28 Responses to “Do You Have Hometown Pride?”

1. Bob Miller
   August 18th, 2009 @ 9:48 am

   Every place we live can present opportunities for growth in Torah learning and practice. Moving elsewhere, at our own initiative or our company’s, can present such opportunities, too.

   Hometown spirit (or new-hometown spirit) can motivate people to improve or to smugly stay the same.

   Since we hope and pray for the Geulah Sheleimah, we clearly believe that Israel—and not some borough of NYC, for example—is our best destination.

   Anyway, when I grew up on Staten Island (1950′s, early to mid-1960′s) it was strictly dullsville, a comparative Torah wasteland, but I learned a lot of values that helped me in later life. Living in many places since has been an enriching experience overall. We found Oak Park, MI, where we lived from 1988-1998, to be a particularly good place to raise an American Orthodox family, but we’ve made friends and learned vital lessons wherever we’ve gone.

2. Larry Lennhoff
   August 18th, 2009 @ 10:43 am

   I have yet to find a place I prefer living Jewishly than where I am now, in Highland Park, NJ. The community achdut is incredible. Events in one synagogue are announced in the others’ newsletters. Dual synagogue memberships are common. We have an active Vaad which includes every congregational rabbi who lives in town. We also have an eruv, several kosher restaurants, an active bikkur cholim organization and many other community wide organizations.

3. Neil Harris
   August 18th, 2009 @ 11:23 am

   Without getting to deep, Rabbi Akvia Tatz speaks (and probably wrote) about this exact issue. The neshama gravitate naturally towards doing Mitzvos and Hashem. Of course, as a BT, that path is many times blocked by our upbringing and our enviorment. This attraction towards Hashem and his Torah has a counterpart in the physical world, usually manifested by our warm feelings of where we grew up…”hometown pride”.
   We fondly remember all the good memories of where we lived and ususaly we keep these feelings for years even after we move away.
   This pride is really just the physical expression of our longing to return to the true Source.

   For me, Wichita, KS was great place to grow up and I think because for my last few years of high school the only frum person in town, I developed a certain strength about my Yiddishkeit.

   Currently, I’m very happy and proud to be living in a Torah community like the one in Chicago. Pleny of chinuch choices, learning, ample food/places to eat out, and a general attitude of “what you see is what you get” in regards to Yiddishkeit.

4. Leonard Cohen
   August 18th, 2009 @ 11:26 am

   Larry Lennhoff:

   You wrote: “I have yet to find a place I prefer living Jewishly than where I am now, in Highland Park, NJ.”

   In order for you to make this statement I have to hope that you’ve never experienced Eretz Yisrael. As Bob Miller expressed in the comment preceding yours, Eretz Yisrael “is our best destination.” Living Jewishly anywhere else in the world can never be more than mediocre compared to Eretz HaKodesh.

   Remember, your beloved Highland Park is still golus, and we must never become overly attached to golus. As I’ve written before, I have great trepidation that the Ribbono Shel Olam will treat us with a sorry middah k’negged middah: “since you take pride in your hometowns in golus to a fault, and have become comfortable there to a fault, what’s the point in bringing you home to an Eretz Yisrael which is not truly in your hearts.” Sure do hope I’m wrong.

5. Bob Miller
   August 18th, 2009 @ 12:53 pm

   Leonard,

   Eretz Yisrael can be foremost in one’s heart, but finances or other fsctors might not permit him to move there now. Meanwhile, we try make the most of our second-best or nowhere-near-best situations.

6. Bob Miller
   August 18th, 2009 @ 12:54 pm

   s/b “factors” above

7. Menachem Lipkin
   August 18th, 2009 @ 1:01 pm

   As someone who lived in Highland Park for 20 years and then made Aliyah I will offer a compromise and say that if one MUST live outside of Israel then Highland Park is probably one of the best places to “suffer”. :)

8. Leonard Cohen
   August 18th, 2009 @ 1:36 pm

   Bob Miller: Thanks for the correction, s/b “factors.” I had the darndest time trying to figure out what “fsctors” meant. Then I realized that you must be partial to your left ring finger over your pinky (that is, if you touch type. If you hunt and peck, then no excuse).

   Menachem Lipkin: Thank you. Your smiley face mirrored the one that you put on me [but I have a nose ;-)] I wonder if there’s a way to do one “tongue-in-cheek.” I can use one for my comment to Bob Miller, above.

