@brantly - I’m Jewish, in my late 50’s, and was born and raised in one of the most Jewish neighborhoods in NYC – the Lower East Side of Manhattan (right across the street from Guss’s Pickles, if you can picture where Bubbie lived in movie “Crossing Delancey.” For the record, Bubbie’s apartment, was just alongside the East Broadway – not the Delancey Street Subway Station, but “Crossing East Broadway” doesn’t sound quite as catchy. But I digress). I left NY in my mid-30s, but kept my apartment (you never give up a cheap apt. in NYC!). My family lived there until the early 2000s, which is when I sold my apartment.
I was raised secularly – culturally Jewish with a strong Jewish identity – but totally non-practicing (I was in high school the first time I attended a seder) in an area filled with both Orthodox and secular Jews. There was little interaction among the groups beyond pleasantries in the shops and in the elevator (which, I might add now are “Shabbos elevators” that automatically stop on each of the 20 floors from Fri. eve. until Sat. eve, thus allowing the religious people to no longer be relegated to living on the bottom 3 or 4 floors of the buildings. Again, I digress).
The secular Jews I knew (myself included) all went to public school, the Orthodox Jews went to Yeshivas (we called them “Yeshiva bochers;” I shudder to think what they called us!). I never knew anyone who attended a Jewish Day School until I moved out to CA – and ironically sent my daughter to a Reform one until 3rd grade. While the name “Solomon Schechter” rings a bell, he could have just as easily been a neighbor (perhaps a local big macher), not a network of schools that ever came into my radar.
Here’s an interesting article about the neighborhood I grew up in and how it has evolved:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/realestate/my-lower-east-side.html
And, yes, antisemitism, often conflated with anti-Zionism, is still lamentably alive and well and certainly not limited to – but surely present on – college campuses.
And while I don’t generally use the term “Fundamentalist” to describe the ultra-orthodox Jews, I have no problem with its use, based on the definition(s) provided by Wikipedia:
Fundamentalism usually has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs.[1] However, fundamentalism has come to apply to a tendency among certain groups—mainly, though not exclusively, in religion—that is characterized by a markedly strict literalism as applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions,[2][3][4][5] leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established “fundamentals” and their accepted interpretation within the group is often the result of this tendency.[6]