Battle in Brooklyn

Brooklyn’s slow but steady gentrification is creating tensions among newcomers and old-timers in another of the borough’s traditional Jewish enclaves.

The New York Daily News reports that the latest round of ” hipsters vs. the Hasids” is taking place in Crown Heights, home to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement – and now, increasingly, 20-somethings who don’t live by the same customs. An angry Internet post by an anonymous Jewish resident of the neighborhood has triggered an “e-firestorm,” the paper claims, with the poster warning other Jews not to rent to new arrivals in the neighborhood.

“Young, upwardly mobile professionals may seem to be pleasant tenants who bring in reliable income, but they also introduce a very different way of life: new nightclubs and bars, sun tanning on rooftops, bike lanes and an increasing amount of immodesty on our street,” the post said.

While the post seems to describe yuppies rather than hipsters – a significant distinction, as these things go – it reflects an issue that is likely to persist.

The sentiment may be relatively new in Crown Heights, but it’s been around for years in other parts of Brooklyn. Cultural battles between religious Jews and newcomers in Williamsburg have been going on for years, as evidenced by this New York magazine piece from 2004.