Hasids win on a technicality
While police interpreted Quebec’s guidelines to mean religious gatherings were limited to 10 people per building, the Hasids took them to mean 10 people per distinct room inside a building, and Superior Court has agreed with them. Now this seems to imply police must watch as any number of people file into a synagogue and, I suppose, trust them to break up into separate rooms limited to 10 each.
jane 12:59 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
Please don’t refer to people as Hasids.
shmulik 13:02 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
would you say: “the chasidic communities in outremont” or “chasidic leaderships in outremont” is better?
Kate 13:52 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
I see the group referred to as Hasidim on various sites belonging to the Jewish community, so I assumed the term isn’t felt to be derogatory.
jeather 14:33 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
Hasidim is fine. Hasids seems to be often used in a derogatory way, though I don’t think you did it that way, and is probably related to why calling people “Jews” is often done and/or read maliciously.
Ephraim 14:35 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
The more encompassing term is actually Haredi. Hassid (Hassidim) is actually a subgroup.
Haredi comes from the word that means pious, but also fearful or trembling at the word of G-d. Hassid comes from the word that mean pious, but also benevolence. Hassids go back to the Baal Shem Tov (Israel Ben Eliezer) and generally excludes the Lithuanian groups and definitely excludes the Mizrachi (ie the Sephardic) ultra-orthodox.
The other term used in Israel is Dossim and my guess is that they consider it pejorative, because it is based on the Hebrew word Dattim, but with their mispronunciation of the letter Taf as an S instead of a T. Which is why they say Shabbos instead of Shabbat.
Marco 14:37 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
Saying “Hasids” is fine. They (the group in question) also refer to themselves as Hasids.
MarcG 15:39 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
Marco: That logic doesn’t always work. I call myself an idiot but someone else saying it is something else entirely.
Jebediah Pallendrome 16:47 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
This reminds me of that 30 Rock episode where Alec Baldwin asks Salma Hayek what he should call her people/ethnicity, and she says ‘Puerto Rican’ and he says “I know that’s what you people call yourselves but what do I call you?” and she’s like “Puerto Rican!?”
Joey 17:02 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
Adding “im” to the end of a word in Hebrew makes it plural (most of the time; Hebrew is gendered, like French, so “im” is added to masculine words and “ot” is added to feminine words. The default, like French, is masculine). So “Hasidim” is Hebrew for “more than one Hasid.”
Hasid, as Ephraim points out, means “pious one.” I think jeather’s point is valid – if you want to refer to a group of Hassidic people, the term “Hasidim” is more respectful than “Hasids,” since it is effectively “their” term, coming from their language/culture (which, technically I guess, is Yiddish for everyday language, but Yiddish is sort of a melange of Hebrew and German, so I digress). We can infer that one who says “Hasidim” is perhaps a little more knowledgable of Hasidic culture/language/experience than one who says “Hasids.”
Anyway, I don’t think it’s a big deal. As Paulie Walnuts said, “Hasidim but I don’t believe ’em.”
Last, Ephraim, I’m not sure it’s fair to say that pronouncing a Taf with an S instead of a T is a “mispronounciation” so much as a part of the Eastern European Hebrew dialect. The idea that there is one true Hebrew that is correct and the rest are pale imitations seems like a lousy endeavour for Jews to pursue. It was also a favourite pastime of my Montreal high school Hebrew/Judaica teachers, almost all of whom were recent immigrants from Israel who were quick to make clear that the “Israeli” Hebrew was superior, followed by the Hebrew spoken in parts of the world close to Israel (Morocco, like Iraq 50 years ago, Spain like 500 years ago, etc.) followed by Eastern Europe followed by North America. Real exquisite pettiness on behalf of these educators. Anyway, see here: https://jewishaction.com/humor/fighting-taf-guys/ for an argument in favour if occasionally pronouncing Tav as Sav (really Saf, I guess)…. “Somehow the fact that I call a citron an “esrog” means that I must love Israel less (because Sepharadic pronunciation has been adopted in Israel) or that I’m a fundamentalist (because those perceived to be fundamentalists often use the Ashkenazic pronunciation).”
Shabbat shalom, Jews and Gentiles alike!
Ephraim 17:52 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
@Joey – Yes, there is a well known controversy/argument over it, related to a town in the Galilee (I think it might be Tiv’on, but I’m not sure.) Anyway, the story goes that some of the people in the town mispronounced a letter in the Hebrew alphabet and were forbidden from reading out loud from the bible because of it. So, there are those who argue that you have to be very careful when reading from the Torah to not mispronounce letters.
The argument is over the simple dagesh kal, but with no actual data behind it. But there is already TWO letter in Hebrew with the S sound, why would they have needed a third? More likely, like the shin/se’en, it might have been a tet/te’eth rather than pull in a letter for a third time. The dagesh kal change in other letters move them to known changes in other alphabets… pay/fay.
Incidentally, Sephardic Jews were in the Americas a long time before Ashkenazi Jews were here. And the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language was actually an Ashkenazi endeavour.
Joey 17:58 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
That last point is what I used to think of when the Israeli teachers would sneer at Ashkenazi prononciation…
Chris 18:45 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
So apparently the ruling applies to all religions.
Let it not be said that the religious don’t get special perks in our society. You can’t get a haircut with a grand total of two people in a room, but dozens can gather to talk to their inaginary friend. Yay science-based virus policy!
Kate 22:17 on 2021-02-05 Permalink
Chris, I don’t know what the interior architecture of a Hasidic synagogue is like, but according to the CBC radio news, the rule says they have to practice in groups of no more than 10 in separate rooms, each with a distinct exit to the outside. How closely it’s possible to police this, I do not know. Christian churches are pretty much one big hall, and I believe mosques are as well, so they can’t really use this loophole.
Chris 12:48 on 2021-02-06 Permalink
Kate, the article you linked also says there has to be “un accès indépendant à la rue sans partager d’espace commun avec les autres salles”. Unless I’m missing a loophole, wouldn’t this mean the police could just watch the external entrances? If more than 10 enter any entrance, then they are in violation, no?