Bill Bradley comes to Brooklyn and faces his toughest audience yet—the
Orthodox Jews of Borough Park
by Ryn Gargulinski
Ryn's Archives: New Cat, Brunch with Mom
Bill Bradley came to Brooklyn. He was trying to hammer up
enthusiasm and support in Borough Park, in the basement cafeteria of an all-girls yeshiva.
Borough Park is an extremely orthodox, extremely strict, Jewish community where signs
“Closed Saturday for Sabbath” abound. In fact, if there was a
definition of BP in the dictionary, I bet you would find a picture of men in black hats
(the width of the brim is directly proportional to the fervor of their sect), and stifling
black, wool outfits (even in the dead heat of summer).
Borough Park can be tough. But Bill Bradley pretty much held his own
-- when he eventually showed up. Security consisted of the Secret Service shooing all the
waiting people from side to side, including a group of women with a devil-may-care
attitude and not a lot for respect for rules that didn’t originate in the Torah or
Talmud.
“Do we have to move?” complained a woman in a hat and opaque
stockings to a Secret Service agent ( he reminded me of my little brother who I used to
push around).
“Yes, if you could, er, please, move, please.”
Woman in wig: “You mean us?”
“Yes please.”
“O.k,” she said, not moving an inch.
The highlight of the pre-Bradley entourage was the bomb-sniffing German
Shepherd (pet dogs are banned by the orthodox). Naturally all the kids
went wild over this forbidden beast--“Ohh, ahhhh, Look! A DOG!”—while the
school’s administration was thoroughly disgusted.
“MUST the dog be down here! It’s a cafeteria!”
Other highlights of the waiting period included watching women with
strollers barreling through the Secret Service barriers as if nothing were going on,
students in uniform barreling through the Secret Service barriers as if nothing were going
on, and friends and families connected to the school barreling through Secret Service
barriers as if nothing were going on.
Besides myself and my co-workers, the event was attended by US
Senator Moynihan, a big endorser of Bradley; a City Councilman who was ignored by the
press and swallowed up by the crowd and an anonymous State Senator. There was also the
president of the Boro Park YM-YWHA, who organized the event and managed to get two photos
of Bradley with him and some family members. Finishing up the list of
political notables was a certain Assemblyman who sniffed out reporters with an unerring
accuracy that the bomb-sniffing German Shepherd could only hope to emulate.
This Assemblyman had two cents to spout on every issue including the fact that he would
endorse Gore and was only here because he was invited and “I wanted to tell me two
sons I met a basketball star.”
Nobody shook my hand, of course. After all, I am a woman! In the
Orthodox Jewish community a woman is “lucky” if she gets eye contact from a
male. And I ended up being admonished by my co-worker for standing too close to the
“male” side of the makeshift auditorium. In Orthodox Jewish functions, the men
and women are separated by a barrier.
The audience was a the usual sea of black wool, the men all sporting
beards that would put ZZ Top to shame (except the one poor fellow who looked lost and was
unable to grow a full beard -- “That’s the saddest thing,” my coworker
commented, “to be forced to grow a beard and not be able to,”) and the women in
their wigs and opaque hose.
Enter Bradley. After the cursory basketball jokes from the peanut
gallery (“Look how he maneuvers through the crowd, you can tell he knew his
defense!” And, “too bad there are no basketball hoops down here...but watch out
for those chandeliers!”) Bradley finally meandered to the front of the room. He
didn’t don a yarmulke -- although I hear that many politicians wear them when
speaking to Orthodox communities. Senator Moynihan cracked up the audience by asking them
how many of them watch TV (Orthodox Jews don’t generally watch TV),
and Bradley took center stage.
His speech was profoundly lackluster, peppered with quotes from
Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., a friend of his who teaches fourth grade, and
a story about picking up two hitchhikers in Israel that really seemed to have no point. I
guess the mention of Israel was his Jew grabber. Other than that -- and the
faux pas of mentioning a Jewish community in New Jersey which many in Borough Park
disapprove of -- Bradley’s 20-minute talk was not directed toward the community at
all. Instead he spewed a one-size-fits-all speech rather than anything
specifically tuned to the audience. There was no time for a question and answer session
either, although many students in the audience were clearly eager to question the
candidate.
The whole thing lasted only half an hour. After that the
Secret Service whisked Bradley away so quickly the audience barely had time to treat him
to their tepid applause. In a couple of minutes, it didn’t seem as if he had ever
been there at all.
Did Bradley have any impact on the Borough Park community at all?
We’ll see if there’s a sea of black wool pulling the “Bradley” lever
on Tuesday.
Also check out: 
Deborah Au-Yeung falls in love and neglects her
'hood for a month. But she's back in D.U.M.B.O. (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass section of Brooklyn) to report on the local art scene.
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