Comment Mining

RobRoy: Far too many charedi-types think that they constitute some sort of superior elite by virtue of the fact that they put on a big black hat, grow a beard and have learned a few blatt of Gemara.

Case in point. A parent I know with a son in a "black hat" mesivta told me that one day, the menahel comes into the office, where there's a big mess because, I believe, some of the hanhola had a breakfast meeting, and he bellows "I NEED A GOY TO COME AND CLEAN THIS MESS UP!"

The fact of the matter is that like most yeshivas, this one's maintenance staff was totally comprised of non-Jews --but he did not say "I needs a janitor," or "I need a custodian" or "I need a maintenance man" -- he said "I NEED A GOY".

The obvious implication of his wording being that even though frum Yidden made the big mess, their neshamas are too holy, refined and pure to clean it up, and besides that, it would be "bittul Torah" -- precious time that could be spent teaching or learning Torah, wasted doing such menial chores.

The other implication, of course, is that the so-called "goyim" (and God, how I, as a Jew, despise that noxious term and anyone ignorant enough to spit it out with such clear contempt!) are fit to do nothing else in this world but to follow the Yidden around with a broom, doing the dirty work that the Yidden are supposedly too good to do. I have no doubt that many of the people in the office probably had not much use for the so-called "goyim" either -- but this guy was so obvious and over-the-top in his bigotry that even they burst out and started laughing at the pompous, pretentious SOB. I don't know if he picked up that they were laughing AT him, not WITH him.

And it's not just the so-called "goyim" held in such contempt.

Near that same mesivta, there is a kosher pizza place that delivers, and freequently, the boys will call in an order. When the delivery man comes, they call him a "shaygetz Jew" behind his back. His crime? He's an immigrant from Russia who probably grew up pretty ignorant of his Jewish heritage under the athiest former Communist government there and never had the kind of opportunity to learn in a fine makom Torah like they enjoy. He wears a little brown leather kippa on his head as a sign of his Jewishness and his respect for God -- but not a big black velvet one like the school says they must wear because that's what "the gedolim" say, and of course, no big black hat. He is clean-shaven (so no beard) and, since he works in a pizza parlor, he wears jeans and a T-shirt, not a black suit and a white shirt like all the yeshiva bocherim and their rebbeim wear.

Maybe they despise him because he spends his whole day working hard baking and delivering pizzas to support his family because his English and/or educational qualifications are not good enough to get him a more presigious "chushava" job like their fathers have, and he doesn't have a rich balaboss father-in-law to support him and his wife while he just sits and "learns," which is what many of these boys intend to do because they have been taught that this is what a young Jewish man is supposed to do. For this, they despise him as a "shaygetz Jew."

In God's name, what kind of stuck-up, snobbish middos are we as a community teaching our children?