I’ll decide how much light you need
Noga pointed out two more articles, and I’m feeling slightly peeved at being told not to ‘blame the Jews, for Chrissakes,’ as if I had, so I’ll say a little more. The articles are interesting. From The Canadian Jewish News, which says the Canadian Jewish Congress doesn’t agree that the synagogue should have asked the Y to frost its windows.
[C]ommunications director Leyla Di Cori…said CJC is trying to get the message out to the public that the entire chassidic population represents only five to 10 per cent of the Montreal Jewish community and “does not reflect the community as a whole.”
Well of course it doesn’t, and neither does anyone else, because there is no such thing as ‘the community as a whole’ except in the case of a town or neighborhood, in which case there is still no one who can ‘reflect the community as a whole’ because that doesn’t mean anything, because people don’t think in a bloc. Why would anybody think that the people at the synagogue did ‘reflect the community as a whole’? I suppose because people keep talking about ‘communities’ that way, just as Leyla Di Cori does.
What the people at the synagogue may ‘reflect’ is a growing tendency for religious zealots to think they can tell everyone else what to do, but that’s not the same thing as reflecting a ‘community.’
Di Cori said she thinks this seemingly minor incident has been played up in the media because it fits into the “reasonable accommodation” debate going on in Quebec today about how far a society that prides itself on being secular and progressive should go to tolerate practices of religious and cultural minorities that are at odds with the majority.
I’ll tell you how far. Zero far. Unless of course there’s no issue, which is no help, because when there’s no issue there’s no debate about how far anyone should go. If there’s no harm and nothing at stake, no problem; if there is harm, the society should go zero far.
B’nai Brith Canada legal counsel Steven Slimovitch “commended” the Y administration for good neighbourliness and finding a “compromise” that poses little or no inconvenience to the institution or its members. In fact, it appears to have been a plus for the Y, because the congregation paid for the change to the windows.
Why is that a plus? The congregation paid to make the windows opaque so that there is less light inside. Why is that a plus? Many of us like natural light.
“Was the space rendered any less comfortable? Can they not work out there any more? No. If it had been, for example, a sewing class that was held there that required a lot of natural light, it would be a different story.”
Ah – so it’s up to him to decide how much light the people at the Y get to have in a situation where the people at the synagogue want them to have less. It’s up to him, not up to them. I see.
He deplored what he regards as the visceral “us versus them” mentality among some Y members. In an increasingly diverse society, he said, it’s necessary more than ever to co-operate and show respect and understanding.
Respect and understanding for the religious zealots who want women to hide, not respect and understanding for people who don’t share their religion and don’t want it telling them what to do and how much light they’re allowed to have in a public gym. No, it’s not necessary to show that, it’s necessary to refuse to show that.
Slimovitch said he doesn’t see this case as a status of women issue in any way, or one that endorses a view that women are somehow shameful and must be kept out of sight.
Well he would say that, wouldn’t he. And he’s not the one who’s being told to cover up, is he, so I really don’t think his opinion is interesting or relevant.
And here’s an ugly little finale:
Alex Werzberg, president of the Coalition of Outremont Chassidic Organizations and a Satmar community member, called “the whole thing a big joke…Everything was fine for months, and then somebody came in and made a big deal out of it – an agent provocateur – who says, ‘Those Jews are not going to tell us what to do,’ called the media and made a hullabaloo.”
Did she? Did she say that? Did she? Or did he just say she did? I know what I think.
I found this blog with lots of pertinent information and different perspectives.
It’s my belief that the whole thing is another example of the failure of multiculturalism. The original notion of multiculturalism was relying on reservoires of good-will and patience. However, the reservoires emptied rapidly. Too many drinkers taking too long drinks, I suppose. And now we are witnessing the backlash.
http://hogtownfront.blogspot.com/2006/11/hasidic-jews-in-montreal-reluctant-to.html
OB
You are 100% spot on with your comments here.
These “compromises” and “reasonable accommodations” tend to favour those who want to put more restrictions on how people can behave, dress and speak.
Speaking up in this situation is not stirring up trouble. It is ensuring that individual rights are not eroded by conservatives.
As you so clearly demonstrate, various “others” are deciding what is reasonable without listening to those most directly affected: the people in the gym.
“Was the space rendered any less comfortable? Can they not work out there any more?”
Wrong questions. Right question: Is it any business of the synagogue’s what the windows of the Y are like?
Brings back a vague memory of an article in an Israeli paper a few years back. It was a reply to calls from the religious to show more respect and tolerance, such as not driving on certain streets on Saturday. The writer said fine, I’ll modify my behaviour to a degree and what I’d like in return, if this is really going to be a mutual thing, is that you also modify your behaviour. I’d like you guys to eat on Yom Kippur. Or words to that effect. The point was, this kind of thing is always one-sided. You never get the side that is trying to modify the other’s behaviour offering to change something in its behaviour that may disturb the other side. The freedom not to look into gym windows isn’t enough, is it?
