The same Halacha and the same human nature exist in and out of town.

Those Jews who see right through Jewish strangers on the street and won’t wish them a Good Shabbos (often even in reply) need guidance to overcome their habit/shyness/whatever. Their Rabbonim and teachers and other talmidei chachamim should be the first to break the ice and set the example in this area. And the smile with the greeting should come from the heart.

in spirit I am. I daven late and nusach sfard, clap by lecha dodi, and was born in brooklyn

I agree with your point regarding the statistical aspect and Starbucks. Nevertheless, as someone who always envied courtesy associated with “out of town”(as defined by a location being beyond the Verrazano Bridge :)), the survey brought a smile to my face.

I have no problem saying that many New Yorkers are more jaded, harried, and less courteous. In a different context(for moral reasons), the Gemara says that living in big cities is difficult. But I think that there is a trade-off involved in choosing where to live, and that there are benefits as well to living in big city.

A related issue to the RD “study” is the issue of saying “Good Shabbos” to strangers. I admit that this area needs improvement, and that for this reason, one might say it is indeed more pleasant to live in neighborhoods where everyone greets each other freely. But I think that for improvement to be made, in must be put into perspective.

People–both Jews and non-Jews– find it hard to greet strangers, I think, because it feels awkward to relate personally to strangers in the context of a larger community. Particularly in the Jewish community, “in towners” have the luxury of concentrating on differences resulting from splintering. Nevertheless, it is a social awkwardness and perhaps shyness, that makes exchanging greetings difficult. I have nothing philosophically(”b’shittah”) against greeting a stranger, yet I sometimes feel as if there was a non-tangible wall that I need to overcome in the interaction.

That is why I disagreed strongly with one letter-writer to a Jewish newspaper who stated that people in community X do not greet people because they are hypocritical and snobbish. I also disagreed with the attitude of one non-NY friend who insisted on counting how many people *didn’t* greet him(a’la the story of R. Eliezer Silver in the DP camp). As pointed out by commentators( # 26 and 35), people who have a negative aspect may have a positive aspect, too. My application of this is that the Chasid who people malign for being too insular may be saving the life of the complainer through Hatzalah, or rushing into the burning World Trade Center. So by all means, be aware of the problem, but define it properly, and try solve it.

I agree. Not chasidish, but hey, are you?

All of the New York tests were done in a Starbucks — meaning all of the service tests were performed against Starbucks employees. Starbucks happens to have an intense employee-training program focusing upon customer service and satisfaction, covering everything from the way the “Barista” greets you at the door to how to describe blends of coffee. They have classroom training, they have on-line training, they have on-the-job training.

And, says my local expert in Starbucks employee training, “we say thank you for everything. Oh yeah. If the customer says thank you? We say thank you back.”

So a realistic test would be to measure the “thank yous” from NY Starbucks employees to Starbucks employees elsewhere. Instead, they measured Starbucks employees in NY vs. the poor guy in Mumbai, India, who defended his failure to thank the customer with “Madam, I am not an educated guy. I hand goods over to the customers, and that’s it.” And, indeed, he’s not educated — and every Starbucks employee is. This is like expecting every child to be as adept at avoiding Loshon Hora (malicious gossip) as the kids who learn the laws against it on a daily basis.

The test as performed by Readers Digest just tells us how easy it is to skew your data and render your “conclusions” entirely meaningless.

Yes! My goal of being mesameach a yid is is achieved. As an aside, I think we would have a good time together over a shabbos seudah or cigar (by the way, you aren’t chasidish, are you?)

- imagine how high Israel would score

Since you are emphasizing groups, I have no problem admitting to that. Besides taking the positives of a group into account(”judge the *entire person* favorably”),and therefore appreciating a group as a whole despite its flaws, the challenge is in the first place, not to pigeonhole individuals into a particular group, but rather to individuate them. This is harder to do if one is not from the particular society; i.e., to a secular person, all Chasidim may look the same, just like all Orientals look the same to many Americans and Europeans.

I prefer also to look at negative characteristics as an “at risk” factor. A government might allocate funding for research to a particular state or zip code that has the highest percentage of deaths from a particular disease(”lo p’lug”). Theoretically, just as a particular age population is statistically more at-risk for automobile accidents, one might say that the closer a community is to either end of the insularity-integration spectrum, the more some of its members are “at risk” for either being less intensely observant, or for being less concerned about the effect of some the group’s behavior on the broader public.

