City versus Country

[fabrisse]

I had the weirdest moment of revelation tonight. I've always been a city kid.

Both my parents were country kids. A quick example from Mom's life was the rattlesnake that came into the living room to get cool. My Dad had no electricity until he was 15. The town he grew up in still didn't have electricity: they moved.

Part of their urge to make a better life for the kids was making certain that we knew how to behave in restaurants, that we weren't afraid to try new things, and that we were aware of other religions.

Tonight, a friend of my mother's was amazed at having seen her first Orthodox Jew. I've mentioned before that they lived in a frum neighborhood. To give you an example, within two blocks of my sister's house there's a Conservative group, a Sephardic group, and a small rabbinical school. Sis doesn't live in the really Jewish part of the neighborhood. The local drycleaner cleans tallit's for free as a mitzvah.

It never occured to me that a 70 year old would never have seen someone dressed for shul.

I put it down to her having always lived in a small town in the central California valley.

Comments

[gileswench.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how sheltered people can be when they put their minds to it.

Sometimes it really is a matter of access, but small towns in the Central California valley are still within range of much bigger, more sophisticated places. Also, there's electricity there. There are televisions, radios, and movie theaters. There are libraries. There are people from other places passing through.

My hometown was one of those places really determined to bury its head in the sand. When the population hit 100,000, half of those people were still describing it as a 'small farming community'! Even if it had been every bit as much of a small town as people insisted, it was just over an hour's drive from San Francisco. 'Nuff said. My current home is in a town that still thinks it's in an episode of Leave It To Beaver...but it's a fifteen-minute drive to Berkeley. If you can't find an alternate lifestyle, religion, or political view there, it probably doesn't exist anywhere on the planet. Okay, they don't get a lot of Amish, but it's pretty damn diverse.

Most people who haven't seen anything haven't looked beyond their own doorsteps.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

If it had been the other people at the table, I'd agree with you. But this woman has a lively mind and great curiosity about the world. I don't think it's willfull (does that word have too many Ls?) on her part.

But I do take your point about the cities that maintain they're small towns. I know a couple like that, including the one that Mom moved to when the family left the desert. When I was less than a year old, there were fewer than 1000 people in the town. When I was fifteen, that number went up to 3000 and it officially became a city. There are over 10,000 people there now, and most of the people call it a small town.

[gileswench.livejournal.com]

And I guess I'm quick to get disgusted at how people wear such blinders because most of the places I've lived in, blinders have been amazingly fashionable. It astonishes me how many people in this town consider it to be a bastion of white, politically conservative christianhood when a huge chunk of our population is Asian (mostly Japanese and Pacific Islanders), we've got an active Mosque and a large Buddhist center, and we have a huge LGBT organization that is very politically and socially active in the community. Slowly we're chipping away at Leave It To Beaverville. It's just a really uphill battle, and I get feisty.

Then again, as a child I was part of an extended Chinese family and a member of a Mexican family, as well. Yeah, my parents, my brothers and I all had that super-pale Celtic skin, but we were part of the family. My brothers and I all knew early on that there were two New Years, and the second one had the good food!

Part of it is what's in your area, but part of it is also how far you open your eyes. I do have to admit, though, there are no Sephardic or Hasidic Jews in my town...that I've noticed! I have, however, seen them in other places.

[wadjet-theperv.livejournal.com]

I had a similar experience with some friends of mine. They were both brought up in East Yorkshire, a very rural county with few ethnic minorities. We went down to London and one of the ticket inspectors was a Sikh, complete with a very large turban. I thought her jaw was going to hit the floor LOL The town I grew up in had a large Indian population. Many came over from Uganda when Idi Amin chucked them all out, so I was used to seeing guys in turbans.

The other time was when I was living in a small village in Lincolnshire and a Sikh doctor and his family were looking at a house. Dave and I got into conversation with them, and he said although they loved the house, and the village was in an ideal spot, he couldn't stand being stared at all the time. They meant no malice by it, and would have gotten used to it, but it was all very new.

It's an odd thing the first time you see a frumme in a streimel and silk stockings. They look like they're in a time warp (which in many ways they are).

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I have no idea why we visited Golders Green so much when I was a kid, but I know that by the time we went to the Diamond District, I already knew the difference between the dress of Orthodox and Hasidim. I must have been eight.

I love my parents' neighborhood. Mom hates it because no one will walk single file on Friday nights (there's no sidewalk), so if you don't see the prayer shawl you might not be able to see them at all. Personally, I think that's a minor inconvenience for living in such a fascinating area.

Within half a mile of their house there are Reform, Orthodox, Hasidic, and a couple of stripes I'd never heard of congregations. Sis and I get the HUGE Conservative congregation and the smaller Sephardic one I mentioned above.

Is Simchat Torah the night that everyone studies and attends lectures? My Dad and I already have a date to go visit any synagogue that will allow goyim and study with them.

[disbelief11.livejournal.com]

When my gal and I drive down a certain road (which we do often), we transition from a mainly caucasian neighborhood to a Swedish neighborhood to a Hasidic Jew neighborhood to an Indian neighborhood to a lesbian neighborhood to a meth-addict neighborhood. It's a very diverse road.

But with all our times driving it, she'd never noticed the Hasidic Jews until the other day. She had no idea why they were wearing what they were wearing. I was boggled at how she could have missed them all those other times.

[disbelief11.livejournal.com]

OK, yeah, the Swedes are caucasian too. They're just highly concentrated in that one area. Oops.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

The first time I went to Denmark (and later in Norway), I was amazed at how very different Scandinavians look in concentration. They're tall; the short women were still taller than I. The blondness is pretty overwhelming too. *G*

I can perfectly understand treating them as a separate neighborhood -- especially if any of the store signs were in Swedish, the way the store signs are in Hebrew here.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

And the not noticing could definitely be a factor.