A Letter to the Yeshiva – A Critique of Haredism

With God’s help, 8 Adar 5766

To the honorable Rabbi …, spiritual supervisor of Yeshiva …

Greetings,

At the time of my son …’s departure from the yeshiva, I found it appropriate to write a few words. First, to thank you for the good, and afterward to add several more general matters that seem to me very important, and I would be glad if you would consider them.

This letter is addressed to you because you were the one who was in regular contact with … throughout the entire period, and you followed the whole process closely (and were even involved in it). But in fact this is a letter to the yeshiva staff in general, and therefore I sent additional copies of it as well, as detailed below.

At the outset of my remarks, I wish to thank you and the yeshiva for the great amount of Torah learning, both in depth and breadth, that … acquired in the yeshiva. For a good and pleasant social environment marked by decency. For the outstanding Torah scholars and teachers whom he had the privilege to meet, and I am sure this will accompany him wherever he goes.

The remarks below are mainly critical, but I hope and believe that they are written for a constructive purpose. At the end of my remarks I shall return and note again the great good and positive things we found in the yeshiva, and my gratitude for them.

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 requesting permission, I also attended several general lectures).

Over time it became clear to me that … had ideological difficulties. I note that the matter came to my attention indirectly, and the yeshiva administration, although it was aware of the situation, did not see fit to contact me about it.

After it became known to me, I contacted you to see what could be done, and I received courteous treatment, but I did not sense any real willingness to cooperate.

After I delved deeply into the matter, and invested much time and effort, and came from Yeruham to the yeshiva quite a few times, the situation stabilized, and to the best of my impression … entered the course of study very well.

It is not clear to me why I was not contacted, and why the cooperation was not willing and full. Perhaps already then you had information in hand (see the next section) that cast a shadow over your attitude toward me, or perhaps this is the policy toward all parents. In my view, either way this disregard is unjustified, since it could have caused deterioration without informing us as parents.

I would further note that, to the best of my understanding, although … kept telling us that his relationship with you was excellent and that he respected you greatly, it seemed that he did not receive any real answer to his difficulties. A situation in which there is no possibility of answering a student’s difficulties requires consultation and the involvement of the parents, and perhaps of additional parties as well.

This is a symptomatic situation, which reflects a very common inability among yeshiva staffs to deal with real problems that students raise (not always for genuinely substantive reasons, since, as is known, sometimes questions are really excuses). In recent years, since my book ‘Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon’ was published, dozens of Haredi yeshiva students and married scholars (and others as well) have telephoned me and even come to me in Yeruham. Some of them are among the outstanding students in their yeshivot and kollels, and they are grappling with very difficult problems and find no answer to them. Moreover, out of sheer fear they do not find any possibility of speaking about these issues with anyone at all (for fear of marriage prospects, labels of heresy, social exclusion, and the like). Some of them, when they tried to speak about these matters, encountered a hostile attitude and a total lack of ability to cope with them—slogans and recitations without any real engagement, and certainly without any willingness to leave matters unresolved. Sometimes the willingness to remain with a question unresolved provides an extraordinary kind of response, far more than forced answers and rote recitation of slogans, as is customary in our circles.

This failure to cope with the problems is destructive and very dangerous. In my view, a large part of it stems from the staffs’ own inability to deal with questions they do not know. Who in the yeshiva world is familiar with philosophy, general culture, biblical criticism, and the like? The easy way out is to accuse those who are wavering of dark motives and the evil inclination, which gives them no real answer and only entangles them more and more.

More generally, I would note that this is the price of Haredi insularity in general, and not necessarily of one yeshiva or another. Usually it is assumed that openness carries a heavy price, and that is indeed true. On the other hand, in recent years I have repeatedly seen that insularity too has no small price. Instead of the rabbis helping and grappling together with the students with the problems and the various fields of knowledge, the students are left alone in the struggle.

I would note that my conversations with those inquirers mentioned above, to the best of my assessment, helped save quite a few of them from ruin. This is a good example of the benefit of openness (see further below).

If I may add, in my view this was one of the difficult problems during the period of the Haskalah: instead of taking up the challenge and entering the fields under discussion, confronting them, and helping sift grain from chaff, they adopted a policy of prohibition, ostracism, and excommunication. Today we already know how enormous the casualties of this policy were (just look at what the Jewish people look like today). It is easy to accuse all the Haskalah intellectuals of dark motives and a desire to permit sexual immorality for themselves, but that is too easy and not correct. Some of them had pure motives and merely wanted to increase knowledge. And we lost them by our own hands.

I have neither the ability nor the desire to criticize the great figures of those generations, who tower over me immeasurably, but it is certainly legitimate to learn from the mistakes of the past, even if only as a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants, and to understand that today we are once again repeating the mistakes of the past.

The problem is sharpened by the fact that today there are various tools, acquaintance with which can assist in these confrontations, and ignoring them leaves us with the same tools—or lack of tools—that characterized the confrontations of that time.

B. After some time it became known in the yeshiva, by some route, that I write weekly sheets for synagogues about the hermeneutic principles by which the Torah is expounded (the sheets are called ‘A Good Measure’).

As a result, my son was called in for a conversation 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 concern was that students might read the sheets or be influenced by them. I know that there were several students into whose hands the sheets came in various ways (nowadays it is rather difficult to shut out the world. See below), and one of them, who once caught a ride with me, even asked me several questions, and I answered them. I assume that this conversation was the source of your aforesaid request.

Generally speaking, it should be noted that the sheets are not distributed in Haredi synagogues, since I am aware of sensitivities. Of course I did not bring sheets to the yeshiva itself for distribution (on one occasion I brought that aforementioned student who had spoken with me, at his request, the sheet for a particular week). I do not know to what extent the yeshiva staff is familiar with the sheets, but it is important to note that there is nothing in them against the spirit of traditional Judaism, and the ideas accord with the accepted outlook, while also engaging critical and other conceptions. It is true that the sources from which I quote are broader than is customary, and the tools I use to analyze the hermeneutic principles are likewise broader than is customary (philosophy, logic, etc.).

The sheets receive enthusiastic responses from all over the country, and even from abroad. As is known, the subject of the hermeneutic principles is all but abandoned, and therefore dealing with it is very important, and we have no real tradition of how to do so. This situation dictates resorting to tools of many different kinds. I do not really understand why every weekly sheet that tells stories dripping with piety about the Chafetz Chaim’s grandmother’s kreplach (which generally never happened) seems to you more positive than sheets that deal analytically and rigorously with the hermeneutic principles, leading to Torah labor and to the recovery of such a fundamental subject in Torah, one that has already been neglected for many generations.

I would have expected the yeshiva, of all places, to take great interest in this important subject, and even to cooperate with the desire to restore it. For some reason, it seemed that this was not important in your eyes, and instead you preferred to suppress the slight interest that had been awakened in the subject (in only one student, and on a one-time basis, as far as I know).

In any event, from that time on I stopped coming to the yeshiva, and I learned with … each week in Bnei Brak (he also participated in a regular public class for married students and young men that I delivered there on Maimonides’ introductory principles). But in these circumstances it was difficult for me to know what his situation in the yeshiva was. I could form the impression that, generally speaking, the situation was reasonable, and that he was learning well, and I very much hope I was right about that (from your silence, of course, I could learn nothing, in light of past experience).

Allow me to remark that your conduct in this matter was mistaken from the outset. First, you should have approached me directly, and not through … . He himself could have been hurt and felt very bad in a yeshiva whose staff related to his father in that way.[1]

Second, the almost hysterical insularity in the face of slightly different learning also projects insecurity and a lack of tools for coping. Why, in your opinion, can I not come and learn with my son in the yeshiva, when all the while we are dealing only with the topics he is learning (and nothing else)? I simply cannot understand this hysterical approach.

I do not understand what is wrong with these sheets, and even less can I understand why they are a reason that I may not learn with my son once a week in the yeshiva where he studies. How many parents of students in the yeshiva are willing to invest the time and come to learn for several hours every week with their son in the yeshiva (from Yeruham, a two-hour drive each way)? Does that seem to you like the right message to send to students? And to parents?

C. Generally, I get the impression that the yeshiva is conducted in a very closed atmosphere (I am not referring to behavioral and disciplinary pressure on the young men, but to worldview and intellectual openness). For example, volume IV of ‘Seridei Esh’ and the like were removed from the yeshiva library. Rabbi … expressed his opinion in the students’ hearing several times about some great Torah figures in an inappropriate manner, all according to what seemed to him a correct or incorrect ‘outlook’ (and I am not speaking about Religious Zionists—may God have mercy—whom, as is well known, one is commanded to belittle, but even about figures within the Haredi camp), using expressions that revealed a disgracefully narrow and superficial outlook. I note that this surprised me personally very much, since in my experience older people are usually more balanced and measured, whereas zealotry characterizes the younger ones more, those who grew up inside the shtibl and know nothing else, and judge everything through the slogans—usually not especially well-founded—on which they were raised.

In my view, this is faulty, destructive, and indeed harmful education. It points mainly to fear, apprehension, and inability, and certainly not to a correct and genuine outlook, or to wholeness and harmony. In my view, that is also the message conveyed to students by such behavior (and the jokes about spiritual supervisors in yeshivot are well known; they are, among other things, a result of such attitudes).