Sometimes the generalizations are so general that they become meaningless. For example, take the attitude that people who live in big cities–Jew or non-Jew–are less friendly. I don’t like that attitude since I am a born and bred-Brooklinite! But I take comfort associating with New Yorkers because Rav Avroham Pam Zt’l lived most of his life in Brooklyn(true, he learned in Russia as a young boy).

Think about this recent Reader’s Digest survey the next time you sterotype anyone:

“…Is it really true? Reader’s Digest decided to find out if courtesy truly is kaput. RD sent reporters to major cities in 35 countries where the magazine is published — from Auckland, New Zealand, to Zagreb, Croatia. In the United States, that meant targeting New York, where looking out for No. 1 — the heck with the other guy — has always been a basic survival skill.

The routine in New York was similar to the one followed elsewhere: Two reporters — one woman and one man — fanned out across the city, homing in on neighborhoods where street life and retail shops thrive. They performed three experiments: “door tests” (would anyone hold one open for them?); “document drops” (who would help them retrieve a pile of “accidentally” dropped papers?); and “service tests” (which salesclerks would thank them for a purchase?). For consistency, the New York tests were conducted at Starbucks coffee shops, by now almost as common in the Big Apple as streetlights. In all, 60 tests (20 of each type) were done.

Along the way, the reporters encountered all types: men and women of different races, ages, professions, and income levels. They met an aspiring actress, a high school student, a hedge-fund analyst and two New York City police officers. And guess what? In the end, four out of every five people they encountered passed RD’s courtesy test — making New York the most courteous city in the world. Imagine that. “

- if you knew how bad of a guy I really was, you wouldn’t expect this much from me

Some of my best friends are chasidim also.

Here the thing. We cannot draw conclusions from isolated incidents, good or bad. A lifetime of experiences must feed into our feelings. To resist admitting that certain groups, as a group, are better or worse at certain things than other groups is to deny reality. There is an expression in the talmud “to’ano chitim v’hodeh lo b’seorim” meaning “party a claimed (that part b owes him) wheat and party b admitted (that he owes party a) barley”. does the fact that chasidim are great at chesed somehow prove that they also excel at public behavior? furthermore your honor, is it wrong to say that chasidim excel at chesed, in that it impliues that mitnagdim are not as good at chesed? what if a blogger brings a r’ayah from his Tanteh Shprintze, a great Litvaker baalas chesed? will that disprove the claim about chasidim? The challenge is to love all jews, nay, humans, in spite of the reality of their flaws. As it happens I come from chasidish roots and sometimes skip a shower myself.

Agree. And let’s not deal with the G-d fearing people without increased tolerance and respect

For awhile we foolishly believed that we were exactly like everyone else around us–It ain’t so.

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/4744/format/html/displaystory.html

I couldn’t care less what the Germans may have thought, and if they knew I was Jewish, and knew I was davening, then even better.

JO- No, it is not relevant or even related, other than in some manipulative and roundabout way to make this an opportunity to say something negative about a group. I just don’t see the logic in turning this article into an opportunity to denigrate Chassidim, in however subtle a way. Let’s “deal” with G-d fearing people with increased tolerance and respect.

The Orthodox community should be proactive and find a way to produce and distribute the necessary information for presentation inside airline companies. A well-produced DVD showing typical Orthodox/airplane situations (humor doesn’t hurt, either!), along with written handouts, could work.

I disagree. We can say that male Moslems in a certain age-group, who commit the majority of terrorist attacks, should be profiled and singled out for searches at the airport, and not doing so, is merely being politically correct(and dangerous). But to assume that Chassidim, or Blacks for that matter, have a proclivity to engage in anti-social behavior on airplanes is bias and discriminatory, unless a scientific study is done.

If you confirm this statistically, and not merely based on anecdotal evidence or on an assumption( e.g., insularity leads to less positive social interactions with the broader society), then we can discuss further, how to express the results of such a study in a helpful manner.

Being the victim of stereotyping–and I do not have a monopoly on this– is an excellent opportunity and incentive for a person to try to develop a fair and open-minded approach. Indeed, the Torah often says do or don’t do a certain thing because of the subjective Egyptian experience.

One’s subjective experience of being stereotyped is merely used to cancel and outweigh pre-existing biases(besides the mitzva of “b’tzedek tishpot es amisecha”, which is to go further and give the benefit of the doubt). True, a lawyer interviewing a potential jurist might worry about your argument, but then again, the lawyer is trying to pick the most favorable jurist for his client, and is not necessarily concerned about the absolute truth.