Noga – “another example of the failure of multiculturalism”
The whole thing is a misnomer. The very definition of ‘multiculturalism’ seems to have been reduced to that of ‘different religions’. ‘Culture’ is of course, so much more than about the few percent of any society who are actively involved in worship and struggle to order their society accordingly. Yes its about traditions, customs, mores, ways of life which to a greater or lesser extend may have been influenced by those holding religious power, but what of the music, literature, food, clothing, drama, education ? These issues are not even considered in the continuing tug of war between varying interest groups and the host nations’ great and good.
For host nations to insist as they do that a merely few loudmouth religionists represent an incoming and newly establishing ethnic sub-culture is in itself, patronising, even racist. A lot of people came to England or Canada to get away from those kinds of proscriptive dogma, so they can thrive.
Exactly. When the sharia debate was going on in Canada, I remember quite a few voices being raised to say “we only came here to escape that.”
Aye – not wishing to press the point too hard – but how would anyone under those multiculti criteria define Iranian culture ? ‘Strict’ and ‘Traditional’ one aof ‘Deeply Held Faith’. Notions of communitarianism, egalitarianism and education would be right out of the window, yet more in reality they’re apt to the actual ‘culture’ of Iranian people. At least the Iranians I’ve been reading…
Can someone ask the rabbi where I can find this nude sewing class?
Now c’mon OB, the solution’s really simple:
Anyone wishing to use the gym space has to wear a burqa. At all times. Especially in the showers.
Now, that way NO-ONE gets offended, surely?
;-))
Nick S.:
The initial idea of multiculturalism was about encouraging solicitude among different minorities, and between minorities and mainstream societies. It was based on the hope that politeness and courtesy in treating others would result in a truly civil society. It was not about balkanization of minorities but that’s how the application, unfortunately, evolved. Some cultural (and religious) minorities simply used multiculturalism to dig deep moats around themselves and within those boundaries insisted on their entitlement to carry on traditions that are incompatible with Canadian VALUES. So we now have students asking for special prayer rooms in universities, and girls asking to be exempt from physical education classes because it’s against the religion. There are also many more women walking with covered faces than there were three or four years ago.
The general perception is that religion has become a vehicle for grabbing political gains and power. It’s not the Hindus, or the Sikhs or the Chassidic Jews that use their respective religions to this effect. It’s the Muslims who do. That’s why I see the whole YMCA fiasco as a Freudian displacement ploy. No one suggests that the Chassidim are pining for more political weight. Their request was never couched in a concept of entitlement. But the activist gymnasts turned it into a political issue and that is unfortunate. Because it means that even the modest expectations of the original multiculturalists for benign indifference is no longer possible in today’s climate of suspicion and ill-will. And I say “unfortunately” because a society cannot hope to be civil without a modicum of good will.
There is a maxim in Judaism that says one must not prevent good service that gives some relief to one but does not detract anything from the other. I think the Y case was such an example. But I may be wrong. Maybe the frosting of four windows in a gym will indeed eventually lead to a demand that all women wear burkas by way of the butterfly effect.
Noga, in the previous thread you say:
“Their founder and his immediate followers in the seventeenth century had great imagination about the application of tradition in straightened circumstances.”
Now I could bring up what you probably know about those times in Israel when the police made it clear that they had their hands full of other problems and would make short shrift of anyone starting violent demonstrations about roads being open or closed on Saturday – and the Haredim knew, completely pragmatically, what was meant and laid off the demos for a while. My point, however, is much larger and has to do with the way religion is so eminently tolerant when it has no power and very often vice versa. You seem to know a great deal more about the details of the current case than I do, but even if this is something that was relatively amicable till someone tried to use it for other purposes, I still think that every attempt by religion to change its secular environment that is not resisted is a dangerous precedent.
For some reason, the last two paragraphs of Norman Levitt on The God Delusion now come to mind, maybe because they are a ringing reminder of what really is and really isn’t reasonable.
Peeve away.
Noga, yeah, it used to be a form of civil rights grounded in equality of cultures. In the UK though the very term culture has become so meaningless and debased, religion wins out.
Piss off, David. Gutter accusations of ‘blaming the Jews’ are way below the threshold; go away and don’t come back.
Noga,
I followed the link you provided and prowled around a little. I wouldn’t exactly say it provided ‘different perspectives’. The site, and the linked sites, seemed pretty homogenous to me; anti-immigrant moaning and racial pseudo-science.
“It’s not the Hindus, or the Sikhs or the Chassidic Jews that use their respective religions to this effect. It’s the Muslims who do.”
Oh but it is though. Think ‘Behzti,’ think Asia House, think California textbook controversy, think back of the bus. And it’s not ‘the’ Muslims who use their religions this way, either, it’s some of them. It’s not all of any of the groups, but it is some of all of them.
And the Jerry Springer ‘Opera’ show – Christian fundys active in UK again…
Another example of Jewish fundamentalism gone horribly awry:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070203.ISRAEL03/TPStory/?query=israel+bus
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that.