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March 14, 2009 | 1:11 pm

What a Shabbat elevator says about race relations

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo

A Shabbat elevator in Israel

An interesting story from Baltimore’s Jewish Times about a condo-community dispute over whether its cost-effective to construct one of two elevators as a Shabbat elevator, which automatically stops on each floor. Seems pretty straight-forward, except for the fact that the folks who don’t want the Shabbat elevator are black and the folks who do want it are Jewish and claiming anti-Semitism is being disguised as fiscal responsibility:

At the same time, the Maryland Commission on Human Relations got involved. Last August, MCHR issued a report in which it found “probable cause” that discrimination by the condo board had occurred against its Orthodox residents.

Last fall, the situation changed. Condo board members serve two-year terms. At the annual election to replace three departing board members, residents who supported the Shabbat elevator were elected. On March 2, the new board voted to retrofit one of the elevators into a Shabbat elevator.

The vote was 5-1 for the elevator, with two members not attending and one member “storming out” before the vote, according to board president Yael Kaner. Mrs. Kaner, a Star K kashrut supervisor and a chef at the Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center, and her husband, Yosef, who owns a virtual office support company, have lived in Strathmore Tower since 2005.

“Our challenge was to find the silent majority and to encourage them to vote,” Mrs. Kaner said of the board election. While the dispute does not involve all the residents, since the election she said “some African-American [residents] have displayed overt hostility.”

But that’s not how one of the former board members, who is black and a former president of the Baltimore City Teachers Union, sees it.

“If they wanted a Shabbat elevator, they should not have bought here,” Irene Dandridge told the Jewish Times. “It’s not a black-white matter. It’s a matter of not having a few families get their way.”

You can read the whole story here.

(Creator’s note: I saved this blog post Friday, before sundown, and preset it to publish during Shabbat. I will, however, be working much of the day.)

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what did people do before elevators?

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/14/09 at 8:00 pm

Revised comment - sorry just noticed your included link)

In answer to Proton Soup, they walked up just like they do today without the elevator. Just like they walk to synagogue in boiling and subzero weather conditions. Or like someone I know who has a heart condition, tip the doorman once a year to be alert for him coming in on Shabbat and take him up to the seventeenth floor (when I visited on Shabbat, I walked up).

In the full article, we discover that the condo has nine floors, and that it is eighty percent Jewish although the majority of the board that rejected the contract for the elevators was African American.

Missing from the story is what negative impact this elevator would have on residents who do not require it. My instinct is that they would not object to the cost of painting the building red black and green for Kwanzaa, and certainly not for the cost of converting a utility room into a mosque.

There is a well-known area in Nassau County on Long Island (NY) called the Five Towns. Four of the five towns (where Jews were long-ago barred by restrictive covenants) have experienced a large growth in Orthodox Jewish population, the fifth (Inwood) has traditionally been Italian and increasingly black. A spillover of Orthodox families and two schools has occurred in Inwood, and an activist effort has been mounted to shut down the school and exclude Orthodox Jews from Inwood. Here is an article from the local Jewish paper http://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=3921 called ‘Strange News From Inwood’. I suppose it would be redundant to speculate on the media firestorm that such an action taken by Jews on black people would ignite.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 3/14/09 at 11:35 pm

thanks for that, Ben.  i have to say though, that i still don’t grok it, but that’s OK.  it just seems like pushing a button on an elevator would be much less labor than walking a flight of stairs.

as for the elevator, if they could build a clock into it and have it automatically switch its function from manual to automatic mode on the sabbath, then that should make most people happy, i’d think.  it’d free up the manual elevator to the only 20% non-jewish population there.  unless the observant community there really is a minority of that 80%, in which case, it’d still cause a bit of a backup on sabbath.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/16/09 at 1:33 pm

The article left out that the building has 2 elevators, and only one would be used as a Shabbos elevator and that one only during certain hours on Shabbos, not all 24 hours. Plus, if there if a non-Jew has an urgent need to use the second elevator, the Shabbos mode can be temporarily overridden at the front desk. The times will be preset before Shabbos, and the installation will be coordinated with a Rabbinic authority to make sure it is halachically acceptable. It would have cost nothing if it was installed when the residents had the elevator refurbished, but now to retrofit it will cost $3000. That will be covered by a donor, so the residents will not have to pay a penny.

