Q&A: Radical Religious Thinking
Radical Religious Thinking
Question
“All who separate themselves from the ways of the community—these are people who have cast off the yoke of the commandments from their necks, and are not included among Israel in the performance of the commandments, in honoring the festivals, or in attending synagogues and study halls, but rather are like free people unto themselves [like the other nations]—and likewise the heretics [and apostates] and informers: for all these one does not mourn. Rather, their brothers and other relatives wear white, wrap themselves in white, eat and drink and rejoice, for behold, the enemies of the Holy One, blessed be He, have perished. About them Scripture says: ‘Do I not hate those who hate You, Lord?’”
This is the language of Maimonides, Laws of Mourning, chapter 1, halakha 10. I find this Maimonides difficult. Is it possible that my religious outlook is mistaken?
How do you understand such a Maimonides? Do you disagree with him? Would you act this way? What is the basis of the disagreement between you, if there is one?
Answer
I didn’t understand what is bothering you. When someone wickedly separates himself from the community, one does not mourn for him. This is not talking about someone who doesn’t keep commandments simply because he doesn’t believe. On the contrary, today there are commandment-observant people who fall into this category. The Haredim today separate themselves from the ways of the community and do not grieve over its suffering, but instead continue to exploit it cynically and coldheartedly. They really do fit this category.
Discussion on Answer
And Dov Elbaum wrote well:
May God remember
The baseness of the rabbis, the community rabbis, the rebbes, the yeshiva heads
and the heads of the kollels,
who turned their backs, closed their hearts,
and filled their pockets with blood.
May God remember
The arrogance of their words, their divisiveness, and the abomination of their evasion
from helping their heroic brothers and sisters,
who gave their lives for the sanctification of God’s name,
for the guarding of life.
May God remember them,
those politicians, fixers, and little operators along with the big ones,
who brokered in innocent blood
for honor, power, and bribes.
May they be remembered in everlasting disgrace in the history of the people and the homeland.
May they be inscribed in the heart of Israel as a byword and a reproach,
from generation to generation and for all eternity.
I already don’t have the strength to keep doing reserve duty, and they’re still dodging.
And what’s most infuriating is the excuse that they’re protecting me. It’s not enough that they don’t help me—they also want me to thank them.
Really impressive, the leap from my question to criticism of the Haredi world. Maimonides explains that the meaning of those who separate from the community is people who cast off the yoke of the commandments, so that leap seems unnecessary too.
In any case, the overwhelming majority of those who leave religion do not do so because of problems of faith; if I remember correctly, I saw in your writings that you agreed with this claim. So regarding such people, is it really right not to mourn them, to wear white, and to rejoice?
For that matter, after Dov Elbaum reaches one hundred and twenty, will it be a happy day for you?
Given how impressed you were, apparently you didn’t read what I wrote.
I read it again. A. Maimonides writes that those who separate from the community are those who cast off the yoke of the commandments, and the Haredim keep most of the commandments. So I don’t agree with the claim that, in principle, the Haredim fit the definition of those who separate from the community.
B. Just so I can be sure: in your understanding, most of those who leave religion today and the formerly Religious Zionist people who became secular today (who presumably are not casting off the yoke of the commandments because of problems of faith)—in your opinion should one rejoice at their death?
C. I mentioned Dov Elbaum as an example of someone who left religion, where according to Maimonides his death would seem to be something to rejoice over—and this despite his great contribution to Hebrew poetry.
I don’t understand why my question was deleted. Progressivism is anti-national because that’s the fashion in the West today. So you won’t hear anyone in the secular left use the words “the Jewish people,” only “the State of Israel” (which is something formal—a tool and not a goal. After all, focusing on tools and frameworks rather than content is one of the clear hallmarks of postmodernism). So a progressive is no longer just a “child taken captive,” but a child taken captive who also separated himself from the Jewish people because of intellectual fashion or an unwillingness to suffer for being Jewish. That’s not wickedness in our everyday language. But anyone who separates from the Jewish people does so because of convenience and an unwillingness to suffer from being Jewish. In other words, that’s what Maimonides mentions in Laws of Repentance as those who separate from the ways of the community, who have no share in the World to Come. So in the case of progressives you’d surely admit this. And it’s not at all clear why you think it’s the Haredim who separated, if that’s how they have understood the situation ever since the founding of the state. It’s actually a strong question whether today’s progressivism was already hidden and embedded back then in communism and socialism, which were then the fashion. Or more precisely, already in the communist arc of Maki on one side and Mapai on the other. And the secular public was mostly under that umbrella. True, I know that in your view a “poor fellow heretic” isn’t really a heretic—but is a “poor fellow apostate” also not really an apostate in your view?
I didn’t understand your argument, Daniel. A child taken captive who afterward separated from Israel is presumably not okay, but Maimonides doesn’t write about such a case. You can argue on your own that it’s the same level of severity, but there’s no source for that.
Non-performance of the commandments is not the reason but the sign.
When non-observance of the commandments stems from a desire to separate from the community, they have the status of those who separate. Today there are almost none like that. And when there are people who separate from the community, even if they keep some of the commandments, they still have the status of separatists. See also Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 3:11:
“Whoever separates from the ways of the community—even though he has committed no transgressions, but has merely separated himself from the congregation of Israel, and does not perform commandments together with them, does not share in their distress, and does not fast in their fasts, but goes on his own way as one of the nations of the land, as though he were not one of them—has no share in the World to Come.”
And it’s obvious.
And this has not the slightest connection to contribution to Hebrew poetry (and I don’t know what contribution this Elbaum made to it).
Maybe Ashkenazi Haredim can get off on the argument that they’re children taken captive, but the Shas Haredim are almost all first- or second-generation Haredim.
Although there too, most individuals fall under the category of children taken captive into Haredism, and therefore one may mourn for them.