In addition to the tragedy that was the deaths of two Israeli IDF soldiers as part of a "prisoner swap"...
Take a gander at another truly tragic situation and its various levels of media coverage.
New York Magazine
Escape From the Holy Shtetl:
Gitty Grunwald fled the pious world of her mother to return to the secular city of her grandparents. There’s only one problem: The Satmars kept her daughter. A family saga of four generations of American Jews.
Vos Iz Neias?(Yiddish for What's News?)
Yet another hate-filled, biased and anti-religious article appeared in the New York media this week— under the headline 'Escape From the Holy Shtetl' one that for obvious reasons was not reprinted by VIN News but which stoked a firestorm of controversy. A young woman still finding her place in the world tears her beautiful daughter between father and mother and the stable and shifting lives they respectively live(source:The Wolf)
--So much sadness, in so many ways, on so many levels, from so many places.
Here in Yerushalayim, the streets seemed quieter this morning when the news began to cover the prisoner exchange.
ReplyDelete:(
i think i have to throw up
ReplyDeleteYep. So much sadness. That's how I felt all day. About both of these things in different ways. G-d help us.
ReplyDeleteA^2 -
ReplyDeleteThat was my first working title for the post.
Upon review I found the whole story more sadenning than sickening...although one would be hard pressed to choose between the two.
I am very, very sad about the prisoner exchange, although I am relieved that Mrs. Regev will not be an agunah. If the Israelis are wiling to pay this price for bodies, their enemies might start to think that keeping Jewish prisoners alive is (G-d forbid) too much trouble.
ReplyDeleteBut it is impossible to work up even close to that level of indignation about the _New York_ magazine article. First of all, I read this magazine on a regular basis. All of their articles are sarcastic, and they could, and would, make [insert name of person you admire most in the world] look like Satan to sell more magazines. Also, is anyone other than me troubled by the idea and fact of a Jewish "morality police," in Kiryas Joel or anywhere else? Especially if its members beat people up on suspicion--suspicion--of immorality, as they (often 18-25-year-old mean) define it? For those who want to argue that people who live there agree to those rules, which I think is incorrect, if someone, like the woman in this article, wants to leave, can you really blame her? Is your complaint that she told a snarky media outlet that knows nothing about Judaism about it? Why should that rank higher on your list of things to be mad about than the existence of these thugs? (Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, anyone?). They will be there tomorrow, and the next day, whether people write articles about it or not. That's what worries me.
Nah, anonymous, the tragedy in the NY magazine article is that the woman is lost and that she and her young daughter were exploited by the magazine, that she allowed her daughter to be exploited and publicly paraded because she is so young, naive, and--well--lost. The Tznius Police or whatever they are if they do exist, are not my main concern. The child in the pictures. And I guess the lack of decent leadership in all areas of Orthodoxy.
ReplyDeleteTreppenwitz had a terrific post about the prisoner exchange. Truly a sad day.
ReplyDeleteI want to throw up, too.
ReplyDeleteThe prisoner exchange is indeed sad and scary.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I read the entire NY Mag article, and its rebuttal. While the NY Mag article is clearly biased and one-sided, frankly, I do not doubt that it presents Gitty's perceptions, and that KJ, an intense version of some black hat neighborhoods, is indeed intolerant of, say, women who choose to wear pants. On the other hand, the NY Mag article also does show Gitty as stubbornly rebellious and in with a self-destructive crowd, leaving room for speculation that Esther Miriam's dad could indeed be acting out of her welfare.
I found the NY Mag piece riveting, and I think it should not be completely discounted but used instead as the source of self-examination regarding our own behaviors and attitudes.
That NY Mag article is terribly depressing.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous- at least that was explicitly addressed by the VIN editor.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip-off, G. I appreicate it.
What's A^2?
Attention: for those who are interested, I copied all the comments on the NYMAG article and those on the VIN editorial onto Word Documents.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone is interested email me.
All the best, Mindy