Strange Tales of Hassidic Jews

a briss in brisk...

And I have some half-remembered thing in a far corner of my brain suggesting that it's a gender thing, that if Hasidic men see a woman improperly attired or otherwise err, what's the equivalent of treyf for social conduct? not-frum? anyway, that they'll ignore a woman because to appear to notice or otherwise be drawn into something not-frum would be contrary to the law. I know women don't have the same responsibilities in worship/observance that men do, don't know if that has anything to do with public social behavior.

I'm not asking you or anyone to draw any conclusions, per se, just wondering if there's a known basis for the weirdness.

http://photos1.blogger.com/img/21/2176/1024/hasidic.jpg

Can someone deindex this thread before it gets ugly?

Anyway. To underline my previous point - until I moved to melbourne, I cant say I had ever met or seen an orthodox Jewish person such as a Hasid... I had no idea of any of the sub-faiths until only a few years ago. Want to call me ignorant? Please don't. I merely grew up in a city that honest to goodness has probbaly a .001% Jewish population. It is something I never knew much about til I moved to a very Hasidic neighbourhood in another city. And I find it really interesting, actually.

I'm not religious though, so of course I dont agree with any of it in that sense. But eh.

http://www.heebmagazine.com/images/magazine/issue9.jpg

re Cheskies (omg black-and-white cookies and poppyseed croissants1)
My friend Kyla used to work there (maybe Charlotte replaced her - who knows?). Not Jewish. Although there were varying degrees of weirdness from the clientele, she had only the warmest things to say about Mr Cheskie. Among the Hasids I've been exposed to, I find it very interest the extreme variance of attitudes toward gentiles and non-frum Jews. Normal people are weird, rude, kind, etc., but among the ultraorthodox community there's (what appears to me as) exaggerated versions of these behaviours. Ultraambivalent is much more striking than just-plain-ambivalent, ditto for generosity and rudeness and awkwardness. So I notice(d) it a lot.

Recently, one of our neighbors said that he didn't want to rent to 2 black dudes even though they passed a credit check, etc.

i knew it was true!

but shvartzers make LOUSY landlords!

hahahahahahahaha

Today I got approached by one of those Chabad sukkot guys. I was kind of rushing to class and really not trying to be a dick or anything, but he was persistent, and I kept saying, "Sorry, I'm running late," and the guy goes, "But don't you want to just hold it? Just hold it!"