9. Bob Miller
   August 18th, 2009 @ 3:02 pm

   Leonard,

   Some people use professional touch typing methods. Some others use “hunt and peck”. I typically use “search and destroy”.

10. Menachem Lipkin
    August 18th, 2009 @ 3:10 pm

    Glad to bring some computer generated sunshine into your life Leonard.

    I have been thinking about the original question. For me, I’m not sure that “pride” is that right description for what I feel about my “home town”, the town I grew up in. I think “allegiance” is a better description for the way I feel about that sleepy town on the Jersey shore where I grew up.

    I think it’s a pretty healthy thing to feel allegiance (or pride) for the place where one was raised. Such feelings reflect a positive upbringing. As you get to be my age (yuch, that’s something old people say) you realize what a small portion of your life you spend in that place where you grew up. Yet the impact of those few years stays with you forever. A part of my heart will always be reserved for that place and when I go back to visit there’s sense of warmth and comfort I feel no place else.

    Is this a bad thing hashkafically? I don’t think so. First of all, as an aside, I think this has nothing to do with being a BT. My rav often talks warmly about his youth in the Bronx (he will often say Alav Hashalom (my it rest in peace) when mentioned the Bronx.) As with most things, I think it’s a perfectly normal human emotion and doesn’t present a hashkafic issue unless it becomes some sort of obsession. For instance it’s probably ok to root for your hometown team, but may become problematic if you must go to every game and paint your face with the team colors.

    I turned my life and my family’s lives upside down because I knew, intellectually that Israel is our home. And there are many things one can only experience and feel here. But I think our hearts are big enough to have Hakarat Hatov and allegiance for the place that nurtured us.

11. Gary
    August 18th, 2009 @ 8:39 pm

    Our hometown doesn’t necessarily mean the frum community in which I currently reside. To me it’s the place where I grew up, home to several synagogues, only one of which was Orthodox. That’s the one that I didn’t go to.

    However, at the non-Orthodox synagogue that I attended, I learned to read Hebrew, learned some history and Chumash, and learned to pray. The lessons in the latter were effective enough that when I started going to shul over 20 years later it didn’t take more than a few weeks for me to be in the swing of things.

    Obviously, hometown in this sense includes our families, too. In my hometown, I learned a respectable amount of Yiddishkeit and a heaping amount of mentschlikeit, so I can point to that place with a good deal of pride.

    It’s not necessary for me to name the place, but I would venture that many visitors to this website have similar foundations that served them very well as BT’s.

12. Mr. Cohen
    August 18th, 2009 @ 10:37 pm

    I believe that the Talmud teaches that there are three things that find unmerited favor in the eyes of a manl: one of them is an object that he purchased, another one is the town where he lives.

    I can not remember the third thing, nor do I remember the name of the tractate.

    Maybe someone can help us by supplying the missing pieces of this quote?

13. tesyaa
    August 19th, 2009 @ 7:09 am

    Often, our “pride” or “allegiance” or what I would call our “comfort level” with our chosen home makes us reject others simply for not being a part of it. We may not even realize we’re rejecting them, but dismissing them or ignoring their existence is alse rejection.

14. Steve Brizel
    August 19th, 2009 @ 9:09 pm

    Baruch HaShem, noone should ever confuse KGH with being a “quiet section of Brooklyn”.

15. Gary
    August 19th, 2009 @ 11:11 pm

    The following is for Steve (14), in GOOD HUMOR:

    http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/7589/history.htm

    Brooklyn’s long history of expansionist colonialism includes:

    1886: Town of New Lots annexed to Brooklyn

    1894: Towns of Flatbush, Gravesend, and New Utrecht annexed to the City of Brooklyn:

    1896: Town of Flatlands annexed to the City of Brooklyn
    ———————————————-
    Could KGH be next?
    ———————————————-

16. Steve Brizel
    August 20th, 2009 @ 11:14 am

    Gary-Thanks for the tidbit of Brooklyn historty. Yet, any KGH resident for any period of time could tell you that KGH is a neighborhood in the wholly separate borough of NYC of Queens County.

17. Bob Miller
    August 20th, 2009 @ 11:43 am

    I guess Queens don’t automatically take orders from Kings (remember Vashti?)

18. Bob Miller
    August 20th, 2009 @ 11:51 am

    By the way, my hometown, Staten Island tried to secede from NYC, but this was stymied by a combination of no legislative support in Albany and goodies from Mayor Giuliani.