There is a book by Chaim Grade (who as a young man lived in the home of the Chazon Ish, and later joined the Haskalah and became a well-known Yiddish poet and writer), called ‘Tzemach Atlas’ (one of the most powerful moral books I know, because of its credible and impressive description, and above all its very non-stereotyped description, of the Chazon Ish), in which he describes two contrasting figures: Tzemach Atlas, a young and stormy head of a Novardok yeshiva, as against the Chazon Ish (who is referred to there by the literary name, the author of ‘Mahazeh Avraham’). Grade describes a sharp contrast between them: Tzemach Atlas is consumed by doubts and passions, and it is precisely he who adopts a hysterical policy of fiery Haredi fervor, full of preaching, moral zealotry, and withdrawal. By contrast, the Chazon Ish figure is calm and harmonious, not inclined to hysteria, and deals quietly with everything.

I would note that this does not pertain to extremism, or to the Chazon Ish’s well-known letter about it. There is a difference between extremism and zealotry and insularity, and Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel—the real one, not the reconstructed one—proves the point.

From this book one can see clearly what was known even beforehand: that excessive fervor and zealotry sometimes point to hidden fears, passions, and hesitations, to a lack of inner wholeness in one’s path, and to an inability to cope. Very often the zealot is fighting his own inner self through his zeal toward his surroundings.

Beyond all this, an education whose main content is prohibitions is a problematic education: it is forbidden to drive. It is forbidden to read good literature. It is forbidden to study any non-Torah field of knowledge. It is forbidden to listen to music. It is forbidden to go anywhere. It is forbidden to travel. It is forbidden to engage in anything that is not within the very narrow framework laid down by the yeshiva. It is forbidden to study a profession, and even to practice one. It is forbidden to adopt lenient positions in Jewish law where people have become accustomed to be stringent, even if there is no real basis for it. One must not meet with people, or think about ideas, that come from ‘outside.’ One must not engage in art in any form. Children’s books are constructed in a stereotyped and harmful way. Information of various kinds is censored bluntly and crudely, and presented in a one-sided and tendentious manner. History, both Haredi and general (to the extent that it is dealt with at all), is rewritten in an unreliable way. It is forbidden to ask questions and raise troubling subjects. One must not dress in a way that departs from the accepted norm. And more and more…

I suggest rereading the list in the previous paragraph, which was written off the top of my head, and trying to take in the overall picture.

When everything is forbidden and everything is dangerous, both what truly is forbidden and dangerous and what is not. When one must keep away from everything, and the entire world is a collection of empty temptations and ‘we have nothing left but this Torah,’ then what happened to Eve with the prohibition of touching the tree happens again. When one knows nothing of what goes on outside, although there are things of value there, this is a repressive education. In the end, ironically, it often creates admiration for what is going on outside, based mainly on unfamiliarity and insecurity. How many students who encounter an academic, or a book, will even dare to engage with it, and feel confident doing so? Sweeping prohibitions and seclusion point to an inability to cope, and they broadcast that message with great force to students. Such a narrow path awakens sad thoughts about the breadth and power of the Torah. There is no need to add that the great majority of the public cannot live like this, and then it falls into perplexities, tricks, and underground behavior.

D. In recent weeks the yeshiva administration learned that … is considering leaving the yeshiva in a different direction. You yourself asked him for an answer by 5 Adar, and demanded that he leave the yeshiva before the end of the term for the sake of the yeshiva’s good name (so that people should not think, God forbid, that a student is leaving the yeshiva for a hesder yeshiva, combining study with army service).

This demand astonished me, since I was educated that the most important thing in yeshivot is not to leave the students exposed to outside influences. To send home a student who is not harming anyone and is learning well, so that he should sit there for two months (including Nisan), simply because of concern—distorted in itself—for the yeshiva’s reputation, seems to me a step that also points to the costs of insularity and of the Haredi way of life. All this stands in contrast to the slogans with which the young men and the public as a whole are fed, namely that Torah and its study are above everything.

This is a common phenomenon, in which various constraints lead the public to act in incorrect and distorted ways in other areas as well (see the ‘shidduchim’ matchmaking system, ‘full-support arrangements,’ and the like).

As I understood from …, in the end the decree was rescinded under the pressure of some friend. It is a great pity that the students, of all people, understood what the yeshiva administration should have understood.

And in the end, nevertheless, … did in fact find himself compelled to leave (on your own advice) because of the harasser’s wrath (apparently from fear of scandals, probably mainly on the part of the administration). If so, the reality is indeed bleak, and I am sorry for it. Does this seem to you to be a proper situation?

