Results tagged “hasidicjews”

Have really fake-looking beard, will rob: Surveillance footage has emerged of two men who disguised themselves as Hasidic Jews to rob a Diamond District jewelry importer on New Year's Eve afternoon.

The NYPD is stepping into a long-running feud between two rival Orthodox Jewish patrol groups in Crown Heights in order to unite them into a single police-supervised unit. Shmira and Shomrim are two bitterly-divided private crime-patrol organizations that split in the late '90s. (Here's one explanation of their complicated rivalry.) In an exclusive titled, "Jew Guys Need to Talk," the Post reports that Shmira has agreed to the merger, but Shomrim refuses to sit down with Shmira, who they accuse of slashing patrol-car tires, making prank emergency calls and falsely informing on Shomrim to the police. Yossi Stern, director of Shmira, denies the allegations: "It's all a bunch of rhetoric. Show me a police report. We're not out to harass anybody. We're out to do a service for the community." You'll recall that members of Shmira were suspected of beating a 20-year-old black man, Andrew Charles, in Crown Heights last April.

The utterly unnecessary return of 90210 to the small screen tomorrow means the arrival of giant billboards displaying the new cast. The Brooklyn Paper reports on one in which teens wear swimsuits and lounge in pools in the form of the 90210 numbers. The image can be seen from the BQE and hangs above Williamsburg--specifically in the Hasidic Jewish area. Rabbi David Niederman says, “In Jewish law, it is forbidden to see any part of a lady that is not dressed — and having men and women swimming together is also not permissible, even if they are fully clothed.” (In the past, Hasids have rallied against an H&M ad.) To be fair, though, that girl in the "1" pool isn't swimming with any boys, so she's only half offensive.

The police have increased their presence in Crown Heights after two incidents that have upset the black and Jewish communities and caused unrest between them. And many are recalling the summer of 1991, when the Crown Heights riots shook the city.

A few months ago we were walking on Lee Avenue in East Williamsburg, and noticed some strange billboard graffiti. It looked like someone had spraypainted a beard over the kid in the ad. At first, we thought it might be the work of Beard, a streetartist who had been putting work up recently, but on closer inspection, it wasn't so much a beard as just a straight crossing out of the face.

Haverford graduate, Parks Department project manager, and Greenpoint resident David Langlieb is under fire for writing an essay about his neighborhood in his alumni magazine. According to the Daily News, the essay, ripe with complaints about the old-school Polish residents and self-deprecation about not being an Ivy League graduate, has incensed the Polish American Congress and Councilman David Yassky, who said, "my eyes pretty much popped out of my head when I read this."

Gavin Cato's death set off three days of riots. Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian Orthodox Jew doing research in New York City for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Melbourne, was stabbed to death a few blocks away by a group of young black men. Cato's and Rosenbaum's deaths became heated symbols in a political and cultural struggle that pitted not just Hasidic Jews against black residents of Crown Heights, but also black radicals against the black-dominated Brooklyn political establishment; the black mayor and his black police commissioner against the largely white police force; the United States Department of Justice against New York politicians; and the leadership of Manhattan-based Jewish organizations against Jews from the outer boroughs. The riot strained race relations in the city, led some to question the viability of urban liberalism and the black-Jewish political entente, raised concerns about the extent of black anti-Semitism, and led the federal judiciary to broaden the scope of federal civil rights legislation to include Jews.

Gothamist on the Hasids vs. the Hipsters.

Should hipsters be added to the list of plagues? Gothamist previously on the Hasidic-Hipster unrest.

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