Comment by Farbel Madeupovitch on 3/16/09 at 5:32 pm

Thanks to Farbel M. for the additional context. Antisemitism was a major impetus for the counterproductive excesses of Black Power days, and is still a reliable motivator for the socio-cultural opportunism that just wants to bring home Jewish heads on a plate as trophies. Go on, laugh. I experienced it firsthand as a young man and on and off since.

And for Proton Soup, the technical definition of the ‘work’ that is prohibited on Shabbat is not equivalent to ‘= Force x Distance’ as in physics. In this specific case, it would be the consumption of electricity analogous to the fire that is prohibited in the Torah (Bible). But the technicalities are not what is at issue here. Look at the quote - “If they wanted a Shabbat elevator, they should not have bought here,” Irene Dandridge told the Jewish Times. “It’s not a black-white matter. It’s a matter of not having a few families get their way.” See? I like to point out that any statement that is not ‘reversible’ is by definition discriminatory.

In any case, the deciding vote was five to one which means that some non-Jewish residents joined in not considering it a big deal.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 3/16/09 at 9:32 pm

well, i’m curious about the technicalities simply because the culture is foreign to me.

as for the quotes, i don’t quite get why this is automatically assumed to be “discriminatory”.  when people bought homes there, the building had two regular elevators.  it’s not unreasonable for them to expect that was part of what they paid for.  if they suddenly find themselves delayed in their coming and going from their home 1 day per week, it is reasonable to expect them to be annoyed by that.  it’s not what they paid for.  likewise, the people who do want the shabbat elevator had reason to expect the building would not have one when they moved there.

in any case, i don’t understand how everything boils down to antisemitism.  sometimes people just get pissed off because their expectations weren’t met.

Comment by Proton Soup on 3/16/09 at 9:51 pm

I don’t mind discussing the technicalities but I just didn’t want to get bogged down. One more element in this is that the city had passed a law or regulation stipulating that reasonable religious accommodation should be made in new construction or renovation if needed.

It’s nice of you to want to give the opponents the benefit of the doubt, but it’s not dissimilar to the curbs and buses and theaters in my city having wheelchair accommodations. It costs money and parking fines and some time and tolerance on the part of others, but that’s either OK or tough luck depending on your point of view. That’s the ‘let live’ part of ‘live and let live’. I gave you equivalent examples of antisemitism, and the article specifically cites ethnic hostility, as well the presumably impartial Maryland Commission on Human Relations finding probable cause of discrimination against the Orthodox Jews by the condo board.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 3/16/09 at 10:42 pm

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Comment by Toronto condo on 3/17/09 at 5:13 am

This is so ridiculous.  An elevator that stops on every floor?  That is freaking retarded.  How do people come to the conclusion that they want such a thing?

Comment by Drew Coulter on 5/19/09 at 4:43 pm

well, first you have to convince yourself that it’s OK to use fire on the sabbath if you use only your feet and not your fingers…

Comment by Proton Soup on 5/19/09 at 4:53 pm

The freaking people have a commitment to an alternative lifestyle where they won’t take an elevator several days a year, and since they mostly own the place they can ask for any damn thing they effing want.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 5/19/09 at 5:07 pm

thanks for that,the movement of an elevator may also indirectly cause other forbidden actions to take place. For example, in many systems, one light turns off and another light turns on as the elevator passes from one floor to the next. Turning on incandescent floor lights represents a Biblical prohibition.
square one condos

Comment by square one condos on 7/25/09 at 8:13 am

this did not help me one bit! some times i hate the internet when it does things like that. this iis a legitimate article, just not the thing i need to read when i am researching the impact of elevators on today’s lifestyle!!! oh well.

Comment by madison the awesome on 11/02/09 at 8:36 pm

Here

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/dix-hills-condo-complex-agrees-to-allow-mezuzahs-1.1558072

is an article about a condo in Dix Hills, New York being forced to rewrite its bylaws, pay a fine and settle with a resident for preventing her from displaying a mezuzah on her housing unit.

P.S. the other residents were confused but supportive of the woman’s right to have a mezuzah.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 11/02/09 at 8:50 pm

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