The residents of Postville may have been willing to welcome the new arrivals to their community, but the Lubavitchers, were not at all interested in mingling with the Lutherans. They regarded the locals as fundamentally inferior, allowing them to treat the people in rude, obnoxious ways. They upheld all of the worst stereotypes of Jews as penny-pinching cheats interested in nothing but money. They actually bragged about haggling with local merchants (not a part of the rural Iowan culture) and reaching long-term payment schedules which they then failed to keep. Even merchants who originally welcomed the Lubavitchers grew to dislike them.
These Lubavitchers live in a Manichean world where absolute good is in conflict with absolute evil. This premise of a world fundamentally divided lies at the heart of everything they do and everything they believe. Any time a person disagrees with them, opposes them in any fashion, or even tries to enforce unwelcome civil laws which apply to everyone, they are accused of anti-Semitism:
- "Ultimately, I discovered, carrying on a conversation with any of the Postville Hasidim was virtually impossible. If you didn't agree, you were at fault, part of the problem. You were paving the way for the ultimate destruction of the Jews, the world's Chosen People. There was no room for compromise, no room for negotiation, no room for anything but total and complete submission."
This extreme anti-assimilationistic attitude which eschews any form of negotiation or compromise presents a difficult challenge for any multicultural community. It is one thing to have more than one distinct cultural group living close together, but it doesn't get very far unless those groups are willing to come to some accommodation with each other. They have to learn to live together, not simply in close proximity.
This means that they have to be willing to change, and that is what lies at the heart of not simply Postville, Iowa, but a million Postvilles all over the world. Both the locals and the Lubavitchers could agree on one thing (or they would agree, if they ever sat down and talked to each other): neither was very interested in their community changing. That, however, was also the one thing neither could have.
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