NEW YORK
Huffington Post
Eliyahu Federman
Nechemya Weberman, a prominent member of the Satmar sect in Williamsburg, was convicted Monday of repeatedly sexually abusing a young teen he was entrusted to mentor.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, CBS and others have labeled Weberman and Satmar “ultra-Orthodox,” unwittingly conveying the assumption that the more Jewishly observant you are the more extreme you must be.
The descriptor “ultra-Orthodox” is reserved to convey the message that a particular group of Jews are extreme and fundamentalist but Orthodox refers to Jewish observance, not wearing fedoras, long coats and sporting bushy beards. So using the terms “ultra-Orthodox” implies that the more Judaism you observe the more extreme you become.
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