This is from an interview with Chafetz – the New York Times reporter who wrote a now much-quoted piece on the New York Syrian Jewish community – about recent events.
[The community has a] long history of having problems along these lines… [A]ll kinds of scams [go on]… I wish I could say I was surprised… Having spent some time looking into that community I truly wasn’t actually shocked… [This is a] very tightly knit community… everybody is related to everybody else… a lot of business is done on handshakes… [The] ethos is… not disconnected from the commercial traditions of the Middle East… [I assume] there are more arrests or scandals coming… that wouldn’t shock me.
Having spent 62 years being Jewish, I do not think that rabbis are ethical or moral figures in particular… [Unethical behavior among them] never surprises me…
July 26th, 2009 at 2:52PM
> I do not think that rabbis are ethical or moral figures in particular
Kind of like academics.
July 26th, 2009 at 3:06PM
Yes, RJO.
July 26th, 2009 at 7:15PM
Was that in his prior article? If it was, I missed it.