OUTTA HERE Interacting with New Yorkers we often said proudly was like talking to people from another planet

L ike all out-of-towners I’ve always walked with my shoulders back and head held high carried by the silent pride that comes with knowing deep down that out-of-towners are simply a superior breed of human being.

Sure they laughed at us those New Yorkers they mocked us scoffing at our Payless shoes nerdy white shells and general lack of savvy but we knew the truth. Out-of-towners were more thoughtful and more understanding. We were kinder more welcoming and more given to introspection. We were less judgmental less prone to stereotyping less likely to label broad swathes of humanity based solely on externalities like dress or locale. Interacting with New Yorkers we often said proudly was like talking to people from another planet.

This pride carried me from camp — where I recall a memorable Neighborhood Day that featured separate teams for Bensonhurt and Kensington Flatbush and Boro Park to say nothing of the Five Towns but lumped together all of us out-of-towners from Montreal to Memphis from Phoenix to Philadelphia — to seminary and then to the real world.

When a seminary friend asked me what state Georgia was in I mentally laughed as I responded and when my friend regretfully informed me that the boy she had redt me to didn’t want to spend Yom Tov out-of-town after marriage I inwardly rolled my eyes and counted myself lucky to avoid spending three hours in a hotel lobby with him.

When I got engaged I was delighted to escape the Lakewood fate of most of my friends by moving to Eretz Yisrael the ultimate destination for any Jew. The adjustment was tough but we were both aware what a privilege it was to live here. Still even in my new surroundings I was told “Oh you’re such an out-of-towner!” by my new friends — and I was fine with that.

Until one day shortly before Succos as I hurried to a gan pickup picking my way through the ubiquitous tables of young boys selling araba minim that spring up like so many mushrooms winding in between the black-bearded men carrying shared loads of wooden boards and thrilling at the very real presence of Succos everywhere it hit me and I froze. Toto I don’t think we’re out-of-town anymore … and was I — gulp — enjoying it?

I’m not saying that Brooklyn (or even Lakewood) can compare to the kedushah of Eretz Yisrael — no out-of-towner worth her salt will tell you that. (Let me know when Dovid Hamelech extols the beauties of 13th Avenue and I’ll reconsider.) But so many benefits of in-town life that I’d always shrugged off… I’m living them. I found the realization unsettling my worldview askew as I was forced to reexamine the flip side of the platitudes I’d been spouting for so long. (Excerpted from Family First Issue 547)