Hasids on Hipsters: "Dangerous to Our Children"

Yesterday, the Post reports Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg staged a protest about the "yuppies" overdeveloping the neighborhood, with new buildings and expensive rents. Not only are rents selling for around $500-600 (vs. regular price of $200) per square foot, a 21 year-old Hasid Joel Klein says, "[The new residents] will have a very liberal lifestyle, contrasting to ours. We have Jewish housing, synagogues, a Jewish medical center. They want to make bars and swimming pools. We don't like these things." Another protestor called a development at 60 Broadway "an extension of the East Village," confirming what Gothamist and everyone else has known for the past 4–5 years. But the most damning words come from a rabbi, who said "The morality of [yuppies'/hipsters'] living is not acceptable to our people. It's dangerous for our children."

Two books that show the divide between the communities: The Hipster Handbook and Hasidic Williamsburg.

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By Jen Chung in News on December 1, 2003 8:10 AM

Comments [rss]

Elke

Check out my Hipsters and Hassids Blog for an illustrated book I am putting together showing the striking similarities these communities have.

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Zoya

You have to understand they built this community based on their own religion and their teachings to their children. One of which is ISLOATION AND OTHERS ARE A BAD INFLUENCE SHOULD THEY NOT BELONG TO THIS COMMUNITY OR RELIGION.

They have practiced their religion in other ares of NJ and now they are on the receiving end of what IS HAPPENING IN NY NOW, THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY, and everyone has a right to live where they choose to, WHO PROCLAIMS that anyone other thay they will have a bad influence on their children, their beliefs are theirs alone and they choose to isloate themselves and their children.

perhaps they teach that they are the good and other than their Religion everyone else is Evil, they have the voting power in many states and one day when you wake up and you see this community growing, you know your no longer living in any community BUT THEIRS.

Zoya

You have to understand they built this community based on their own religion and their teachings to their children. One of which is ISLOATION AND OTHERS ARE A BAD INFLUENCE SHOULD THEY NOT BELONG TO THIS COMMUNITY OR RELIGION.

They have practiced their religion in other ares of NJ and now they are on the receiving end of what IS HAPPENING IN NY NOW, THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY, and everyone has a right to live where they choose to, WHO PROCLAIMS that anyone other thay they will have a bad influence on their children, their beliefs are theirs alone and they choose to isloate themselves and their children.

perhaps they teach that they are the good and other than their Religion everyone else is Evil, they have the voting power in many states and one day when you wake up and you see this community growing, you know your no longer living in any community BUT THEIRS.

L. Hernandez

Congrats to the Satmar for joining in that most NY of traditions, hagiography of the old neighborhood. In the Fifties, Williamsburg was the site of dozens of breweries, including Schaefer and Reingold (my 70+ year old cousins have great stories about swiping beers off the loading docks), and nearby McCarren Pool was built during the Great Depression, so I'm having trouble finding sympathy for the modern hipster evils they rail against.

My family settled in Williamsburg during the '20s, but by the '70s, most of us had worked our way out of the neighborhood. I understand why the Satmar stayed behind, but give me a break. There was always tension about affordable real estate in the neighborhood and always the same tired arguments about morality.

Hilton

A made a few typos up there. It's sometimes hard to write a quick comment and read it for mistakes (e.g., Hasidism instead of Hasidim). oops.

Hilton

I am in no way here to defend the Hasidism, but I am mildly sympathetic to their frustration, as well as that of (presumably) the Puerto Ricans. The Hasidism have lived there for dozens of years because of the cheap rent -- they do not have lots of money (in fact, they are the largest population of White welfare receipiants in the City). They also live there because it houses their institutions and their community, which is dependent on proximity and isolation. The hipsters come in, and it is a total affront to their lifestyle and culture. The hipsters also have money. What happens? Kulturkampf.

Now, the Hassids are well known for this problem. For those old enough to remember Crown Heights, we got to see first hand that when it comes down to it, it's all about Real Estate, and retaining a community that is isolated in a cheap area.

I am sympathetic not because I support their cause -- far from it -- but I do think that hipsters who hope to slum it have to realize their encroaching in areas that are long-established (unlike the original Williamsburg community of hipsters, who in large part took over abandoned warehouses and a few houses) and therefore will encounter lots of community resentment.

mike c

What bothers me is the constant confusion between "yuppie" and "hipster". They are in no way one and the same. The hipster is well, I don't need to even go into it...and the yuppies are the young professionals with the marketing or wall street or IT jobs...they follow their own flock of sheep...a very different (dare I say cleaner and better groomed) flock from their trucker hat counterparts.

The only thing the two groups have in common is that they're willing to pay the crazy rents.

toby

i wonder how they feel about the hipsters shopping at the mall on bedford that is owned by them. i bet they make a lot of money in that REALLY EXPENSIVE cheese shop! without the yuppie money they are making how could they afford to stay in the most populated city in north america?

eli

Why is it that when the hipsters are all in bed, the Hasidim are still up walking around with their entire families, waiting on streetcorners in the middle of the night? What are they doing out there? It might actually be the Hasidim who are a bad influence.