"Heimish" is as "Heimish" does

Heimishe Lokshen writes in response to פרסום ראשון! מכתב שנשלח להאדמו"ר ר' אהרן טייטלבוים מ'סאטמאר שליט"א:

CR: Whatever is done in willy becomes Heilig and Heimish, since they buy the most G&G long suits in our doir. Imagine if the NYC housing projects would've been in any other Yiddishe neighborhood and Jews would utilize it for their cheap shelter, then the shprach in Willi would be, nebach on these Jews who expose their kids to Sedom Ve'Amora. The Beach in Eilat is 1,000 times eideler than the projects, ask the kids that lived in Clemente or Wyhte Place, the corridors are brothels, officially. But since the Heimeshe live there it is the norm. This is their attitude and obviously their leader is in the same drekk. Imagine if [Mayor] Barakat [of Jerusalem] would build these projects in Meah Shearim, they would holler in protest for years to come, like years ago with the pool in Yerushalayim.

ad kan devorov.


Funny how we never think of it that way. We had a rebbes in Spinka kheyder kita gimmel and daled who lived in these projects, and once a year, on Purim night, we would go deliver Shalikhmoones to our kheyder rebbe. It was a חויה for us Boro Park kids to go to holy Williburg bikhlal. Willi - in our minds - had the REAL holy Jews living there. Not like in BP. We yearned to be more like them. But I gotta tell you, it was weird going up there. אין באראפארק האט מען נישט געוואוינט מיט גויים אזוי אין איין בנין. There were a few kids who lived in Apartment buildings, but that's not public housing. But we sometimes do strange things in life if we convince ourselves that it's OK. Or if it helps out get through life just a little bit easier. Like the title here says: Heimish is as Heimish does. If it's the norm and accepted we usually don't give it a second thought.