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!

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?

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.

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

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

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

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.”

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
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Could KGH be next?
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