to something janky. Don't @me (I have receipts)

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Chassidic Jews relaxing in Prospect Park, 1956. Click to enlarge.

Photo: Leon Levenstein via the Stephen Daiter Gallery

[hiddurmitzvah]

My pictures of a small Lag Baomer celebration in Hungary. 

More details and other pictures you can find here, at my Facebook page.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

The re-ghettoizing of the Jews, by Eli Steinberg

Laws limiting where Jews can live show America going down a dangerous path on anti-Semitism.

Think the word "invasion" is too harsh? It was used unambiguously in 2016 by the (now former) mayor of Toms River, New Jersey, Tom Kelaher, to describe the Jews buying homes in his town. Toms River is one of the towns bordering Lakewood, and, as the town grows beyond its natural limits and the limits of its infrastructure, Lakewooders have, for the last half-decade, been looking toward these towns, only to be told they aren’t wanted there.

Residents responded to Jews buying homes on their blocks by pressuring neighbors not to sell, putting out “Toms River Strong — Don’t Sell” yard signs. In one instance, an entire block of residents reportedly emptied their driveways, taking up all the street parking when a neighbor, who had hired a Jewish realtor, held an open house. These residents continued to press their local government to “do something” to keep the Orthodox Jews from moving into their town and “turning it to another Lakewood.”

The horror.

Neighboring Jackson is under investigation by both the New Jersey Attorney General’s Civil Rights Division and the Department of Justice after local officials enacted ordinance after ordinance in a concerted effort to keep Jews from moving out of Lakewood and into their town. These included prohibitions on the construction of an eruv, a virtually unnoticeable string of fishing line that encircles public areas and permits observant Jews to carry items on Saturdays. Jackson voted to make it illegal to build any school dormitories, a project only the Jewish community was contemplating undertaking. The town required land eight times the size of a typical lot for anyone to build a house of worship.

The town’s mayor, Mike Reina, admitted in a conversation with a GOP county chair that the intention of the last was to prevent the construction of synagogues. Reina was also quoted as having told “concerned citizens” in a private meeting that “the key to keeping Jackson the way we all know and love it" is to "tell your neighbors” not to sell.

Local media reported that then-Council President Rob Nixon, when asked at a public meeting before the enactment of these ordinances what the township planned on doing to stop the Jews from moving in, said that “the threat can be eliminated if people held their ground and refused the offers being made on their properties and remain committed to Jackson Township and their neighbors.”

[ecrasonslinfame]

MILE END LIFE

[lawrencefineart]

There is nothing more beautiful than a Jewish wedding. 2000 years of tradition. Recently we were privileged to attend a wedding that involved members of the Bobov sect of Hasidism. Pictured here: a father prepares his son to walk down the aisle to meet his Kallah-bride-bashert (Yiddish). The word Kallah comes from the Hebrew for “all”. The bride is his completion, just as Eve completed Adam. #wedding #groom #hassidim #bobovhasidim #jewishwedding #judaism #tradition #chasidim #bride #jewishbride https://www.instagram.com/p/CfctIozLYoR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[porterdavis]

Words fail me

[vibrantmattah]

the world to come

“There is a well-known parable about the Kingdom of the Messiah that Walter Benjamin (who heard it from Gershom Scholem) recounted one evening to Ernst Bloch, who in turn transcribed it in Spuren: "A rabbi, a real cabalist, once said that in order to establish the reign of peace it is not necessary to destroy everything nor to begin a completely new world. It is sufficient to displace this cup or this bush or this stone just a little, and thus everything. But this small displacement is so difficult to achieve and its measure is so difficult to find that, with regard to the world, humans are incapable of it and it is necessary that the Messiah come." Benjamin's ver- sion of the story goes like this: "The Hassidim tell a story about the world to come that says everything there will be just as it is here. Just as our room is now, so it will be in the world to come; where our baby sleeps now, there too it will sleep in the other world. And the clothes we wear in this world, those too we will wear there. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different. "