Today, in the City Section, the Times wrote about what Boro Park is like on Motzy Shabbos. The article, titled, In the Land of Black Coats had this too say:
TAKE the D train to 55th Street in central Brooklyn, and you feel as if you have set foot in a different world. The station sits at the junction of New Utrecht Avenue, 13th Avenue and 55th Street in the heart of Borough Park, home to a quarter-million Orthodox Jews, one of the largest concentrations of Jews outside Israel. To travel to Borough Park is to journey through both space and time.
OK. So far, so good. Now that we are off the train I wonder who we will meet.
There you may meet David Sondik, an exuberant Orthodox Jew who sings as he walks. Speaking very fast, he stops a visitor and pulls out a picture of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh and last rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, based in Crown Heights.
Wait. In Boro Park I'll meet a Lubavitcher? Whose group is based in Crown Heights? Then shouldn't I expect to meet him in Crown Heights?
I think the press thinks all chasidim are Lubavitcherrs. Otherwise, why would a Lubavitcher pop up in an article about Boro Park.
I'll tell you who you will meet in Boro Park. Bobovers, later mentioned in the article. Belzers. Skverers. Satmarers, Gerers, Stoliners, Papas, Spinkas, and many more. And yes. You will meet some Lubavitchers. But the article gives one the impression that Boro Park is full of people carrying around the Rebbe's picture.
It makes me wonder if the Time's gets it wrong when it reports on the ethnic groups I know nothing about.
No comments:
Post a Comment