Sent to me and asked to remain anonymous
I’m not sure why they hate us, I hear tons of excuses all the time. I wish we looked different so at least I’d be able to tell my children that the hatred is based on some identifiable feature. At least then, we’d be able to hate them back, it’s hard to hate those who hate you for reasons that make no sense. Some say we aren’t even Jews, other say we aren’t assimilated into the rest of the community, and others say we focus too much on things that shouldn’t be focused upon.
Someone once told me that we were the Jews of the Jews, we were hated for no reason other than the fact we did things a little differently, but when asked why the Jews generally had a disdain for us, they would come up with all sorts of excuses. Of course, those were merely excuses, for when they experienced our genuine love and care, they generally stopped their hate and sometimes it even turned to love. I always wondered how someone could stop such hatred at the stop of a dime, could a warm shabbos meal in Thailand really get someone to instantly stop hating us? Could finding a minyan in an airport change their years of speaking against us? It always seemed weird, until I hear from someone that we were the Jews of the Jews.
I’ve heard it all through the years…
Why do you only learn your seforim and your philosophy? I never understood why they cared, it was all Torah and all worthy, we just wanted to do our own thing. It’s not like we had a different chumash or different gemara. Then I would get that line about the Rebbe, that usually came from people with little or no experience with Chassidim. I wondered if those people ever went to Tosh or Skver? Did they think we were the only one’s obsessed with our leader?
I’ll be the first to admit that we seem like a cult, heck frumkeit displays cultish tendencies all over the place, but we aren’t killing people in our cult. We are merely bringing them back to their roots. We don’t demand a certain look, just put on some tefillin and light shabbos candles once in a while. Are we hurting anyone? Are we rioting in the streets against secular Yidden? Are we forcing our followers to adhere to crazy bans and chumros perpetrated by other sects within our cult called Orthodox Judaism? No, we are merely doing the bidding of our Rebbe and bringing Jews closer. Still, the hatred persists. Still, we hear, oh you’re one of them, why do you….do this or that?
You would think those questioning our customs and ways would be so sure of their own practice and that’s why their questioning ours, but it’s usually the opposite. It’s not like these people have never stepped foot into our house to use our “services” only to turn around and talk bad about us. The most painful thing of all is when this happens, it’s like a knife going through my back. How could someone call me up, ask for a place to stay and daven, and then proceed to stomp on us.
I figured it was Ellul so I would pour my heart out and try to bring some peace amongst our brothers and sisters.
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