It’s interesting to see how two seemingly unrelated stories in the media are upon further reflection connected. Consider this current example:

There are numerous reports of assaults against women at Occupy Whatever sites (OWS) across the country. This ought not to surprise given the collection of anarchists Communists vagrants and outright criminals who’ve gravitated to these places. But in Manhattan and Baltimore occupiers have apparently been preoccupied with trying to get the victims to keep their reports of these crimes internal rather than alerting law enforcement.

At the Baltimore OWS security committee guidelines stated that since “we do not encourage the involvement of the police in our community … any member of the Occupy Baltimore community who believes he/she/they have been a victim of … abuse are encouraged to immediately report the incident to the Security Committee.” These guidelines by the way were written by a woman.

And in New York where numerous such crimes against women have been alleged an occupier told the New York Post “We don’t tell anyone … [w]e handle it internally. I said too much already.”

One party that might have been expected to take up the cause of these victims is the Forward newspaper. Why? Because that paper has been waging an unrelenting campaign against the Orthodox Jewish community for its supposed policy of dissuading victims of child abuse from reporting such crimes to the authorities preferring instead to “handle it internally.”

Now the charge itself is specious as those making it might realize if only they’d pause their harangues long enough to actually study the facts and rationale of the Agudath Israel reporting policy. But what’s important here is that the Forward has led the charge against the Orthodox community for “trying to be a self-contained community and deal with conflicts internally as much as possible” — the very words used by the Baltimore OWS spokeswoman to describe her movement’s reporting policy.

And the reaction of the Forward thus far to both the ongoing violence against women at OWS and the latter’s reporting policies? Pristine silence which also accurately describes its coverage of the rampant lawlessness at OWS: the rioting widespread theft and the damage to countless businesses and neighboring residents.

But the Forward has managed to find its voice on another developing story this one involving a report by the New York World (NYW) a Columbia Journalism School website that men and women sit separately on the B110 bus line that runs between Boro Park and Williamsburg catering to an almost exclusively chassidic clientele. Although not publicly subsidized the line is required to comply with the city’s non-discrimination laws.

A reporter for NYW sent a woman onto the B110 to sit among the men only to be told to move because it is a “Jewish bus” with the ensuing controversy resulting in a coup for the fearless young journalist. Subsequently Wall Street Journal reporter Sumathi Reddy also reported on her experience sitting in the men’s section. But Reddy who joined the ladies in the back after being asked by a woman to do so seems to have gained quite a different perspective:

“Thank you we appreciate it” said the woman smiling as I followed her to the back … The reasoning she said is their idea of modesty.

The women said if a rider who isn’t familiar with their customs gets on and sits in the wrong section they usually will ask nicely if they mind moving. They said they’ve never witnessed someone who didn’t oblige.… “I’ve been taking this bus eight years and never a problem” said another woman who also declined to give her name. “There’s always a lot of respect. It’s self-understood. This is how we grew up. It’s the way we are.”

So let’s cut to the quick through the thicket of intellectually dishonest posturing and yes antireligious animus that pervades the media coverage and address what this story is — and isn’t — about.

It’s not a story about protecting the rights of women: 99.99% of the female riders on the B110 not only don’t mind the separate seating but actually demand it for the privacy and dignity they feel it affords them. Reasonable people would also agree that the chance female who boards and actually relishes being the sole woman sitting among tens of what the NYW reporter lovingly described as “Orthodox Jews with full beards sidecurls and long black coats” ought to be permitted by both law and common courtesy to do so. It’s also not a story about the bus line’s owner using public money to run a discriminatorily illegal operation because he doesn’t receive public funding: it is he who pays the city for the franchise.

So what then is this story really about? Only two possibilities remain: One that NYW and the Forward have such deep respect for the law of the land that they insist the technical prohibition on segregated seating be upheld even against the express wishes of the riders whom it’s designed to protect. Or two these media outlets are so deeply concerned for the dignity of Orthodox women and so pained over their benighted state of submission to men that they’re willing to fight for these oppressed women over the latter’s own objections.

Yet somehow the Forward’s coverage of OWS or lack of it seems to preclude even those possibilities. So what’s left? Only raw religious bias and a disdain for the rights of real women in the real world.

 

 

NO TIME TO THINK: One of the very few New York Times writers who are a worthwhile read is Stanley Fish an academic and opinion columnist who’s capable of breaking free of the academy’s mental straightjacket to offer a fresh take on things. One memorable column was a rejoinder to a Yale Law professor who argued that through the study of the humanities colleges can once again become places to train character and provide life’s meaning. Fish himself a professor of humanities responded:

Do the humanities ennoble? The answer … I think is no. The premise of secular humanism … is that the examples of action and thought portrayed in the enduring works of literature philosophy and history can create in readers the desire to emulate them.

It’s a pretty idea but there is no evidence to support it and a lot of evidence against it. If it were true the most generous patient good-hearted and honest people on earth would be the members of literature and philosophy departments … and as someone who’s been there (for 45 years) I can tell you it just isn’t so … To the question “Of what use are the humanities?” the only honest answer is none whatsoever.

His most recent column in which he considers his life thus far is also quite striking for its openness. His professional prominence was the result of “arriv[ing] at places at the right time and ha[ving] enough sense to seize the opportunities that were presented to me.” His unease with emotions caused him to “escape to work … where … you can ride the rails of scripted routines without having to display or respond to actual feelings.”

And then there’s this: “I’m still over-scheduling myself and trying as hard as I can to make sure that I have absolutely no time for thinking seriously about life.” That kind of self-reflective phrasing isn’t seen very often in the Times.

 

 

SENSING HASHEM’S PRESENCE A young ben Torah I know had the following experience one recent Erev Shabbos. After his rebbi’s shiur that morning he put his head down for what he intended to be a few moments’ rest but when he awoke he was very distressed to find he had missed the yeshivah’s Minchah. But all’s well that ends well: he was happy to learn that this was the one day of the month on which he’d get a second chance at Minchah b’tzibbur for it was the one Erev Shabbos in the month on which another rebbi travels from New York to spend Shabbos at the yeshivah thus necessitating another Minchah minyan later in the afternoon.

What made this anecdote so enchanting for me was that I know how careful this young man is to always daven b’tzibbur the effort he expends to ensure that his every tefillah has the potency that only davening with a minyan provides. And so this incident seemed like Hashem’s way of telling him that for those who are vigilant about His mitzvos He will see to it one way or another that their efforts are not in vain.

We all have these sorts of experiences these gentle reminders from Above that whisper “I’m here” these love taps that are subtle enough to not preclude free choice yet palpable enough to assure us of His nearness and caring. They are the experiences that Rav Chatzkel Levenstein ztz”l had in mind when he counseled a Jew headed for life in America to keep a journal of the Hashgachah elyonah he would experience in life. Perhaps the mashgiach felt that it is the sense of “ki Atah imadi” that is the antidote to the alienation that a G-dless American society breeds.