I live in NYC and know about the fraud, the attitudes towards the goyim that come from Maharal and Tanya, the way a woman becomes an agunah, the way the Rabbanut controls giyur, and I know that many poskim among the Haredim consider Christians ovdei avodah zarah.
Being from NYC doesn’t tell me that you actually know more about us, just that you might be more exposed to infamous anti-orthodox outlets like the New York Times and other prejudiced media. If you have had personal bad experiences with religious Jews then I regret that and am very sorry to hear it.
Let’s make an educated guess that there are half a million orthodox Jews in the NY metro area. It might well be more. In a community of 500,000, do you think that there are no people who commit fraud and other crimes? It is sad to me, because these people are going against the teachings of our Torah. Nevertheless, it happens. It is exacerbated for two reasons. Since we dress distinctively, an “orthodox” criminal always attracts more media attention. Second, the media has the habit of calling everyone “rabbis”. In the popular mind, this evokes images of someone who stands up at a pulpit in a synagogue every Sabbath and leads his congregation. In reality, it very often means someone who studied in yeshiva as a youngster, earned some rabbinical ordination in his early 20s, went into business and became a “regular guy,” perhaps respected in his community and perhaps not so much, and now 30 years later he’s nabbed on tax evasion. Some rabbi! Other times it’s totally made up. Either way, it’s not excusable, of course. But to take this as representative… is laughable. It’s like me saying to a “progressive”: Don’t tell me blacks are not criminals. I live in NYC. Look at all the murders and robberies!
If someone said that he would be rightly censured. When it comes to Jews, somehow it’s ok.
You say you know “all about” the attitudes to non-Jews conveyed by the Maharal and Baal haTanya. It is hard to convey to an “outsider” how silly this point is. First of all, the Tanya is learned only by the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidim. Literally almost no one else opens it up. Secondly, that book of very, very minimal importance in the wider orthodox world is literally the most extreme source that anyone could come up with. I don’t agree with that and it’s not supported by classical Jewish literature in my opinion. This book dates from the late 1700s, not ancient times. IT was also written in a time of intense persecution against Jews. So to say that this is inciting hatred of non-Jews and xenophobia is laughable. (BTW even the Lubavitchers have darn good relations with non-Jews, so go figure.) The Maharal has been simply misunderstood, but that’s another long post. And while he is very respected, to be fair his books are also not integral to Jewish life and practice. They are Jewish philosophical books and most yeshiva students don’t read them.
I literally don’t have time to finish this post but there’s so much more to say. You are being very fancy using Hebrew terms like “ovdei avoda zara”. That simply translates to “practitioners of foreign worship” i.e. idol worship. Some Jews think Christianity is idol worship and some don’t. Some Protestants think Catholicism is idol worship too! How does that validate your point? I have not heard from my rabbi or in my studies of any obligation to hate idol worshippers, even if I considered Christians idolaters. I’ll continue this later…
