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CANDLELIGHTING

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THE JEWISH VIEW

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HOLIDAYS

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JUDAISM 101

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{weblog_name} - Let’s Move Forward Together
Comments (1)

One warm evening, I remember seeing one of the greatest acts of bravery I’ve ever seen in person. A former Shomrim member raced down the steep decline of the Greenspring Avenue quarry, dropped into the cold water, and saved the life of a young man who was attempting suicide. That same former Shomrim member on that same night helped the Baltimore City Police identify a suspect in the shooting of an off-duty City Police detective. This, I believed, was what Shomrim was all about. In November of 2009, almost 3,000 Jews, blacks, Hispanics and just plain old neighbors got together at Northwestern High School. There was a flag football game going on between a Shomrim team and the Northwest Police District. But nobody really cared much about the score of any game. Because there were pony rides, children’s activities… read more

Phil,

You are missing one major point here. Most jews, especially those that don’t live in Northwest Baltimore City, don’t identify at all with the Jews that live there, and many in fact actively distance themselves from the predominantly orthodox lower income jewish population there.

They don’t have to live with spiking crime rates in Baltimore City or on the fringes of Baltimore County. Many of them have already fled the city, or many have even fled the suburb (Randalstown, Owings Mills) when it got “too diverse”.

Even the Jewish city counsel member in the area lives in a posh downtown condo as you have reported.