The Good and Not So Good News

Today’s New York Times devotes a full page to “The 15 Best-Educated Congressional Districts.” Number 5 on the list is the Tenth Congressional District in New York and, perhaps amazingly, Borough Park is in this district, which is also to say that we Borough Parkers – I am included – are in about the top one percent best-educated districts in all of the United States. Doubtlessly, this is attributed, to an extent, to the reality that yeshiva education extends significantly past the high school years for boys and, generally, a year and sometimes more for girls. On top of this, there is a slew of higher education programs specifically catering to the Orthodox.

But before we celebrate, we need to reflect on what this story is actually telling us. In a grotesque example of Congressional districting, for many years now Borough Park has been linked to Manhattan and not merely to nearby Manhattan but, in the words of the Times article, this district “runs alongside Manhattan’s West Side, from West 122nd Street.” In short, BP is part of the district that includes much of Harlem, which would not necessarily be bad if we had a Congressman who cared as much about BP as he cares about Harlem. But we do not.

And we are constantly told that Orthodox Jews have political power!

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6 Responses

  1. mycroft says:

    The 10th Congressional District is represented by a long me Manhattan Liberal Democrat. District is overwhelmingly Democratic, Borough Park does not support national Democratic candidates. Agreed if true  BP not represented not right,but we have a President who makes no attempt to worry about not antagonizing those who voted for him only concerned about his minority base.

    I am happy to see Professor Schick commenting again and perhaps he could comment on the recent analysis based on Pew 2013 population study that shows Modern Orthodox are only 5% of non Chareid Jews, and Reform and Conservative much higher figures. Actually I’d be pleased to read any of his comments.

  2. dr. bill says:

    i am confused:  much of Harlem is north of 122st and east of morningside heights.  i know of no reason to write “In short, BP is part of the district that includes much of Harlem.” 

    i always assumed harlem was 110th to 145th, river to river, and that included morningside height, a part of harlem in the 10th district, and parts of spanish harlem.

    i think the real issue is lumping a conservative part of brooklyn with the uber-liberal western section of manhattan.  harlem is largely irrelevant.

    • mycroft says:

      Dr Bill:

      Checking the map

      http://nadler.house.gov/our-district

      one sees that you are essentially correct. It almost looks like the 10th District was gerrymandered to avoid the vast majority of Harlem. Even those parts of Harlem are centered along Columbia, West End Ave and Riverside -not the Harlem that is the image of many readers of CC.

      Note the description” New York’s 10th Congressional District includes parts of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, SoHo, Greenwich Village, TriBeCa, the Financial District and Battery Park City.  In Brooklyn, the 10th District includes parts of Borough Park, Kensington, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights and Gravesend” from the website doesn’t even list the few streets of Harlem as worthy  of mention.

    • Steve Brizel says:

      It actually is a classic case of gerrymandering designed to preserve a liberal incumbent whose views are obviously more in line with the U W S than BP. Nadler is known as one of the most liberal members of Congress and even supported the act of appeasement with Iran

  3. Y. Ben-David says:

    I think American Orthodox Jews are just going to have to get used to the fact that the Democratic Party is going to go the way of the British Labour Party….a relentless shift to the radical Left.  Everyone thought that Jeremy Corbyn’s radical positions and open support for blatant antisemitism would drive away voters, but his position and domination of the party were strengthened by the outcome of the election, even if he didn’t win it.

    In the US we see the rise of “celebrities” like Linda Sarsour in the Democratic party, where she managed to be chosen as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and the fact that a “Jewish” Senator like Chuck Shumer supported anti-Israeli Muslim Congressman for the position of Chairman of the Democratic National Committee shows he knows which way the wind is blowing.

     

    Although I live in Israel and am not in touch with New York politics, I finally came to the conclusion that the recent Jewish bash-Israel demonstration held in Brooklyn, ostensibly called in order to protest the non-existent conscription of Haredim, had the sub-text of reaching out to the growing anti-Israel elements in New York Democratic politics by trying to say “see, we are anti-Israel, too!” (after all, how is a demonstration in Brooklyn supposed to affect internal Israeli policies?).  I wonder if Linda Sarsour was watching?

    • Steve Brizel says:

      Schumer claims that he is the Shomer on Israel but he failed to mobilize Senate Democrats against the deal with Iran and sounds like he represents Park Slope Brooklyn Heights and the UWS far more than the drum neighborhoods where he schnors for votes periodically on the dinner and breakfast circuits. You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

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