Nothing like a shtetl

Andrew Sullivan links to this article in the Jerusalem Post, reporting on the shooting death of a Jewish man in Antwerp.

Awful, but not surprising. Antwerp's Jewish community, considered by some the modern world's only real shtetl, is unlike any other I know of. (I stayed at a hostel in Antwerp's Jewish neighborhood during September 2002, and still cannot forget this one Hasidic man I saw, smoking a cigarette while riding a motor-scooter. Europe...) While guide books warn against speaking French in Antwerp, a Flemish (Dutch?)-speaking part of Belgium, French, Yiddish, and I suppose some Flemish and Hebrew, are spoken by the Orthodox Jews who live there. Signs have Hebrew letters, restaurants are kosher, and synagogues are heavily guarded. Unlike Paris's Marais neighborhood, the Jewish part of Antwerp is no center of trendy boutiques and cafes; if anything, it felt most like Orthodox Jewish parts of Brooklyn. I even saw a woman, presumably an Antwerper, carrying a Daffy's bag.

But unlike, say, Midwood, the Jewish part of Antwerp seems aware of its status as a ghetto in the original sense of the term, situated not only right in the middle of where Jews didn't fare so well in the early and middle 20th century, to put it mildly, but also in a city which has in recently favored a far-right political party, and which seems to be under the impression that its Jews are likely to be attacked--the whole neighborhood appeared to be under some sort of national guard-like patrol during the High Holidays.

There's something reassuring in the continued existence of traditional European Jewish communities, despite all the efforts over the years of Europe to kick them out. But if I were going to live somewhere to make a point, I think I'd choose falafel over french fries, if you know what I mean.