Boro Park Mayhem

I just heard on the Dov Hikind program on the radio that the (English presumably, which is based in the BP vicinity) Hamodia newspaper, had an editorial in which senior community Rabbinic leaders R. Yaakov Perlow, Novominsker Rebbe and R. Yosef Rosenbum, Rosh Yeshiva Shaarei Yosher, both of whom reside in the BP area, rebuked the community strongly for what happened.

I agree. The silence is deafening.

Also, while I enjoyed Rabbi Horowitz’s letter. I don’t think that speaking
to our children is enough. Here is what I wrote another place:

Rabbi Horowitz,

With all due respect, I believe that speaking about the acts is not enough.
We clearly need programs in our communities (including mine!) where students
who engage in destruction of property are forced to work off their destruction
through the sweat of their own brows.

The boys who set the fires and burned a police cruiser absolutely need to work off
their debt to society.

The problems of property destruction are not limited to Boro Park. There seems
to be a general disrepect in many communities. For example, in the Girls’
School where I taught briefly, the desks were destroyed by graffiti caused by
the students (there is no way to be dan l’chaf zechut when Adina, Ahuva, and Faigy
are scribbled all over the desks). In my public school, if you were seen writing
on the desk, you were forced to clean not only your desk, but other desks in the
classroom over lunch or after school. Our school was clean and nice and beautiful.
The school I taught in was a dump and was treated as a dump. My school also had a
work program where disruptive students cleaned the grounds of the campus of trash.
Needless to say, the program wasn’t very large.

We need to enact common sense, tried and true policies to encourage better behavior:
Behavior that is in conformance with halacha and the way B’nai Torah should act.

While I don’t believe what happened in Boro Park would happen in my community, I
certainly view the actions as a wake up call for all of us to do a cheshbon hanefesh.
We should all be asking ourselves what we are doing wrong and what we should be
doing better in terms of parenting and chinuch?

Talk is not enough.

Sefardi Lady,

“Talk is not enough.”

How right you are! So what should we do? Should the Gedolim whom you’ve regularly bashed on your blog and elsewhere, utter a proclamation stating what you believe? Will their words have any effect on your legions of faithful readers who have learned long ago from a wise Sefardi Lady that they don’t know what they’re talking about?

Talk will truly never again be enough so long as there are such knowledgeable and passionate people out there like you calling into question their every word.

Congratulations on a job well done!

Mark:

VERY well said !

Hard to believe that someone claims that SephardiLady as a basher of Gdolim. That accusation IMO cannot be sustained upon any reasonable reading of that blog and comments.