B"H
"The haredi world is perfect and only there one can find true Judaism and religion !"
This is the claim of a friend of mine who lives in the Batei Hungarin in Mea Shearim.
According to her, only the haredi way is THE way. The perfect way !
Anything else is sloppy and not really … well, you know what.
Not up to the Mea Shearim standard.
The statement just entered my mind when I went into "Max Stock" last night. A huge cheap department store right across Jerusalem's Clal Center at Jaffa Road where all the cheap little things made in China and Taiwan are made. Haredim love to buy there because it is so cheap.
Especially now due to Purim. Presents need to be bought and costumes. Lots of money is going to be wasted on that and wherever prices are low, the Haredim are there.
I walked into Max Stock and a taste of Mea Shearim women surrounded me. Except for the Israeli girls at the till, the common language was Yiddish.
The only difficulty for me is to watch out: Not for special offers but for Haredim I know. All this because of my "old problem": I wore pants !
If anyone had caught me I could have said that my pants are actually a Purim decoration.
This should have worked as an excuse ! :-)
Do you know if other languages like hungarian, polish and russian are spoken among haredi people living in Israel? Or do most of them prefer to talk Yiddish and hebrew?
ReplyDeleteB"H
ReplyDeleteWhen you look at the Litvishe or Chassidishe history then you will see that those Haredim even spoke Yiddish in the old countries. They knew HUngarian or Russian but communicated (among each other) in Yiddish.
They do the same today. The Litvishe less than Chassidim.
I very much doubt that Chassidim with Polish, Russian, Romanian or Hungarian ancestors know those languages at all. Maybe the elderly people but definitely not the younger ones.
Didn't you mention in one post that sometimes when you go to Toldos Aharon for a meal they speak German? Can't remember exactly.
ReplyDeleteB"H
ReplyDeleteAt least one family (Pappenheim) does but because their parents come from Munich. They spoke to me but to all the members they talk in Yiddish.
Shalom,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I would like to say that your this is awesome and that I've already (after 5 minutes) learnt new things about Judaism.
As far as the languages are concerned, there is a common perception among Hasidim and outsiders that there are different accents of Yiddish. So for example, Hungarian hasidim such as Satmar, Munkacz and Kaliver communicate in a Hungarian stylized Yiddish with words that are similar to Hungarian.
What's important here is that religious Jews never considered themselves as making part of a certain nation and thereby rejected the idea of picking up national languages.