(E.) Parenthetically I would add that the matters above join, in my mind, events that occurred in Yeruham during the past year. There we saw, to our shame, how the Haredi community joined—by itself—a corrupt council head, and acted against the entire town (and in the end also against its own interests), destroying every good part of it, all out of financial considerations. I participated in the struggle against this corrupt and harmful council (some of its disgraceful steps literally involved matters of life and death), and therefore I found myself pushed outside the Haredi community. I was accused of desecrating God’s name, according to the familiar criterion whereby corrupt behavior is itself acceptable, and only exposing and warning against it count as desecration of God’s name.

All this occurred even though I took care that during the struggle the community and the rabbi would not be harmed, and I asked the rabbi several times, in writing and orally, to reconsider his decisions even before we went out to the struggle. The rabbi was not willing at all to listen and consider the matter. There too I saw that decisions made in a small, closed room and without consultation, under the cloak of ‘Torah authority,’ are prone to failure. The rabbi, who to the best of my assessment is a wise and upright person, and also a great Torah scholar, fell into the trap of the constraints created by the path in which our dependent public finds itself, and became a victim of the unwillingness to accept criticism, or even advice. There I saw another aspect of the costs of insularity: dependence on livelihood and financial support, which bends all values and morality.

F. All these things caused me to reconsider my decision to belong to the Haredi public (sociologically, and especially in the education of the children, not necessarily from the standpoint of worldview). True, I always thought that insularity was not correct in principle, but I believed that it was the lesser evil. The things I encountered during the last two years led me to the conclusion that insularity has heavy costs, and they are no less than the costs of openness. So if both sides carry a heavy price, there is no longer any reason not to act in the way that is right from the outset (= the open way). Why act on a fallback basis when even the fallback is no better than the ideal?

G. Despite what was said in the previous section, throughout the entire period I encouraged … to continue on his path, and told him that we were happy that he was progressing in his studies, and hoped that he would continue in this way for many years. We told him that the decision about his direction was entirely in his own hands, and that he would receive from us full support in whatever direction he chose.

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

He reached the conclusion that he believes more in that direction, despite his great and sincere appreciation for many of the people he met in the yeshiva, and in the Haredi public in general.

By the way, I would note that this is another example of the destructive influence of those slogans instilled in the youth and in the entire Haredi public, according to which everything outside is ‘non-kosher’ and devoid of spiritual stature and fear of Heaven, and so forth. The tendency toward black-and-white thinking is also one of the characteristics of Haredism. Although it appears safer and more educational, it too has very heavy costs. The moment someone leaves the Haredi hothouse and encounters, outside, outstanding Torah scholars, good people, upright and God-fearing, of the highest caliber (and there are quite a few such people), he begins to cast doubt on everything that was ‘sold’ to him. Some arrive through this at complete heresy ("If all this was not true, who is to say that all the rest is?"). This repeats itself among quite a few of those who turn to me, as I mentioned above.

In the wild world in which we live, the ability to seal people off hermetically is steadily diminishing, and there is a growing chance that they will eventually encounter the reality described in slogans, and the ‘terrible’ books forbidden to them. Such an encounter can be destructive, because of the comparison between the stereotypes on which they were raised and the more complex reality, as noted above.

H. In conclusion, despite the criticism I have voiced here, both of the yeshiva and of Haredism in general, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, we owe a great deal of gratitude (to the yeshiva and to Haredi society in general). I am writing these things for a constructive purpose, and I hope they will find a receptive ear. Perhaps it is worth considering whether there is still room to draw conclusions, at least with respect to some of the points raised here.

As part of that same gratitude, I took the trouble to write these pages, because I feel obligated to try to offer rebuke regarding matters on which, in my view, there is an obligation to offer rebuke. I hope that precisely in a place like a yeshiva, which educates people to accept rebuke and self-criticism, there will be a willingness to think about these matters and weigh them.

I. As stated above, to the best of my impression the social atmosphere in the yeshiva is very pleasant. The civility is impressive. The young men are very good and positive, and the learning is good and of a high level. Even if I do not agree with part of the educational path, there is no doubt that the heads of the yeshiva and its lecturers are outstanding Torah scholars and teachers, from whom …, like their other students, received a great deal.

We are grateful for all this, for the great amount of Torah learning and analytical skill that … received in the yeshiva during a year and a half, for the atmosphere, and for the friends.

In closing, we wish the entire staff that they may merit ever more students, and that they and their students may see blessing and success, and merit to continue rising ever higher in Torah and fear of Heaven.

With blessing,

Michael Abraham

Copies:

Rabbi …, head of the yeshiva

Rabbi …, head of the yeshiva

Rabbi …, spiritual supervisor

[1] And indeed, several people to whom I told this asked me how I could agree that … continue studying in such a place. But I thought that if … is learning well and benefiting from his stay in the yeshiva, and if he himself is not being hurt by it (and I took care to verify that this indeed was not happening), there is no reason to withhold good from the one entitled to it. In the end, the goal is to rise in Torah and fear of Heaven, and personal matters are not important in this context.