    At the time, my father was skeptical about the practicality of secession because NYC would still own the government buildings on SI.

    Our fair island got little respect and was known as the Forgotten Borough, as the quasi-lunar condition of our roads made manifest. A Manhattan classmate signed my Stuyvesant High School yearbook with the added comment “May Staten Island sink into the sea.”

19. Chaim Grossferstant
    August 20th, 2009 @ 4:04 pm

    For some reason Queens folks get the nilly-willies @ the mere mention of Brooklyn.

20. Chaim Grossferstant
    August 20th, 2009 @ 4:09 pm

    I think that the Mishpacha geographical error is reflective of a Brooklyn attitude that sees the balance of the jewish World much as a New Yorker sees much of the rest of the world in general as reflected in the iconic New Yorker cover.

    http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/steinberg-newyorker.jpg

21. Chaim Grossferstant
    August 20th, 2009 @ 4:10 pm

    This ones pretty spot on as well

    http://artsytime.com/img/people/best-magazine-covers/best-magazine-covers14.jpg

22. Bob Miller
    August 21st, 2009 @ 9:41 am

    Possibly, the classmate I mentioned in #18 was a commuter from another borough. Same idea, though.

    In my (pre-Verrazano bridge)years on SI, relatives from Brooklyn or wherever seldom ventured to visit us in our distant land.

23. Charles B. Hall
    August 23rd, 2009 @ 1:14 am

    Menachem,

    The Bronx isn’t dead at all; I’m quite happy here!

    No Jewish community is perfect, but mine is right for me, at least for now.

24. Ellen L.
    August 23rd, 2009 @ 12:38 pm

    Chaim:

    That second New Yorker cover was the best ever. And the first one reminds me of when I first came to NY and attended Brooklyn college in the 70′s. An acquaintance of mine wondered if we could actually get kosher food back in Cleveland (Ohio), and another one wondered what we’d do for fun back there. When I told him we’d sit out in the fields and watch the cows chew their cud, he politely commented, “Oh, you had cows?”

    I do have pride and very fond memories of Jewish Cleveland, where I became frum at 16. At the time, it was small enough so that everybody knew your name, and because Orthodox Jews were in short supply, we couldn’t afford to be judgemental. My classmates and close friends in Yavne High School (a branch of the Hebrew Academy, the pre-Bais Medrash, pre-seminary portion of the Telshe Yeshiva, which was the only Orthodox Jewish educational show in town) ranged from B’nai Akiva members to the far right wing, including a daughter of Rabbi Mordechai Gifter, zt’l, rosh yeshiva of Telz. It taught me tolerance of Jews not like me, and it finally, after 37 long years, drove me to Bayswater (a division of Far Rockaway, Queens) which is as close as you’ll ever get to Cleveland both in quality of living and Jewish acceptance (thank you fellow BT bloggers from back in June).

    As for E”Y, might I venture an opinion without fear of attack, that maybe when there’s more achdus and tolerance of Jews of different stripes in our Holyland, then maybe we’ll be zocheh to see Moshiach in our times?

25. Ron Coleman
    August 24th, 2009 @ 12:22 am

    I’m very happy with Passaic. I think it’s worked out great for a lot of people, and many BT’s, because of its combination of “out of town” and “in town” qualities.

    Leonard Cohen, you wrote,

    Living Jewishly anywhere else in the world can never be more than mediocre compared to Eretz HaKodesh.

    I’m doing my Elul best to respond to this in a moderate fashion, but respond I must. I will simply say that it is not a statement of fact; it is a political, ideological or religiously idealistic statement. But as written it is a slight to people who have made different choices and do not feel a need to hide behind the usual rationalizations to explain those choices.

    Indeed, Leonard, the fact that some people in E”Y feel they can issue such broad and unqualified judgments about how mediocre MY Jewish living is merely by virtue of my doing it here is one reason I, and, I believe, others want no part of living there under present circumstances or any that can, absent divine intervention, be anticipated in the foreseeable future.

    I hope that changes soon, because I love E”Y!

26. Bob Miller
    August 24th, 2009 @ 10:27 am

    Ron, what do you think “mediocre” was meant to denote in this case? After all, more types of mitzvos are doable in Israel, even under present conditions.

27. Ron Coleman
    August 27th, 2009 @ 6:16 pm

    The same as “mediocre” always denotes, Bob.

28. Bob Miller
    August 28th, 2009 @ 7:51 am

    Why didn’t I think of that?

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