Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Is it a 2-way Street?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QdXgabi-ioo


To recap for those have trouble understanding Israelis who speak at 300 miles an hour: 2 secular journalists dress up as Chasidim and try to rent an apartment in a secular neighborhood. Here are some things that happen:
  • One of the landlords tells them a price for the rent which is almost double what is posted online, and is very evasive when they try to get him to admit that he raised the rent on them because they're Charedi.
  • Another woman shows them her apartment, gets very evasive and says she's just the tenant. She tells them she'll speak to the landlord and get back to them, but she never does. They later found out that the woman didn't call them back because they were Charedi.
  • Most of the other landlords were not as direct, but seemed generally skeptical about their interest in the apartments, wondering why they would be interested in living in a secular neighborhood, in an apartment with a single sink, etc. 
  • One of the journalists takes a half hour bus ride on a bus full of Chilonim, and several people choose to stand rather than sit next to him. 
I have mixed feelings about this, but I just wanted to throw it out there.  Are Chilonim just as hostile to Charedim as Charedim are to Chilonim?  Obviously they don't attack innocent girls, but neither do most Charedim.  Do Chilonim have a legitimate reason to exclude Charedim from their neighborhoods? 

No comments:

Post a Comment