Photo by Roman Vishniac
The other day I saw an Amcha Yid walking down Fairfax Avenue. He was bent bespoke of an almost timeless sense of age; his hair shortly cropped and crowned with a large velvet yarmulke, his chin covered with a thin stubble . . . A Jew without guile or an agenda. He wasn't a Chossid or a Misnaged, a Zionist or a Reformist . . . He was Jewish.
Jews who are Jewish purely for the sake of being Jews are an indelible part of the past.
True there were the istn and ims - Bundistn, Tzionistn, and Yidishistn. Chasidim, Misnagdim, and Maskilim
. . . But the average Jew was just that.
Today, as a result of the war, of the modern need for instant categorization, or perhaps some other force on world Jewry, we box ourselves in. How many of today's grouped Jews came from such groups three generations back?
L'chaim -here's to the Amcha Yid.
Technorati Tags: Amcha Yidden, Judaism, Photography, Roman Vishniac, Thoughts
9 years ago
4 comments:
We just wanna belong, a group a shul a kehilla
Maybe its a self confidence issue.
Belonging is fine . . . I also belong -but we need not box in the world.
Didn't everything started with the BeSht and the Vilna Gaon? One of my Rabbeim told me that at this rate all the groups would merge together in a few generations, look at how Ashkenazi and Sephardi marriages are becoming more common.
Devision in Judaism started with the Twelve shvatim.
While Jews marring each other is always a good thing - and therefor ashkenazi sephardi marriages are fine -we should not turn our Judaism into a chullent of customs!
I don't advacate a groupless Judaism, Chassidim -Chabad and other, Eilamisher, Hungarian, Chug Chasam Sofer . . . all great. But those Jews that have pshitus ha'etzem, why take it away for no reason?
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