You may think your city is the worst, everyone always does, but let me tell you something from my personal experience, every city is bad. Every city has their yeshiva’s, semi kosher unsupervised vegan Indian restaurants, shulls with mechitzas that are- too short, see through, too tall, too thick, too thin. Shulls with too many women not covering their hair, shulls that make you cover your hair, shulls with too much talking, shulls with drunken Kiddush clubs, day schools that accept non-Jewish children, not frum enough day schools that hate frum folks, too frum day schools that wont cater to your child, too much controlling chabadnicks, maybe a couple meshichists speak to much yechi for your taste, that donut shop with the controversial hechsher from a guy who maybe send his kids to coed camps. Or maybe you think all the frummies hate the modern folks, the chabadnicks get along with everyone but secretly disagree with the missnageds, or maybe the school board members are too frum and wont let their kids over at your house because they don’t keep triangle-K. Or maybe your local butcher sells Hebrew national and glatt kosher meat, or maybe the local girls school has too few students and you decide to send your child away only to be avoided in shull, or maybe you adhere to a strict hashgacha and wont eat anywhere, or maybe your children are druggies/untznius/or just nebachs and you wont go to shull for fear of more “advice”. Maybe the local vaad refuses hashgacha to a local pizza store because it is a hangout on moztoi shabbos, or maybe the vaad just controls everything. Maybe your new eruv was made by someone who only half the community holds by- you know who you are. Maybe the yeshiva is disliked in your town (very common) or maybe the yeshiva alienates all the people who don’t adhere to its strict policies, or maybe the local lesbian reform Rabbi bashes the gay hating orthodox folks, or maybe Jews are really bored with their lives and just like to argue. 2 Jews 3 opinions you know……
Now here is a list of places I have lived or been that claimed that they had the most problems of any Jewish community. Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Washington Heights, Cleveland, Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, Scranton PA, Pikesville MD, Providence RI, Monsey, Jerusalem, Miami, Salt Lake City, Chicago.
I cannot say who was the worst but many people will agree that every community has their problems and it all depends on willingness to shut up eat your flippin’ donuts and go about your business. Yeh I am sure its more detailed then that but since I don’t have any kids in school I guess that my world view.
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Hi there. I came across your blog and found it interesting. I have kids and have found dealing with certain yeshivas very difficult. It really affected me in a negative way, I have alot of anger and I am not as religious as I once was. All I can tell you is that you are right, there are problems everywhere, us Jews are in a long galus and are working towards bettering ourselves, but there is sinaas chinam and hypocracy out there that has nothing to do with Hashem. I just am trying to stay with the good and emesdik people that I trust, and stay away from the people I don’t. The judgemental part disturbs me too. I used to be like that, but now I love all jews from all walks of life. Life is way too short to spend it judgeing and being so critical of others. If we accept other people and judge them favorably, maybe Hashem will do that for us.
You do get around!
Just become Breslover and your troubles will disappear…
Without community politics, Jews would play way too much Jewish Geography for their own health.