A taxi passes by in front of The New York Times head office, Feb. 7, 2013. Photo: Reuters / Carlo Allegri / File.
The New York Times story declaring that Mayor Adams is being criticized for having too many Orthodox men on a Jewish advisory council is itself drawing criticism for expressing an antiquated and narrow idea of what a Jewish New Yorker looks like.
“If there is an archetypical Jewish New Yorker, that person might be found on the Upper West Side, somewhere between Zabar’s and Barney Greengrass,” the Times article, by Dana Rubinstein, declares. It goes on to assert that “that type of Jewish New Yorker was in short supply” on the Jewish Advisory Council, which was announced June 26.
It’s a strange hook upon which to hang a New York Times article, though perhaps it does illustrate the insecurity of the people complaining, who represent a demographically diminishing share of the New York Jewish population.
For one thing, the Times article totally omits it, but the council includes Rabbi Joanna Samuels, who is literally the CEO of the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side, which is at 76th and Amsterdam. Zabar’s is at 80th and Broadway and Barney Greengrass is on Amsterdam between 86th and 87th. Close enough?
The Times illustrates the piece with a photograph of a rabbi left off the council, Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn. That congregation is excessively covered by the Times, which featured it in the month of November 2022 alone in a page-one news article about antisemitism, a Style section article about “the first Old Jewish Men Fall Ball, an intergenerational mixer,” and a news article about Timoner denouncing as “fascist,” what she described as “the most racist and farthest-right leadership Israel has ever seen.”
Notwithstanding the “if” and the “might,” the Times stereotype was mocked by Jews and New Yorkers. “Yes, please tell us what box every Jew in NYC is supposed to fit into, @nytimes,” tweeted the mayor’s press secretary, Fabian Levy.
“Talk about living in a bubble,” commented David Bernstein, a professor at George Mason University. He observed that Orthodox Jews are a growing share of the New York City population.
“Something is deeply wrong at the New York Times,” tweeted Seth Mandel, an editor at the Washington Examiner. The Examiner followed up rapidly with a piece by a summer intern asserting, fairly accurately, “the contempt for Orthodox Jews is palpable in nearly every news story the Times writes about them.”
Dovid Margolin, an editor at Chabad.org, tweeted, “the New York Times is so bigoted it’s amazing.”
An editor at Tablet, Armin Rosen, tweeted, “The New York Times makes less and less sense as a newspaper as time goes on, and more and more sense as a lifestyle brand aimed mostly at people who supported Elizabeth Warren at any point in the 2020 race.”
Anyway, the problem here, in my view, goes beyond the stereotype or the Orthodox-bashing, egregious though they both are. What really grates is the inaccuracy. If there is “an archetypical Jewish New Yorker,” at least for the New York Times, it’s not actually some Upper West Sider. Instead, it’s the Park Slope Reform rabbi complaining that she was left off the council that a real Upper West Sider was put on. That’s why the Times illustrates the article with a photo of the Park Sloper, rather than with any picture of anyone from the Upper West Side.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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