Hasids Hate Wal-Mart Too:
Jewschool pointed me to this article about a Hasidic Jewish community in Monsey, New York objecting to plans for a giant Wal-Mart to drop anchor nearby. Normally, Wal-Mart related protests are over lifestyle issues like traffic congestion and the health of local businesses, aesthetic ones (Wal-Marts are ugly) or political anger (sweat shop labor, union busting). All of that’s true here but the community’s also worried issues specific to Orthodoxy including magazines “picturing celebrities in provocative outfits.”
I’m fascinated by real-life cases of cultures butting up against one another and trying to coexist. I guess it’s fair to say the jewish version this has been on my radar since the Crown Heights Riots of the early 1990s. On my bookshelf somewhere is Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America, about a community of Orthodox Jews who purchased a kosher slaughterhouse in the town of Postville, Iowa in 1987. The book’s jacket sums up the theme nicely “were the Iowans prejudiced, or were the Lubavitchers simply unbearable?”.
I haven’t read Postville yet but perhaps I’m overdue.