Ari Goldman’s quip that “Orthodox Jews live like Puerto Ricans and vote like billionaires” might be a bit off target (“Obama And The Orthodox Jews,’ Mixed Media, Nov. 30).
I recall a Jerusalem Post interview with Rabbi Moshe Levinger’s wife some decades ago when his followers began living in Hebron. When asked if she wasn’t afraid of the surrounding hostile population, the rebbetzin replied, “No. We lived with the schvartzes in Brooklyn.” Some years later, during the assault on the Jewish community in Crown Heights, the hapless David Dinkins was accused of deliberately encouraging the attacks. The mayor’s active animus, not mere incompetence, was assumed.
And today, “The Dov Hikind Show,” a weekly Jewish radio show in New York, features the most atrocious bias and prejudice from callers whose vile attacks and factually incorrect statements concerning President Barack Obama go uncorrected by the host, an elected legislator whose own criticism seems anything but fair and reasoned analysis.
So some observers might amend the cliché to read “Orthodox Jews live like Puerto Ricans and vote like racists.”
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