We Are Deceiving Ourselves: Is the Religious Community Raising Its Children in a Bubble?

Originally published: May 12, 2026

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

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We Are Deceiving Ourselves: Is the Religious Community Raising Its Children in a Bubble?

A few days ago, the program “Uvda” aired an episode telling the story of the rescue of the boy Yisrael Amir from the Lev Tahor cult. I am sure that all the viewers were as shocked as I was by what they saw there, but at the same time it was clear to them that this was not something that concerned them. “After all, we open every possibility before our children and allow them to formulate their own positions and way of life,” some surely said. “We do not impose views and patterns of thought on them, as those depraved cults do.”

Are we all living in a cult?

Watching the program sharpened my sense that we are deceiving ourselves. People grow up and live in bubbles, and a significant portion of the options outside their natural environment are not presented to them straightforwardly. In a certain sense, we all belong to “cults”—of course not in terms of abuse, but certainly in terms of a lack of openness and the failure to allow a person to form an independent position in an open way. Honesty requires us to say that this problem exists in the secular world no less than in the religious one. (How many secular schools are prepared to present an honest picture of the arguments for religious faith? How many secular people seriously examine that option at all?)

Educators Do Not Always Provide an Answer

For years I have met many people, mainly young people, who speak with me about problems in the religious worldview presented to them. They raise many questions and significant difficulties, and they feel that their educators or rabbis do not give them a satisfactory response. In many cases, slogans are merely recited, and they are required to remain loyal to them without explanation and without the ideas sounding reasonable. These young people understand very well that this reflects weakness and an inability to confront the difficulties seriously. As someone familiar with the discourse among educators and rabbis surrounding these difficulties, I can testify that in the best case they are “looking for relevant answers”—that is, engaging in apologetics. In less favorable cases, they look for ways to bypass the questions. Almost no one even considers seriously taking stock of his own views—that is, examining himself. The prevailing assumption is that the religious tradition originates with God, and therefore it is obviously perfect and not subject to examination.

The more courageous and honest among those who struggle with doubts are willing to raise these problems despite the difficulty involved, and a significant number of them also draw the necessary conclusions (quite a few of them abandon religious commitment). In many cases, those who do not leave the path are דווקא the less honest and less courageous ones, who prefer the comfort zone in which they grew up. Without generalizing, of course. The conclusion that has taken shape for me בעקבות all these conversations is that these difficulties are, for the most part, authentic and require us to stop the apologetics, leave our comfort zone, and begin examining ourselves and our tradition. We must rebuild it in a way that is rational, coherent, and “lean”—without unnecessary and unfounded accretions, updated for our time, and genuinely satisfactory.

Save the Head Beneath the Skullcap

Any thinking person understands that almost all of our tradition is not from God. It is the work of human hands, and it is certainly exposed to error and in need of updating and repair. It includes the routinization of unexamined positions, the use of arguments from authority where they are neither justified nor needed, and more. In my book, No One Rules the Spirit, I show through conceptual analysis that authority is a relevant discourse with respect to norms (Jewish law, civil law, and the like), but not with respect to facts. Facts must be examined with the empirical and intellectual tools accepted in every other field. The next book in my trilogy, Walkers Among Those Who Stand, shows that even within the framework of the halakhic discourse of authority, Jewish law can and should be updated in various ways.

These conclusions, which I have been publishing for several years now, predictably arouse harsh criticism from conservative circles, but not only from them. There is lively discussion online about the question—irrelevant in my view—of whether I am an unbeliever or a heretic, and for some reason somewhat less about whether I am right. But what is happening on the ground shows that truth has a way of making itself known, and these words are falling on attentive ears. Many find in them an answer to their difficulties and distress, an answer they do not find in the prevailing discourse. One of the remarks I especially liked online expresses this well: “I heard people say that Rabbi Michael Abraham saved the skullcap on their heads. In my case, Rabbi Michael Abraham saved the head beneath the skullcap.” It seems to me that the time has come to wake up.

Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, author of the new trilogy of books: The First Being, No One Rules the Spirit, Walkers Among Those Who Stand

Source (Walla): https://judaism.walla.co.il/item/3332188

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