R abbi Avrohom Gordimer one of the most effective and articulate defenders of Torah Jewry in the United States sent out an e-mail recently to a wide circle of community leaders in which he highlighted two negative phenomena in our community and solicited ideas as to what can be done to remedy them.
The second had to do with the chillul Hashem caused when identifiably observant Jews treat non-Jews and sometimes just anyone outside their narrow group as if they do not exist or are unworthy of notice. He related two stories told to him by the manager of a kosher restaurant in the Tristate area.
In one incident an observant Jew accidentally stepped on the foot of a black patron of the same restaurant and pointedly refused to apologize apparently on the grounds that doing so would be beneath his status as a member of the am hanivchar. The black patron was so upset by that rude behavior that he left the restaurant.
In a second incident in the same restaurant an observant patron refused to vacate his table so that a gentile woman who had fainted in the restaurant could be placed upon the table until emergency services arrived.
