A worth reading article on our next door neighbour district, Ramapo, N.Y where a struggle to survive is going on between Hasidic community and other School district residents. Can it spill over to other neighbouring school districts ? ( F. Sheikh )
Up in Ramapo, the immigrant community and the growing population of Hasidim had eyed each other with increasing wariness. Then the Orthodox took over the public schools and proceeded to gut them.
One morning in June 2005, a team of real-estate agents left Manhattan and drove an hour north to the western part of Rockland County to repossess a house. The home, in a village called New Square, had long since fallen into delinquency, and the bank had sold the property. The new owners, investors, had offered a cash settlement to the occupants as an enticement to leave before the formal eviction, but that offer had been refused. The agents had been told that New Square was a Hasidic village, but they had not given that fact much thought. Arriving, accompanied by the police, one of the agents noticed that the village had a gate and that the gate was attended.
In retrospect, that gate seems like a portal. Inside, young men and boys seemed to be everywhere, dressed alike. One of the agents was a woman in business clothes, her hair uncovered, and as the group passed through the village, her colleagues noticed a Hasidic woman covering a young boy’s eyes. At the house, the owner answered the door and the eviction began. The agents took a look at the place—a yellow house divided into four units, a small structure in the yard, no great prize.
The phrase “all hell broke loose” conjures an ancient kind of chaos. Perhaps it applies. Dozens of Hasidim arrived, forming a crowd, some just curious but some very upset. Villagers took photos of the police, of the agents, of the license plates on the agents’ cars, of the possessions being piled on the lawn. One Hasid stuck a microphone in the lead agent’s face and yelled questions at him, as if he were a corrupt politician. A group of workmen had been hired to help with the physical eviction; they had rocks thrown at them.
Things seemed unstable enough that afternoon that the police decided to patrol the property overnight. By the second night, there was no police protection. Soon after, someone fixed cables to the house’s pillars, tied the other end to a car, then revved the vehicle into drive. The pillars gave way and the house’s deck collapsed. The local paper, theJournal News, reached one of the agents, a man named Alain Fattal. He was outraged. “This is no longer about a real-estate deal,” Fattal told the reporter. “This is about my constitutional right to own property. I will not be intimidated.” The police could not figure out who was responsible for demolishing the deck. They tried to interview neighbors and got nowhere. But to the agents the case was clear: The villagers had destroyed the property rather than let outsiders move in. Click link below to read full article;
I wanted to read the full article. I clicked on the link and I read the first page.
This article is about 7 pages.
At the bottom of the article there is a box for “NEXT” and 1 to 7.
For some reason I was not able to go beyond the first page – may be my PC or some other problem.
This article is very important.
It tells about ultra-conservative groups in any religion.
Hasidic in Judaism, Wahabi/Salafi in Islam and Evangelicals in Christianity.
The level of conservatism in ascending order:
(1) Evangelicals
(2) Wahabi/Salafi
(3) Hasidic/Ultra Orthodox
The higher the number, lesser the level of rationality and more resistance to modernity.
More can be said, if there is a comment on this comment.
nSalik
In the end, author has tried to spin and put a favorable light on the Hasidim community but failed miserably. If many in Hasidim community are living below poverty level, then how they are affording private religious schools, new expensive condominiums are being built and commercial enterprises are flourishing? As the Hasidim population in the community is growing, it will spill over to other school districts. Is it possible for Hasidim community to get away with this without powerful Political backing? Can any other minority community get away with this?
Some comments from readers on the article in New York Magazine;
“This is a community that sends ALL it s children to religious schools and does not wish to educate the children of people who serve them, like the police, fire department, sanitation, roads etc.When I bought my house in 1966, the schools which had 70,000 students. When my kids attended the schools were third in the state, and my kids went on to top colleges with the education that East Ramapo provided. “
“What they do to the secular community is a civil offense. You have to live here to see the arrogance and the destruction.”
“Sound familiar? This is just a very small taste of what is happening to the Palestinians.”
“The Hasid in Ramapo are building “a community”? Really? Is that your big ending Mr. Wallace-Wells?”
“If this is how Hasidic Jews behave in the world, I don’t know what Torah they’re reading on Shabbat, but it certainly isn’t the same one I read and study each week. Shame on them!”
Fayyaz
The Hasidim are aggressively determined to maintain their extreme insularity. They draw in benefits from the community at large and then use their political voting bloc clout to silence any opposition. The earlier scandals of Kiryat Joel in Monroe and the religious schools scam that nearly bankrupted Rockland Community College are now being visited upon the East Ramapo school district. The school board hearings are so decidedly one sided that the two non-Hasidic members of school board resigned in protest. There are other parts to this illegal drive for Hasidic communal expansion. Housing projects in Spring Valley using public funding and the large medical facility on Rte 45 that is designed to provide Medicaid services only for the members of the community. It is a unique combination of religious intolerance and arrogance.
Save East Ramapo Petition has 3,500 signatures!!!
Thank you to all who have signed the petition for the “Save East Ramapo” bill. This bill gives the NYS Commissioner of Education more power to intervene in East Ramapo
This petition is open to all people, regardless of your age, residency status, or where you live, so please invite all your friends far and near
http://poweroften.us/sign-the-petition/
Join the Petition Event on Facebook:
Is Divisiveness Dangerous?
An important new article from The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange examines the impact of divisiveness in East Ramapo.
The author, a professor of journalism at CUNY, has masterfully captured the clearest picture of our divided community by interviewing not just the politicians and activists, but the ‘regular’ people:
“Their kids, the private kids, and our kids, they’re the same amount of American, you know,” said Elsa Palma, in Spanish from behind a glass counter filled with cosmetics. “We’re in America. Everyone deserves a chance.”
I hope everyone will take time to read this article: