Letter to the Yeshiva – Criticism of Harediism

On the 8th of Adar, 5766

To the Honorable Rabbi … Supervisor of the Dishivat …

Hello,

As my son... left the yeshiva, I found it appropriate to write a few words. First, to thank you for the favor, and then to add more general topics that seem to me to be extremely important, and I would be happy if you would consider them.

The letter is addressed to you because you were the one in constant contact with … throughout, and you followed the entire process closely (and were even involved in it). But in fact, it is a letter to the yeshiva staff in general, which is why I sent additional copies of it, as detailed below.

First of all, I would like to thank you and the yeshiva for the great deal of Torah, with study and expertise, that… he acquired in the yeshiva. For the good and pleasant company with a sense of decency. For the distinguished scholars and Torah-loving students that he was privileged to meet, and I am sure that this will accompany him wherever he goes.

The following is primarily a criticism, but I hope and believe it is written for your benefit. At the end of my remarks, I will again mention the many good and positive things we found in the yeshiva and my gratitude for that.

A. At the beginning of …'s stay in the yeshiva, I used to come from Yeruham and study with him every week on Tuesday afternoons (and after asking permission, I even attended a few general classes).

Over time, it became clear to me that… there are ideological problems. I should note that the issue came to my attention indirectly, and the yeshiva administration, although aware of the situation, did not see fit to contact me about this issue.

After I learned of this, I contacted you to see what could be done, and I was treated kindly but did not feel a real desire to cooperate.

After I got into the thick of it, and invested a lot of time and effort, and came from Yeruham to the yeshiva quite a few times, the situation stabilized, and to the best of my impressions... I entered the study track very well.

It is not clear to me why no contact was made with me, and why the cooperation was not willing and full. Perhaps you already had information at that time (see the next section) that clouded the attitude towards me, or perhaps this is the policy towards all parents. In my opinion, either way, this disregard is unjustified, as it could have caused a deterioration without informing us as parents.

I would also like to point out that, to the best of my understanding, even though… he kept telling us that his relationship with you is excellent and that he appreciates you very much, it seemed that he did not receive a real answer to his difficulties. A situation in which it is not possible to answer a student's difficulties requires consultation and cooperation from the parents, and perhaps also from other parties.

This is a symptomatic situation, which reflects a very common inability of yeshiva staff to deal with real problems that students raise (not always for real reasons, as we know, sometimes there are problems that are excuses). In recent years, since the publication of my book 'Two Carts and a Balloon,' dozens of Haredi young men and avrechims (and others) have called and even come to me in Yeruham, some of whom are truly outstanding in their yeshiva and kollel, who are struggling with very difficult problems and cannot find a solution to them. Furthermore, due to fear and apprehension, they do not find the opportunity to discuss these problems with anyone (for fear of matchmaking, labels of heresy, social exclusion, etc.). Some, when they tried to discuss the matter, encountered a hostile attitude and a complete lack of ability to cope (slogans and recitations without any real reference, and certainly without a willingness to remain in the CSA. Sometimes the willingness to remain in the CSA provides an unusual response, much more than forced answers and recitation of slogans, as is customary in our districts).

This lack of dealing with the problems is very destructive and dangerous. For the most part, it stems from the inability of the teams themselves to deal with problems they are unfamiliar with (who in the yeshiva world knows the fields of philosophy, general culture, biblical criticism, etc.?). The easy way out is to accuse those who are in doubt of dark motives and an evil inclination, which does not give them a real answer, and only complicates them more and more.

In general, I would note that this is the price of Haredi closure in general, and not necessarily in this or that yeshiva. It is generally accepted that openness has a heavy price, and this is indeed true. On the other hand, in recent years I have repeatedly seen that closure also has a considerable price. Instead of the rabbis helping and dealing with the problems and various areas of knowledge together with the students, the students are left alone in the battle.

I will note that my conversations with those applicants mentioned above, to the best of my knowledge, helped save several of them from apostasy. This is a good example of the benefits of openness (see more on this below).

If I may add, this was one of the most difficult problems for the Enlightenment period: instead of 'raising the gauntlet' and entering the areas under discussion, confronting it, and helping to sort the wheat from the chaff, they resorted to a policy of prohibition, excommunication, and confiscation. Today we already know that all the casualties of this policy were enormous (just imagine what the people of Israel look like today. It's easy to accuse all the educated of dark motives and a desire to allow themselves fornication, but that's too easy a solution and not right. Some of them had pure motivations, and only wanted to add knowledge. And we lost them at our own hands).

I cannot, nor do I want to, criticize the greats of those generations whose waists are thicker than my waist, but it is certainly legitimate to learn from the mistakes of the past, even if it is as a giant on top of a giant, and to understand that we are repeating the mistakes of the past today.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that today there are various tools that can help in these struggles, and ignoring them leaves us with the same tools (or lack of tools) that characterized the struggles of that time.

on. After a while, it became known in the yeshiva that I was writing weekly pages for the synagogues about the standards required by the Torah (the pages are called 'Good Standards').

As a result, my son was called to speak with you, and there you asked him to inform me not to come to the yeshiva anymore. As far as I understood from him, the fear was that students might read the pages or be influenced by them. I know that there were several students who received the pages in various forms (it is quite difficult to close off the world these days. See below), and one of them, who hitched a ride with me, even asked me a few questions, and I answered them. I assume that this conversation was the source of your above-mentioned inquiry.

In general, it should be noted that the pages are not distributed in Haredi schools, as I am aware of the sensitivities. Of course, I did not bring pages to the yeshiva itself for distribution (once I brought the aforementioned person who spoke to me, at his request, a page for a particular week). I do not know how familiar the yeshiva staff is with the pages, but it is important to note that there is nothing in the pages against the spirit of Yisrael Saba, and the statements are consistent with the accepted perception, and even deal with critical and other perceptions. Indeed, the sources from which I quote are broader than the accepted, and the tools I use to analyze the virtues of the sermon are also broader than the accepted (philosophy, logic, etc.).

The pages receive enthusiastic responses from all over the country, and even from abroad. As is known, the subject of the virtues of the sermon is considered a 'dead mitzvah', and therefore its handling is very important, and we have no real tradition of how to do it. This situation dictates the need for 'tools from different tools.' I don't really understand why every weekly page that tells 'Yarsh-sponge' stories about the grandmother's kraeplacha of the Chofetz Chaim (which usually did not exist and were not created) seems more positive to you than pages that deal with the virtues of the sermon with scholarly scrutiny, and bring to the work of Torah and the redemption of such a fundamental subject in the Torah, which has been neglected for many generations.

I would have expected the yeshiva to be very interested in this important subject, and even cooperate with the desire to redeem it. For some reason, it seemed that this was not important to you, and instead you preferred to suppress the little interest that arose in the subject (from only one young man, and on a one-time basis, as far as I know).

In any case, from that time on I stopped attending the yeshiva, and studied with … every week in Bnei Brak (he also participated in a regular public class for young men and boys that I gave there on the roots of the Rambam). But under these circumstances it was difficult for me to know what his situation was in the yeshiva. I could get the impression that in general the situation was reasonable, and that he was studying well, and I very much hope that I was right in that (of course, I could not learn anything from your silence, in light of past experience).

May I remark that your conduct in this matter was fundamentally wrong. First, you should have approached me directly, and not through… After all, he himself could have been hurt and felt very bad about the yeshiva whose staff treated his father in this way.[1]

Second, the almost hysterical closure in the face of a slightly different learning style also reflects a lack of confidence and a lack of coping tools. Why do you think I can't come and study with my son in yeshiva, when all the time we only deal with the issues he's learning (and nothing else)? I simply can't understand this hysterical attitude.

I don't understand what's wrong with these pages, and even less do I understand why they are a reason why I can't study with my son once a week at the yeshiva he attends? How many parents of yeshiva students are willing to invest the time and come to study a few hours each week with their son at the yeshiva (from Mirucham, a two-hour drive each way)? Does this seem like the right message to you, students? And to parents?

third. In general, I have the impression that the yeshiva is conducted in a very closed atmosphere (I am not aiming for behavioral and disciplinary pressure on the young men, but rather for outlook and ideological openness). For example, a book of the 'Remains of Fire' and so on was taken from the yeshiva library. The rabbi ... expressed his opinion to the students several times about several great men of Israel in an inappropriate manner, all according to what he considered to be a correct or incorrect 'view' (and I am not talking about the Mazruhniks, may God have mercy on them, whom as is well known it is commanded to be disrespected, but also within the Haredi camp), with expressions of shameful narrowness and superficiality in his observations. I will note that this personally surprised me greatly, since in my experience, older people are usually more balanced and thoughtful, and fanaticism characterizes the younger ones who grew up in the shtibel and do not know anything else, and examine everything through the slogans (usually not so well-founded) that they were fed.

For the Jewish community, this is a bad, destructive, and even harmful education. It mainly indicates apprehension and fear, and incompetence, and certainly not a correct and true view, or completeness and harmony. For the Jewish community, this is also the message transmitted to students by such behavior (and the jokes about the supervisors in yeshiva are well-known, which are the result of such references, among other things).

There is a book by Chaim Grada (who as a young man lived in the house of the Chazo"a, and later the "learned one," and became a well-known Yiddish poet and writer), called "Tzemach Atlas" (one of the strongest moral books I know, because of the credible and impressive, and especially the very non-flattish, description of the Chazo"a's master), in which he describes two contrasting characters: Tzemach Atlas, the young and turbulent head of the Novohardoker Yeshiva, versus the Chazo"a (who is named there after the literary author of the "Abraham Play"). Grada describes a sharp contrast between the two: Tzemach Atlas is consumed by passions and desires, and it is he who adopts a hysterical and fervent Haredi policy, full of preaching, moral zeal, and seclusion. In contrast, the Chazo"a's master is quiet and harmonious, not prone to hysteria and calmly deals with everything.

I would like to point out that this does not concern extremism, and the well-known letter of the Chazo"a about it. There is a difference between extremism and fanaticism and closedness, and Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel – the real one, not the reconstructed one – will prove it.

This number can be seen beautifully, as is already known, that excessive clinginess and jealousy sometimes indicate hidden fears, passions, and hesitations, and an incomplete path and an inability to cope. Often the jealous person fights with his own inner self through his jealousy of his surroundings.

Beyond all this, an education that is primarily based on the commandments of "not to do" is a problematic education: driving is prohibited. Beautiful literature is prohibited. No external wisdom is permitted. No music is permitted. No wandering anywhere. No traveling is permitted. No engaging in anything outside the very limited framework of the yeshiva. No studying a profession, or even engaging in it. No relaxing of halacha in a place where the world used to be strict, even if there is no real basis for this. No meeting with people, or thinking about ideas that are "from the outside." No engaging in art in any way. Children's books are structured in a stereotypical and harmful way. Information of various kinds is censored in a blatant and crude manner, and presented in a one-sided and biased manner. History, both ultra-Orthodox and general (to the extent that it is even addressed), is rewritten in an unreliable way. No asking questions or raising troubling topics is prohibited. No dressing in a manner that is not acceptable. And so on and so forth...

I suggest re-reading the list in the previous paragraph, which was written from scratch, and trying to get a general impression.

When everything is forbidden and everything is dangerous, both what is truly forbidden and dangerous and what is not. When everything must be kept away from, and the entire world is a collection of empty attempts, 'and we have nothing left but this Torah,' then what happened to Eve with the prohibition of touching the tree happens. When one does not know anything about what is happening outside, and after all, there are things there that are valuable, then this is a depressing education. In the end, ironically, it often creates an admiration for what is happening outside, which is based mainly on a lack of familiarity and insecurity (how many students who meet an academic, or a teacher, will dare to confront him at all, and feel confident doing so?). Sweeping prohibitions and isolation indicate an inability to cope, and transmit such a message very powerfully to students. Such a narrow path evokes in the heart mournful thoughts about the breadth and power of the Torah. Needless to say, a large majority of the public cannot live like this either, and then they get into embarrassments and philistines, and underground affairs.

D. In recent weeks, the yeshiva administration learned that… is considering leaving the yeshiva in a different direction. You yourself asked him for a reply by the 5th of Adar, and demanded that he leave the yeshiva before the end of time for the good name of the yeshiva (so that the yeshiva will not think that a student is leaving the yeshiva for a seder yeshiva).

This demand astonished me, as I was raised that the most important thing in yeshivahs is not to leave the students exposed to external influences. Sending a harmless student who studies well home, to sit there for two months (including Nissan), just out of concern (which is in itself distorted) for the name of the yeshiva, seems to me to be a step that also points to the costs of closures and the Haredi lifestyle. All of this is contrary to the slogans that are fed to the young men and the entire public that Torah and its study are above all else.

This is a common phenomenon, where various constraints lead the public to behave in incorrect and distorted ways in other areas as well (see the entry 'Matchmaking', 'Full Arrangement', etc.).

As I understand it from…, the decree was ultimately overturned due to pressure from some member. It's a shame that the young men understand what the yeshiva administration should have understood.

And yet in the end... he found himself forced to leave (on your own advice) because of the wrath of the bully (fear of scandals, probably mainly from the management). If so, the reality is indeed bleak, and I regret that. Is this a suitable situation in your opinion?

(the.) In parentheses, I will add that the above is consistent with the events that occurred in Yeruham over the past year. There, we saw to our shame how the Haredi community joined (alone) with the head of a corrupt council, and acted against the entire community (and ultimately against its own interests) and destroyed every good part of it, and this was only for financial reasons. I participated in the struggle against this corrupt and harmful council (some of its depraved actions touched on the very lives of people), and therefore I found myself outside the Haredi community. I was accused of blasphemy, according to the well-known criterion that corrupt behavior is acceptable in itself and that only exposing and warning about it constitutes blasphemy.

All of this happened even though I was careful not to harm the community or the rabbi during the struggle, and I asked the rabbi several times, in writing and verbally, to consider his decisions before we embarked on the struggle. The rabbi was not at all willing to listen and consider the matter. There too, I saw that decisions made in a small, closed room and without consultation, under the guise of 'Da'at Torah,' are doomed to failure. The rabbi, who in my opinion is a wise and honest man, and even a great rabbi, fell into the trap of the constraints caused by the path in which our dependent public finds itself, and fell victim to the lack of readiness to accept criticism, or even advice. There I saw another aspect of the costs of closure (the dependence on livelihood and support, which bends all values and morality).

and. All of these things made me reconsider my decision to belong (sociologically, and especially in the education of children, not necessarily in terms of views) to the Haredi community. Although I always thought that closure was not ideally correct, I believed that it was the lesser evil. The things I encountered over the past two years led me to the conclusion that closure has heavy costs, and they are no less than the costs of openness. So if both sides have a heavy cost, there is no longer any reason to act in the right way from the start (= openness). Why act in retrospect when even the retrospect is no better than the beginning?

G. Despite what was stated in the previous section, throughout the entire process I encouraged … to continue on his path, and I told him that we were happy that he was making progress in his studies, and hoped that he would continue to do so for many years to come. We told him that the decision about his direction was entirely up to him, and that he would receive our full support in whatever direction he chose.

In the end, … he also decided to change direction. It is important for me to tell you that this was done without any direct connection or influence from us in this matter. Just last year he went to see the yeshiva in Gush Etzion (without my knowing of any such intention at all), and was very impressed there.

He came to the conclusion that he believed more in that direction, despite his great appreciation and sincerity for many of the individuals he met in the yeshiva, and in the Haredi community in general.

By the way, I would like to point out that this is another example of the destructive effect of the same slogans that are instilled in the youth and the entire Haredi community, that everything outside is 'prey' and without spiritual level and "Yirsh" and so on. The tendency to see things in 'black/white' terms is also a characteristic of Harediism. Although it seems safer and more educational, it also has very heavy costs. As soon as someone leaves the Haredi incubator and meets scholars of Torah, good, honest and God-fearing people of the first order (and there are quite a few of them), they begin to doubt everything they have been 'sold' to them. Some of them end up becoming outright heretics ("If all this wasn't true, then who would assume that everything else is true?"). This is repeated with several of those who contact me, as I mentioned above.

In the wild world we live in, the ability to hermetically seal people off is diminishing, and there is an increasing chance that they will eventually encounter the reality described in the slogans, and the 'terrible' books that are forbidden to them. Such an encounter can be devastating, because of the comparison between the stereotypes they grew up with and the more complex reality, and so on.

H. In conclusion, despite the criticism I have leveled here, both of the yeshiva and of Harediism in general, as I began my remarks, we owe a great deal of gratitude (to the yeshiva and to Haredi society in general). I am writing these words for the benefit of all, and I hope they will find a receptive ear. It is worth considering that perhaps there is still room to draw conclusions regarding at least some of the points raised here.

As part of that gratitude, I took the trouble to write these pages, as I feel obligated to try and prove things that the Jewish people have a duty to prove. I hope that in a place like a yeshiva, which raises people to accept rebuke and self-criticism, you will be willing to think about them and consider them.

ninth. As stated above, to the best of my impressions, the social atmosphere in the yeshiva is very pleasant. The road is an impressive country. The young men are very good and positive, and the teaching is good and of a high standard. Even if the educational path is partly not to my liking, there is no doubt that the yeshiva heads and the elders are distinguished scholars and Torah laymen, who..., like their other students, received a great deal from them.

We are grateful for all of this, for the much Torah and learning that he received in the yeshiva over the course of a year and a half, for the atmosphere and the friends.

In conclusion, we wish all the staff that they will exceed their limits in students, and that they and their students will see the blessing of success, and may they be blessed with rising higher and higher in the Jewish community.

Best regards,

Michael Abraham

Copies:

Rabbi … Rosh HaYashiva

Rabbi … Rosh HaYashiva

Rabbi … Supervisor

[1] And indeed, several people I told about it asked me how I agreed that… would continue to study in such a place. But I believed that if… studies well and benefits from his time in the yeshiva, and if he himself is not harmed by it (and I took the trouble to make sure that this did not happen), there is no reason to withhold good from his parents. Ultimately, the goal is to make aliyah in the Jewish High School, and personal matters are not important in this context.