Amber Tamblyn and Aggressive Hasidic Drivers
Observable Reality is 'Anti-Semitic' Apparently
The actress Amber Tamblyn has been the subject of a controversy concerning Hasidic jews in Brooklyn, New York. To quote the Jewish Press:
‘“If anyone in Brooklyn near the intersection of Washington Ave and Atlantic Ave just saw a Hasidic man in a grey van try to hit a woman and her baby in a stroller as she crossed a crosswalk, honking and touching the stroller with the car’s bumper, please DM me. That woman was me,” Tamblyn’s first tweet went. The incident she described supposedly took place around 2 PM Sunday.
[…]
“Thank you everyone for your kind words of support today. We are fine. But this is not the first time a man from the Hasidic community in NYC has attempted to harm me or other women I know. Any woman riding a bike through South Williamsburg can attest. I hope this guy is caught.”’ (1)
In essence all Tamblyn is saying here is that she was almost hit by a van driven dangerously and without due care and attention by a Hasidic jew in Brooklyn. As well as that this isn’t her first experience with such drivers.
Ironically the Jewish Press then goes on to try and manipulate Tamblyn’s comments to make her appear like a lunatic. To wit:
‘We stayed with the story for a while, because, frankly, the notion of Hasidic Jews hunting for young women to harm did not strike us as being real.
Several in the Twitter community expressed similar doubts, and some accused Tamblyn a racist, like one user who argued, “I don’t understand your tweets. For someone who is so politically woke, I don’t understand your generalizations of the Hasidic Jewish community. It sounds racist.”’ (2)
Notice that the Jewish Press have twisted Tamblyn’s words to indicate that she is somehow a paranoid lunatic ‘blaming Hasidic jews’ who ‘hunt for young women to hurt’ – citing anonymous Twitter users as an appeal to popularity to widen the charge it is making against Tamblyn from implied ‘anti-Semitism’ to the even more socially unacceptable ‘racism’ – rather than someone simply concerned about driving.
In contrast Rabbi Moshe Dovid Niederman of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg pulled no punches and simply denounced Tamblyn as an ‘anti-Semite’. (3)
He also claimed that:
‘“Data shows that Hasidic Williamsburg area is safer for bikers than surrounding areas,” he said, saying that Tamblyn’s untruthful accusations calls her credibility into question and suggested that the Times “ought to investigate if she meets their credibility standards.”’ (4)
The problem with Rabbi Niederman’s claim however is Tamblyn wasn’t on a bike when she was nearly run over – along with her infant daughter – and the only reference to a bike is in her second statement, which mentioned that she had had similar experiences while riding her bike through south Williamsburg.
He doesn’t bother to actually address the incident and instead simply claims Tamblyn is ‘anti-Semitic’, because she noticed it was a Hasid who was driving the grey van that nearly injured her and her infant daughter.
Doing a quick internet search also quickly demonstrates that Rabbi Niederman is lying through his teeth as you can find numerous anecdotal accounts of similar experiences – including those concerning buses full of Hasidic school children - with Hasidic drivers. (5) Indeed you see the same commentary from locals in the rural town of Postville, Ohio about Hasidic jewish drivers who moved there from New York to work in the Agriprocessors kosher meat packing plant and slaughterhouse there. (6)
Articles on aggressive Hasidic driving habits have been published by the Jewish Chronicle concerning London’s Hasidic population, (7) while even the Jewish Daily Forward thinks that Hasidic jews are guilty of serial impatience when driving. (8)
Thus we can see that despite Rabbi Niederman and the Jewish Press’ claims; Hasids are aggressive (and bad) drivers and it isn’t ‘anti-Semitic’ in the slightest to point this out.
Oh and Amber Tamblyn isn’t an ‘anti-Semite’ either.
References
(1) http://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/ny/actress-amber-tamblyn-goes-to-war-against-hasidic-men/2018/03/05/
(2) Ibid.
(3) http://hamodia.com/2018/03/06/jewish-group-condemns-nyt-contributing-writers-hasidic-tweet/
(4) Ibid.
(5) http://www.brooklynian.com/discussion/28923/why-are-rules-different-for-hasidics
(6) Stephen Bloom, 2000, ‘Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America’, 1st Edition, Harcourt: New York, p. 47
(7) https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/so-why-are-we-such-crashingly-bad-drivers-1.65494
(8) https://forward.com/life/faith/395902/why-so-many-hasidic-men-are-such-aggressive-drivers/