New York City’s mayor has a long history with the city's Jews. His tweet after a funeral still fuels an image that can linger.
“This is a community I love,” de Blasio said at a news conference Wednesday, when asked if the Jewish community in Williamsburg deserved an apology for being singled out. “This is a community I have spent a lot of time working with closely. And if you saw anger and frustration, you’re right. I spoke out of real distress that people’s lives were in danger before my eyes. And I was not going to tolerate it.
What de Blasio has done, though, is inelegantly smash together a broad and diverse population and define them narrowly. If you’re part of New York City’s large reformed Jewish community, you may have a pretty clear sense of what de Blasio means by “the Jewish community,” a not atypical reference to the city’s most religious. But even though it may not always feel this way, Twitter isn’t exclusively a New York City thing, and the mayor’s tweets carry out beyond the boroughs.
to the tactic, painting “real” Jews as having but one opinion about Israel when large numbers of individual Jews contain contradictory opinions about Israel just within themselves . In other areas of US politics, Jews are portrayed as broadly left-wing, sprouted from a legacy of radicalism in the 20th century, despite the existence of a growing and insular Orthodox community that is largely removed from day-to-day national politics.
It’s tempting to not want to read too much into a few words in a tweet. But the last few years have given us a near-daily reminder that words in tweets can matter. An inartful few words can linger.
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