Posted on 11/15/2013 6:57:21 AM PST by amnestynone
On the first weekday of chol hamoed Sukkot, most years, my wife and I take our four children to Hershey Park. The park, which is in Lancaster, Pa., is closed to everyone but frum Jews on that day.
Lancaster is not known as a center of frumkeit — it is most decidedly “out of town — but on that day Hershey not only makes accommodations for the visitors, but actually reconfigures the whole park to be frum friendly. The food stands, including the kettle corn that draws some of the longest lines, are all kosher. Placards advertise the times for minyanim, and hundreds of men converge to daven at prearranged times or, if they miss the large gatherings, come together in small minyanim abutting food stands or roller coasters. In addition, the park has at least two sukkot to allow the visitors to fulfill the obligation of eating in the sukkah.
Hershey is not the only amusement park to accommodate frum Jews for Sukkot, but it may make the most effort. The two Disney parks, in Florida and California, also typically host Orthodox Jews on this day, although not exclusively, as in Hershey. Disney Orlando allows the local Chabad rabbi to build a sukkah on the premises, outside the ticket taking area. This is unlike Hershey, where there are two sukkot on the inside of the park. Hershey in chol hamoed — aka #jewday on Twitter — is also popular because it is in the heart of the Northeast corridor that houses the bulk of the country’s Orthodox Jews. It is a manageable drive from Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, and more specifically from Orthodox enclaves in Silver Spring, Potomac, and Reisterstown, Md.; Cherry Hill, Englewood, Teaneck, and Lakewood, N.J.; and of course, Brooklyn, the Five Towns, and Queens in N.Y.
The crowd, although nearly all frum, is nonetheless quite a diverse mix of the entire range of frumkeit, including haredi, chasidic, Modern, and barely. I delight in seeing chassidishe families, notable for their boys sporting long curly peyot and speaking rapid-fire Yiddish, standing on line next to modern jeans-clad teenagers hanging out in “coed clumps.” Although much is written about the divisions within the modern and non-Orthodox camps, it seems as if Hershey Park, and other similar parks around the country that sponsor or encourage special days for Orthodox Jews, have found the magic formula that will unite these oft-times contentious communities — namely rides.
At Hershey Park — where strangers happily exchange the Yiddish greeting a gut moed — we see that despite differences in prayer books (Art Scroll vs Koren), pronunciation (taf vs. saf) and Zionism (silent vs pro), Orthodox Jews are just like everyone else. They are looking for a place they can enjoy a fun day with their families, where their restrictions — kosher food, the need for a minyan and the need to eat in a sukkah — do not prevent them from sharing in that enjoyment. You can almost sense the excitement kosher-keeping Jews feel at not having to bring their own food to a family fun outing.
Hershey Park helps tell another tale as well. Fifty years ago, American Orthodoxy was being demographically dismissed as a relevant force in American Jewish life; over the last two decades, however, Orthodoxy has grown from its nadir at about 5 percent of the nation’s Jewish population to somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the Jewish population, and the numbers are rising. About 27 percent of Jews under 18 are Orthodox, in large part because Orthodox Jews tend to marry earlier, have more children and intermarry far less frequently than Conservative and Reform Jews. In addition, Orthodox parents are far more likely to send their children to Jewish day schools or yeshivot, which are key predictors of generational Jewish continuity.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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The park is NOT in Lancaster, PA. This guy is an idiot. I go there multiple times a year. The park is MILES west of there.
I love this. Just don’t let the Muslims get wind of it or they’ll start demanding the same.
Yeah yeah yeah, same thing with Woodstock, NY, but for the sake of expediency everyone still talks about the big concert “there.”
Is this the park in Hershey PA?
How long before the mooselimbs demand their special day? The atheists and perverts too.
I rode my first and last roller coaster there in the mid 60s. You're right, not in Lancaster but in Hershey, Pa.
Recent article about a shooting in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri said, near St. Louis. Yeah, "near", about 140 miles from.
“Just don’t let the Muslims get wind of it or they’ll start demanding the same.”
We didn’t “demand” it.
Smart goy businessmen figured out how to make a buck by fulfilling a niche market.
Good deal all around.
He may be confused with Dutch Wonderland, which IS in Lancaster county. I thing they’re now owned by Hershey resort co. (or somesuch).
I believe you are correct!
Smart goy businessmen figured out how to make a buck by fulfilling a niche market.
Goy, as in goyim?
Maybe "Gentile," is more appropriate?
I just thought that today is my day to be offended.
;^)
5.56mm
Oy!
First to be offended. Boo-yah!
Seriously, since when is “goy/goyim” a bad word?
I know you all are busting my chops, but I’ve actually seen people get really offended.
It just means “people.”
Now “shiksa” is negative. Ask my mother!
I’m offended that Jews have their own day at some park I never knew existed before now. What about MEEEEE? I’m a victim.
I dated a girl where I worked who had previously dated a Jewish guy at the same office because he has a Porsche. She met his mom who referred to her as a “shiksa” to her son while she was standing there.
She told him “I know what that word means”.
www.icna.org/about-icna/muslim-family-day/
Link leads to an Ikhwan friendly site, just so you know.
Inter-religious dating is a big f-—g deal, to quote Joe Biden.
She really was one. I think he was the only guy ever to strike out with her. But it got his mother off her dead behind and soon he was complaining that she was fixing him up with all these “nice Jewish” girls.
The president of Chi Omega, a Jewish girl from NY, called me and asked “Do you know XX? His mother called me out of the blue”. She must have been combing the visitors log at the Temple.
He ended up marrying a yenta just like his mother. He told us she called them on their honeymoon to ask about grandkids.
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