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| Fire in a makeshift Satmar dorm (Yahoo News) |
A single-family house owned by a religious organization and being used illegally as a rooming house caught fire with up to 21 people living amid multiple fire and safety violations, according to fire officials Monday…
People were living illegally in the basement and attic, and the three-bedroom house was littered with electrical problems and other fire code violations, Rockland Fire and Emergency Services Coordinator Chris Kear said. Several space heaters were being used to keep people warm on a cold night and the house lacked working smoke detectors, he said.
Apparently, Satmar feels no compunction about placing its students in housing that could have easily burned them alive. They apparently feel that the rules of safety do not apply to them. That nothing will happen to their students. And that in any case, God will protect them from any harm. Well they can pat themselves on the back. God did protect them. This time. But that does not mean that in similar circumstances - sometime on the future that God will do it again.
I wish I could say I’m surprised by Satmar’s casual attitude about fire safety rules. They seem to feel they know better what serves their purposes than city fire officials they consider just a bunch of anti Chasidic Goyim. That these ‘Goyim’ are tasked with assuring the safety of citizens does not seem to occur or matter to them.
‘What they might say is the following:
‘What do a bunch of Goyim know about our needs?’ ‘Our population base keeps growing and outpacing our ability to provide the kind of housing the law requires.’ ‘A law that is well beyond what safety actually requires.’ ‘A law made by an overblown bureaucracy that makes unnecessary laws in order to justify their very existence.’ ‘We have neither the patience nor the means to accommodate excessive and meaningless laws.’
‘Our children will do just fine under these conditions.’ ‘After all conditions of life were a lot worse for our ancestors back in Europe and they survived just fine.’ ‘A little overcrowding?’ ‘Sleeping in the basement or the attic?’ ‘What‘s the the big deal?!’ We will do whatever we have to in order to survive; make sure our students get the education they need; and have a place to stay when attending schools away from home.’
OK. I can’t say for sure that this is what was on the minds of the Satmar officials tasked with providing lodging for their students. Which led to these unsafe living conditions. But unless they willfully ignored the welfare of their students, they had to be rationalizing along these lines.
One might ask, why do I keep picking on Satmar? Well… I’m not. I just keep seeing a variety of dangers to their their welfare, whether it is in matters of education or safety
I have no real quarrel with their lifestyles. My quarrel is only with the way they short change their own people. Even though I'm sure they fully believe they serving them well in the eyes of God.
In my eyes they are not! While they have a right to their own views, when it endangers their people, they lose that right.
That they are so cavalier about safety issues – violating laws that are designed to protect them is in my view yet another consequence of their insular lifestyle. Their disdain for the outside world is key to understanding why they ignore the rules, Whether about education or safety.
Their Chasidim tend to see the world through the isolationism they have been indoctrinated to believe is what God wants of them. Which includes a dim view of the culture in which they live that makes unreasonable demands of them. They are not going to countenance it. They will do as they see fit even it violates all the rules – as long as they can get away with it.
But they don’t always get away with it. They get caught and then cry wolf about being unfairly harassed because they are Chasidim. They see a hostile government when in fact quite the opposite is true. They are very often shown sympathy and understanding by public officials who in the past tried mightily to accommodate their needs.
But this type of Chasidus seems to not understand that. They see only a bunch of Goyim that - given the chance - will get in their way and make it difficult to live their lives as they choose. So when they think no one is looking they will do as they please. Rules be damned.
As this latest incident demonstrates, that kind of approach can have deadly consequences. That they got away with it this time does not mean they will get away with it next time.
Will this be a lesson to their leaders to follow rules designed to protect them? I wish I could say, yes. But I doubt it. I shudder to think about he possible tragedy that may befall them next time. May God protect them all from any harm.
