Wednesday, December 22, 2004

PLAYING TO THE CROWD

It's the old story. One message for the sympathetic masses, and another for the big English-language paper. Only this time the writer is our friend Jonathan Rosenblum:

" The latest haredi ban... provoked... curiosity in the secular media... a certain note of satisfaction... a certain amusement"
--by Jonathan Rosenblum, in THE JERUSALEM POST, Dec. 16, 2004

"Predictably, the ban was widely ridiculed ..."
--by Jonathan Rosenblum, in THE JEWISH TIMES, Dec. 17, 2004

Rosy's Jewish Times article, by the way, is, by my count, the 563rd in the past decade to completely misappropriate and misinterpret the Chanuka story. Unless Mr. Rosenblum is saying that the ban is likely to fail, and that he expects all of Haredi society to be openly flaunting it within two generations, he should not say: The yeshivas' ban on cell phones coincided, appropriately, with the beginning of Chanukah.