Orthodox Jews sick of being 'photographed like animals' by tourists

[Demovictory9]

Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish residents are fed up with tourists who swarm their insular neighborhoods by the busload — all to gawk at their clothing and customs.

“People snap pictures of you like you’re on some sort of display — like you’re in a zoo,” said Chaim, 42, who lives in Williamsburg’s Satmar community and asked that his last name be withheld. “We are people, not animals to be photographed.”

Sightseeing groups venture into Williamsburg and Crown Heights several times a week, some via tour-bus companies InterviajesNY, Tour America and Civitatis. The three offer so-called “contrast” tours of various cultural communities in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx — with one touting the “numerous memorials to gang members who were killed in shootouts” in that borough.

The tours — which cost from $40 to $70 — have been going on for years, but locals say that this summer the throngs, and the tensions they cause, have reached a new high.

“Lately they’re out there every day by the hundreds, and it’s become a ‘must see’ for tourists,” said Max Hauer, 41, who lives in Williamsburg’s Satmar area. He added that he has been photographed many times without his consent.

“They see me as a freak,” said Hauer. “They see us as people from another world [and] if you’re not seen as human, then they think it’s OK” to take photos and stare.

Hauer blames the uptick on a recent cultural obsession with his way of life, thanks to the documentary “One of Us” and the Israeli series “Shtisel,” both popular on Netflix

.

https://nypost.com/2019/09/07/orthodox-jews-sick-of-being-photographed-like-animals-by-tourists/

[Skittles]

1. WTF

that's just ridiculous.....how disrespectful could you be?????

[Coventina]

2. I have to confess...I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, yes, it's disrespectful to take photographs of people when you haven't asked their permission.

On the other hand, I think there is benefit to tourists seeing that there are many ways of being American, and the incredible cultural diversity we have here in the United States, and NYC being sort of a microcosm of that.

When I was in the Netherlands, I went on a walking tour of Amsterdam where we went through the Beguinhof, which was an old female religious community that is now used as housing for low-income women who need some help. We were allowed to tour, but not take any photographs. It was an inspiring experience, although I can see where maybe some women who were living there might not be thrilled about it.

Maybe if the tour operators could tell people to be respectful?

[Mariana]

3. It's reasonable for people who are in a housing facility

to have an expectation of privacy. There can be no such reasonable expectation of privacy when someone is out on a public street. Yes, it's rude and disrespectful to take someone's picture without their permission, but if the photographer is on public property, it is their right.

[lunatica]

6. Except it feeds the Ugly American trope.

Which is very real. Respect is not something the Ugly American understands. And it doesn’t just happen when it’s Americans doing it.

[lindysalsagal]

4. FWIW: If you dress and act like it's 200 years ago in europe because of your cult

don't be all that surprised when you get attention.


Because none of the funny outfits are in the bible: Not even the hats. The vast majority of jews in the world, (and I'm not one of them but I've been among them, and I like them), don't feel any obligation to act as though time has stood still: They move ahead and live in the world and enjoy it as it is. They don't deliberately reject modern society to the extent that they become oddities: They just believe and worship, and believe in american freedom and diversity.

This is a cultural choice they've made, and they benefit from living in a free country. Well, they want to stand out and show how very different they are from the rest of us. Looks like the message has reached trip advisor.

[HAB911]

8. +++++++++++

[Bettie]

9. There are other religious groups who also

get their pictures taken due to dressing as if it is another century.

[NCLefty]

5. I something recently about people taking "tours" of poor areas in South Africa.

This reminds me of that a bit.

[JI7]

7. depends on how it's done. but they should do it in all countries they visit

that woudl show they had real interest in poor areas instead of just viewing it as a tourist attraction.

for example the US has many poor areas .

[SidDithers]

10. Oh well...

If you choose to dress a certain way - and let's be absolutely clear, this is a choice - then you don't really get to complain when people are fascinated or entertained by your choice.

Sid

[MineralMan]

11. Well, try walking through that community as a young woman in

shorts and a tank top. That same guy who is offended by people taking photos of him will likely curse at the young woman and call her a Jezebel. I have very little sympathy for him, I'm afraid, although I don't take photos of strangers for any reason.

[dalton99a]

16. +1. It is a public space

[tavernier]

12. I might take a picture if he walked past my house in the Florida Keys

because I never see anybody in anything other than shorts, tees and sandals. Even a J Witness in a white shirt and tie gets stared at by curious locals. And believe me, we get photographed a lot by our tourists, but mainly those of us with long dreds, palm frond sun hats, and snakes, birds or other wildlife resting on a shoulder.

It’s all good. Live and let live.

[Azathoth]

13. Eh, tell it to the Amish

When you conspicuously set yourself and your entire insular community apart from society, you're gonna draw attention and curiosity.

Not sure it's particularly moral of tour companies to treat Hasidim like an attraction, but hey, magic of the free market and all that jazz.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

15. The Amish have learned to profit from it.

[SMC22307]

14. Taking photos of people without their consent is rude...

no matter how wacky a person thinks their religion.

[dalton99a]

17. They should talk to this guy:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-yorks-hot-new-tour-is-visiting-ultra-orthodox-jews
New York’s Hot New Tour Is Visiting Ultra Orthodox Jews
“To many, the Hasidic world is shrouded in mystery and secrecy—well, not anymore.”
Shira Feder
Updated 08.10.19 10:08AM ET / Published 08.10.19 5:09AM ET

There are about five blocks of Crown Heights’ Kingston Avenue that serve as the nerve center for the Hasidic Jews that set up roots in the neighborhood in the ’40s. Every day Rabbi Yoni Katz walks down these blocks crowded with men wearing black hats and women wearing wigs, a crew of unlikely companions in tow. In the past, some of them have been Christian, some Muslim (from as far away as Qatar). One group was all Mormon journalism students from Brigham Young University. There’s also a steady trickle of Reform Jews who come to accompany Katz on this daily walk, knowing as little about the enclosed world of Hasidic Jewry as the Japanese tourists that walk with them.

Katz doesn’t get too many looks from residents as he walks. The residents of Crown Heights are used to visitors. And Katz has been bringing around visitors for a while, as part of his Airbnb experience tour of the Hasidic community in Crown Heights, where people pay $69 a person to go where few non-Jews have gone. For Katz, that’s a selling point. “To many, the Hasidic world is shrouded in mystery and secrecy—well, not anymore,” he writes in his Airbnb advertisement.

The tour begins with a half-hour introduction, in which Katz answers the question on everyone’s minds: Why in the world would the Hasidic community, with its reputation for being isolated and closed off, ever consent to one of these tours? “Crown Heights has never really been closed,” Katz told The Daily Beast. “It might look like it’s full of reclusive Hasidic Jews, but it’s open. It’s always been open to all different kinds of people.”

Katz gives the tours every day, whether the heat is blazing or the cold wind is rattling the trees. Sometimes his wife participates. Sometimes a couple of his seven children trot along. He estimates that he shows the hidden side of Crown Heights to about 50 people a week, on average. Although sometimes there are a hundred people a week and sometimes there are 12. But there’s rarely a day where Katz walks down Kingston Avenue unaccompanied.

[Demovictory9]

18. $69 a person? cha-ching!