While popping in to comment on some blogs on Shiloh Musings's sidebar, I got sucked into a different blog world. Soccer Dad linked and quoted from Irina's Ignoble Experiment's Blogosphere's gone PC?, who had ranted over a topic on Suburban Turmoil called "Talkin' Bout My Generation." All I can say is that they take themselves very seriously. They think they've invented the wheel.
Every generation thinks they've done it better than the previous one, and most people, by nature must conform to whichever group in society they feel is best for them. That's life. That's human nature.
In the 1960's, when I was a teen and became a "person," there were all sorts of crowds in my Great Neck, Long Island, New York's suburban high school. There were the popular kids who were both top students and athletes, Jon Avnet was one of its stars. There was also a "hoody" crowd, which had very few Jews; most of the kids in that group had gone to the local Catholic elementary school, "Saint Al's" and weren't accepted into their high school. Then there were the "non-conformists," and the rest of us who didn't quite fit into the important categories. I'd say that Andy Kaufman was in a group of his own. I was in my own tiny group of those of us who were getting more involved with Judaism.
Which group was the most "uniform?" The non-conformists, of course!
Oh, no. We didn't invent the wheel. We just made it better.
ReplyDeleteawww, that's what we all say!
ReplyDelete2 years on since anyone has posted. I grew up in GN and lived there from 1960 to 1982. I went to Clover Dr., Saddle Rock and both North Jr. (when it was still a junior high), and North Sr. (good old John L. Miller...) My parents stayed until 1990 or so.
ReplyDeleteDon't know that I agree with you about Rabbi Wolff as the catalyst you make him out to be. Let's face it, until the late 70s, most Jews were secular, affiliated with Beth-El, Israel and Temple Emanuel (I didn't know anyone who actually belonged there,) as well as GN Synagogue. In the outside world, everyone had heard of Rabbi Waxman, who I never much cared for. He used to live around the corner from me on Bayview Ave. My youthful disenchantment with him came during Yom Kippur, 1974 when he defended Richard Nixon for all the Watergate goings on. Help to Israel the year before trumped all in his eyes.
Going back to the emergence of the modern orthodox in GN. I attribute it to the relatively simultaneous immigration of South African and Persian Jews beginning in the early 70s.
I only get back every so often for visits. I don't mind the town, except that it's too avant-garde and too expensive for no good reason.
Thanks for sharing your memories.
ReplyDeleteYoung Modern Orthodox Jews moved to Great Neck, since it not only had the GNS, but it had the day school and houses they could afford, (these weren't poor Jews) within a mile of the shul. Suddenly it mushroomed and they opened a YOung Israel.
Great Neck is nothing like it was in the 1960's.