(This is turning out to be an active day.)
Reading this article, and especially the following quote, got me thinking.
This is a good, even classic, example of the slippery slope that religious Judaism is facing. Become more religious than your parents and tell them that they are not properly halakhic. This of course means abandoning parental respect, basic manners, civil behavior, and the understanding that the Halacha, while meant also to guard against outside influences, is really less important than how it makes you behave as a person. You should be a light unto the nations, not a nitpicky lawyer.
This may be a bad analogy, but Judaism is like yeast in a container. It's a breathing mass, it grows, it changes character, it matures. It's not the container that matters but the living being inside it that does.
What happens if we follow this to the logical conclusion, of ever more strictures? Where do you stop? I spoke to a friend last Shabbos, who went from being Reform-raised to Satmar in a few years, about the eating habits of Jews in the Neturei Karta and the extremist Lev Tahor group. These Jews make the Satmar look not religious, according to my friend, and certainly won't eat in their homes.
Flour is triple-sifted for bugs. Chickens are not eaten, ever, because the religious Jews are afraid of all the 'genetic engineering' done to the chickens that may render them treif. No chicken eggs are permitted either; instead quail eggs are used. In bread-making, yeast is not used for fear that the ingredients used to grow the yeast were not kosher. Instead, grape juice is left to spoil, and then the resulting starter is used to make sourdough challah bread, with quail eggs instead of chicken eggs. (It is supposed to be quite good.)
Among Satmar Jews in New York, marriages to underage women are rare, but they do happen. The average age for women getting married is 17-19. 16 also happens. My friend had heard of a marriage between a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, and a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and a 17-year-old man. In the former case they did not let the girl finish school. At 14 or 15, the women are below New York's age of consent, so civil marriages are not performed. To receive benefits for single women, they say that they are living with their boyfriends and children in one apartment. Three-family homes are subdivided into five to provide kollel housing.
Among Lev Tahor, recently in the news for child abuse, the practice of forcing women to keep their socks on at all times led to their feet becoming completely infected with funguses. Additionally, my friend said that Lev Tahor actually practices malkot for punishments, i.e. lashes with a leather whip.
You can not become ultra-religious without also having increased child abuse, cheating of the government, and complete degradation of ethics and morals (especially morals). To those who would say that these are extreme examples, I would challenge with another question - Why is child abuse and exploitation of power so rampant among Jews and their rabbis? Why, when it is discovered, are complainants harassed, forced out of communities, and the offenses covered up?
I would much rather retain a connection to the so-called secular world, with ideas antithetical to Orthodox Jewry, then become more religious and rub shoulders with Jews who are basically the Erev Rav incarnate. The hypocrisy would be too much.
Is this where we are heading? I completely lost faith in Jews after hearing about what the extremists do. Not Judaism, just the people. By-and-large we are no different from the gentiles around us, so why are we special? Why do we deserve any special dispensation, from anyone?
If we become ever more religious, where is the line over which we shall not cross? What is the point of becoming ever more religious, if it only blinds us to the moral abuses within ourselves and our communities and imprisons us in halacha that servers more purpose? Where do we stop?
Edit: Changed title of Lev Hador to Lev Tahor
Reading this article, and especially the following quote, got me thinking.
"Not dissimilar from the RCA’s anxiety about contesting the Israeli Rabbinate on the question of conversion, many Modern Orthodox parents are in a quandary about what to do when their children come home talking about aliyah, abandoning Columbia or Penn for Yeshiva University or Touro College, or taking on dietary stringencies (e.g.halav yisrael) that makes eating in their parent’s home a complicated matter. Remember, we are not talking about Baalei Tesuvah who come home andkasher their mother’s treif kitchen. The parents of these returnees are alreadyOrthodox, that is, they live a life of halakhic observance that they take to be in accordance with Orthodox standards. Now they must contend with their children, in some way acting as surrogates for either “ultra-Zionist” or “Torah True” Orthodoxy (more on this below) who tell them they are not living fully halakhic lives. "
This is a good, even classic, example of the slippery slope that religious Judaism is facing. Become more religious than your parents and tell them that they are not properly halakhic. This of course means abandoning parental respect, basic manners, civil behavior, and the understanding that the Halacha, while meant also to guard against outside influences, is really less important than how it makes you behave as a person. You should be a light unto the nations, not a nitpicky lawyer.
This may be a bad analogy, but Judaism is like yeast in a container. It's a breathing mass, it grows, it changes character, it matures. It's not the container that matters but the living being inside it that does.
What happens if we follow this to the logical conclusion, of ever more strictures? Where do you stop? I spoke to a friend last Shabbos, who went from being Reform-raised to Satmar in a few years, about the eating habits of Jews in the Neturei Karta and the extremist Lev Tahor group. These Jews make the Satmar look not religious, according to my friend, and certainly won't eat in their homes.
Flour is triple-sifted for bugs. Chickens are not eaten, ever, because the religious Jews are afraid of all the 'genetic engineering' done to the chickens that may render them treif. No chicken eggs are permitted either; instead quail eggs are used. In bread-making, yeast is not used for fear that the ingredients used to grow the yeast were not kosher. Instead, grape juice is left to spoil, and then the resulting starter is used to make sourdough challah bread, with quail eggs instead of chicken eggs. (It is supposed to be quite good.)
Among Satmar Jews in New York, marriages to underage women are rare, but they do happen. The average age for women getting married is 17-19. 16 also happens. My friend had heard of a marriage between a 15-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man, and a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and a 17-year-old man. In the former case they did not let the girl finish school. At 14 or 15, the women are below New York's age of consent, so civil marriages are not performed. To receive benefits for single women, they say that they are living with their boyfriends and children in one apartment. Three-family homes are subdivided into five to provide kollel housing.
Among Lev Tahor, recently in the news for child abuse, the practice of forcing women to keep their socks on at all times led to their feet becoming completely infected with funguses. Additionally, my friend said that Lev Tahor actually practices malkot for punishments, i.e. lashes with a leather whip.
You can not become ultra-religious without also having increased child abuse, cheating of the government, and complete degradation of ethics and morals (especially morals). To those who would say that these are extreme examples, I would challenge with another question - Why is child abuse and exploitation of power so rampant among Jews and their rabbis? Why, when it is discovered, are complainants harassed, forced out of communities, and the offenses covered up?
I would much rather retain a connection to the so-called secular world, with ideas antithetical to Orthodox Jewry, then become more religious and rub shoulders with Jews who are basically the Erev Rav incarnate. The hypocrisy would be too much.
Is this where we are heading? I completely lost faith in Jews after hearing about what the extremists do. Not Judaism, just the people. By-and-large we are no different from the gentiles around us, so why are we special? Why do we deserve any special dispensation, from anyone?
If we become ever more religious, where is the line over which we shall not cross? What is the point of becoming ever more religious, if it only blinds us to the moral abuses within ourselves and our communities and imprisons us in halacha that servers more purpose? Where do we stop?
Edit: Changed title of Lev Hador to Lev Tahor
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