Gay Issue, Paladino Spur "Rift" In Haredi Community

"The problem of the people in the gay community is they have to flaunt their lifestyle. They're shoving it in our faces. It's a chutzpah. That drives me crazy. They do not have tolerance for people who don't agree with them."

Carl spurs a holy rift
By ANDREA PEYSER • New York Post

It's Jew vs. Jew.

Nobody will be inhaling tonight's debate featuring gubernatorial candidates Carl Paladino and Andrew Cuomo, plus five lesser lights, more intensely than Rabbi Herschel Kurzrock.

As chief justice of New York's rabbinical court, Kurzrock has settled hundreds of Jewish divorces, saving his flock "a fortune on lawyers." As pastoral guide to Orthodox residents of Brooklyn, Kurzrock has a duty to side with the man who best upholds family values.

But calls flooded in from The Bronx to Los Angeles after Republican Paladino, posing with bearded rabbis, accused homosexuals of "brainwashing" kids. It's not that they didn't agree with him. On the contrary. Kurzrock's friends and followers were obsessed with an age-old type of question: "Is Carl Paladino good for the Jews?"

"Regarding the gay business," he's 100 percent right," Kurzrock told me. "No doubt about it. It's an abomination. Prohibited. A cardinal sin.

"Andrew Cuomo is too liberal. But Paladino is a wild man, and that's the problem. I'm waiting for the debate. That will tell the difference."

When Paladino blundered like a bull onto the gay scene, angering his family and the gay elite with inartful, to say the least, pronouncements about pride parades, he may not have realized the rift he created.

A fault line has erupted between ultraconservative voters chafing at New York's ultraliberal rule. Nowhere is this division more evident than in the Hasidic community, where some residents cringe at the annual gyrations of dancers in the Gay Pride Parade.

"It's over the top," said Joel, who manages a children's clothing store in Borough Park. He said bringing his baby son to the pride bacchanal is "difficult to even think about."

"The entire community will be behind Paladino, no question about it," he said.

"We appreciate moral people," echoed a young woman.

But will they vote for him?

Some Orthodox Jews confess they'll hold their noses and vote for Democrat Cuomo, but not because they like him. They figure the politically connected war horse is more apt to bring home the kosher bacon, though they can't understand how a father would drag his daughters to parades featuring men in jockstraps, an event that makes even some of my gay friends uncomfortable.

"He's not running for rabbi," shrugged Lubavitcher Rabbi Shea Hecht.

Hecht says he'd befriend a homosexual, rent him an apartments and maybe vote for one. But on the subject of parades, he sounds exactly like his colleague.

"The problem of the people in the gay community is they have to flaunt their lifestyle. They're shoving it in our faces. It's a chutzpah. That drives me crazy. They do not have tolerance for people who don't agree with them."

Assemblyman Dov Hikind, an Orthodox Jew, said, "There's a lot of underlying anger in our community.

"I've never been to one of those parades," he said. "But one thing about Andrew Cuomo, I've dealt with his office these last years and we have a great relationship. Do I disagree with him on some issues? Absolutely."

Truth is, New York is prime for a right-leaning leader, just as blue-state Massachusetts voters installed Scott Brown in Teddy Kennedy's old Senate seat. But Paladino is as far from the polished Brown as you can get within the species.

"He's crude," said Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who nonetheless calls the gay parade a "freak show."

"Personally, I'm not a Cuomo fan. But if you're running for the state's highest office, you would expect to behave with a certain degree of decorum," he said.

"Now he won't like me either!"

Oddly, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, who penned the speech on gays read by Paladino, rescinded his support after the candidate apologized for the speech.

But, he said he's "keeping the light on," should Paladino return to the fold.

Tonight, maybe we'll find out who he is.

 

Comments

[SJ]

I made the point on my blog that when it comes time for a conservative to argue that homosexuality is unnatural when it leads to AIDS, then AIDS is not a gay disease.

However, when it comes time for gays to milk the federal government for money to buy pharmaceuticals, then AIDS is the gaaaaaaaaaaaaayest disease ever.

Go figure.

[SJ]

>> I made the point on my blog that when it comes time for a conservative to argue that homosexuality is unnatural when it leads to AIDS, then AIDS is not a gay disease.

Gay man + gay man = AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS

[harold]

Can anyone tell me what is the New York Post's problem? They, like FailedMessiah, seem to be obsessed with the haredi community. I get the Newsday and see no such obsession. I also assume that the Daily News and The New York Times also don't have this issue to this extent (if they did Mr. Rosenberg would cut'n'paste their articles).

Is this an issue with paper’s publisher, its editor, or one or two reporters? Something or someone is the driving force of this obsession.

[Shmarya]

Is this an issue with paper’s publisher, its editor, or one or two reporters? Something or someone is the driving force of this obsession.

Shoteh.

1. Haredi bloc voting.

2. A large number of Brooklynites are haredi.

3. Paladino's anti-gay speech was written by a haredi rabbi and delivered in a haredi synagogue, and that speech was given wide media attention – in part because the haredi rabbi who wrote it also promoted it.

4. The Post has more Brooklyn coverage than the News, and the Times has almost none, ever.

5. Newsday is based on Long Island.

[harold]

I am uncomfortable with the shown picture. Paladino and the chassid pictured look too lovey-dovey. The way they are gazing into each other's eyes ready to embrace gives me the willies. If they kiss I will puke!

[WoolSilkCotton]

"The problem of the people in the haredi community is they have to flaunt their lifestyle. They're shoving it in our faces. It's a chutzpah. That drives me crazy. They do not have tolerance for people who don't agree with them."

[WoolSilkCotton]

"There's a lot of underlying anger in our community."

When hasn't there been a lot of anger and hate in the frumma community? Those are the 2 favorite emotions in the frumma velt.

[WoolSilkCotton]

Have you ever been to the Lag B'Omer Parade on Eastern Parkway?

It's like a scene from North Korea. Children parading while carrying huge portraits of the Rebbe, with banners openly proclaiming him to be Moshiach.

I would never take my kids to the Lag B'Omer Parade, even when I was more religious, because it was a bizarre third-world display aimed at brainwashing kids to worship the Rebbe.

I never went to the Gay Pride Parade with my kids, but it can't be worse than the Lag B'Omer Mental Illness Festival on Eastern Parkway.

[Alter Kocker]

I am uncomfortable with the shown picture. Paladino and the chassid pictured look too lovey-dovey. The way they are gazing into each other's eyes ready to embrace gives me the willies. If they kiss I will puke!

Posted by: harold | October 18, 2010 at 11:22 AM

No, but when the camera is off, they go down on one another-like the good chassids that they are!!!

[harold]

No, but when the camera is off, they go down on one another-like the good chassids that they are!!!

Paladino is a chassid??? I didn't even know that he was Jewish?

[Devorah]

"Assemblyman Dov Hikind, an Orthodox Jew, said, "There's a lot of underlying anger in our community."

Too bad they aren't angry about their pedafiles.

[A. Nuran]

Why do the Haredim have to flaunt their unnatural chosen lifestyle? They wear outlandish costumes. They want to force women to sit on the back of the bus like Blacks in the pre-civil right South, keep them out of public altogether and deny them their basic civil rights.

It's alright if someone wants to practice these perversions in private. But advertising it in public and banding together to raise whole generations of children in that aberrant lifestyle is just wrong.

It shouldn't actually be illegal to be "frum". I might even invite one of them over for dinner. But I just can't stand the way they try and force their orientation on the rest of us.

[danny]

I agree with Harold... that photo creeped me out worse than anything I've seen at a Pride parade (and I've been to many).