Shunning By Jewish Community
As the pimps prospered, the Argentinian Jewish community rejected them. Articles condemning the rufianes appeared in the local press, and in 1885, the community established the Jewish Association for the Protection of Women and Girls. Notices posted on the walls of the Jewish quarter warned locals not to rent to the rufianes. Nevertheless, the pimps aspired to be part of the community. The wealthiest were patrons of the Jewish theater, which was the center of Jewish cultural life in Buenos Aires. Despite their trade, Zwi Migdal members donated funds for the construction of synagogues and other community buildings. Community leaders were divided on whether to accept these donations, some fearing that accepting "dirty" money would legitimize the exploitation of women. Later the "tmeyim" (unclean), as they were known, were banned from synagogues and refused burial in the local Jewish cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Zwi Migdal
Famous quotes containing the words shunning, jewish and/or community:
“Age wins and one must learn to grow old.... I must learn to walk this long unlovely wintry way, looking for spectacles, shunning the cruel looking-glass, laughing at my clumsiness before others mistakenly condole, not expecting gallantry yet disappointed to receive none, apprehending every ache of shaft of pain, alive to blinding flashes of mortality, unarmed, totally vulnerable.”
—Diana Cooper (1892–1986)
“Don: Why are they closed? They’re all closed, every one of them.
Pawnbroker: Sure they are. It’s Yom Kippur.
Don: It’s what?
Pawnbroker: It’s Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday.
Don: It is? So what about Kelly’s and Gallagher’s?
Pawnbroker: They’re closed, too. We’ve got an agreement. They keep closed on Yom Kippur and we don’t open on St. Patrick’s.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”
—Marian Wright Edelman (20th century)