Launch Event for the Essay Collection “La’asot Chayil” – 2 Sivan 5782 / June 1, 2022 – Part Two – Anshei Chayil Beit Midrash
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Introduction, the space of choice, and coercion in the religious and Haredi world
- The Didi Phone affair, kosher phones, and social pressure
- Law, social norms, power, and the limits of deviation
- Haredi society as norms, the question of the legitimacy of coercion, and the role of the individual
- A generation born into obedience, critical thinking, and the sovereignty of the Torah versus the sovereignty of the state
- Screening in seminaries, a yeshiva high school, and collective punishment versus educational caution
- People leaving religion, ostracism, the “right of exit,” and the ability to choose as adults
- Parenthood, the Chatam Sofer, Abraham our forefather, and the emotional experience of severance
- Conclusion: expanding the space of choice, choosing one’s environment, less fear, and Torah study
Summary
General Overview
The moderator presents the tension between na’aseh ve-nishma and the rabbinic teaching that the mountain was held over them like a barrel, and connects this to the question of the space of choice, freedom, and forcefulness in the Haredi world and in society generally. The discussion focuses on the Didi Phone affair and the struggle over kosher phones, on mechanisms of social pressure and enforcement, and on the distinction between explicit law and social norms. The participants disagree over whether coercion stems from weakness or from excess power, whether Haredi society is mainly Torah or also a collection of non-halakhic norms, and to what extent one can or should expect the individual to resist the existing mechanisms. Later, cases arise involving screening in educational institutions, the attitude toward people leaving religion and the right of exit, and finally suggestions are offered for enlarging the space of choice through choosing a moral environment, less personal fear, and more Torah study that enables criticism in the name of Torah.
Introduction, the space of choice, and coercion in the religious and Haredi world
The moderator describes “We will do and we will hear” as a foundation praised by the Sages and in liturgical poetry, and contrasts it with the rabbinic exposition of “they stood at the foot of the mountain” as coercion in accepting the Torah. He frames the question as a problem of the space of choice in the Haredi world, arguing that a large part of Haredi defensive steps and the reduction of exposure stem from fear that a wider space of choice will lead people to choose differently. He adds that in general culture freedom and individualism are central, and as a result the concept of forcefulness has expanded to include subtler forms such as exploiting status and exploiting power, not only physical violence or coercion by a religious court.
The Didi Phone affair, kosher phones, and social pressure
The moderator describes the Didi Phone affair as involving a cellphone store in Bnei Brak whose owners sold smartphones or filtered phones that had not received approval from the Committee for Communications Matters, and the demonstrations that spilled over into violence, extortion, and forcefulness. He also presents the reform being advanced by Minister Yoaz Hendel and the arrival of Rebbes at his office to cancel the evil decree, emphasizing that the struggle is not over forcing anyone to own a smart phone but over preventing outsiders from being able to identify whether someone has a smartphone or a kosher phone. He asks whether insisting on this ability of social identification in order to create social pressure is legitimate, understandable, and truly serves the Haredi world.
Law, social norms, power, and the limits of deviation
Dr. Nechumi Yaffe says that human beings live in societies, and societies function through explicit law with a penalty clause and through social norms, which also carry penalties that society knows how to read. She argues that norms are a good thing that create security and orderly life, and the question is to what extent a society allows deviation and what the price of deviation is. She rejects the explanation that coercion comes from threat and weakness, and argues that a society uses power when it is strong, so here we are dealing with excess power and perhaps intoxication with power. She adds that today control works through parents and through marking territories of “us” and “them.” She presents the Committee of Rabbis for Communications Matters as a corrupt body, distinguishing between Torah and bullying and between Torah and business, and argues that the violence around Didi Phone created a wake-up call and that there is something good in that as well. She also adds that some rabbis are disconnected from what is happening on the ground and lack real feedback, and says she believes that if people of Torah and fear of Heaven truly knew what was going on, they would be on the other side.
Haredi society as norms, the question of the legitimacy of coercion, and the role of the individual
Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham says that before asking about coercion one must ask what matters to a society and how much it matters, and he presents Haredi society as not identical with Torah but as a concept that adds norms not necessarily halakhic in nature. He says one must first discuss whether one supports those norms, and only afterwards whether they justify coercion. He states that he personally opposes the norms, and therefore finds it hard to discuss whether coercion regarding them is justified, even though he can understand why someone for whom this matters would coerce. He says that a society organizes itself around norms when its members are partners in them and can also choose not to be partners and leave, and he considers it legitimate for a society to tell someone who is not a partner that this is not his place. He also points an accusing finger at those being coerced, claiming that if a public will not allow itself to be coerced there will be no coercion, and that someone who wants to remain Haredi without coercion has difficulty defining Haredi society without coercion, because coercion is an essential part of it. He says there are no instant revolutions, that revolutions require willingness to pay a price, and adds that someone who chooses to be Haredi, knows these things, and cooperates with them “shouldn’t complain.”
A generation born into obedience, critical thinking, and the sovereignty of the Torah versus the sovereignty of the state
Dr. Yaffe objects to placing the responsibility on individuals, arguing that most Haredim are “second- or third-generation” people born into a society that educates them to see obedience as a value, and that it takes originality, luck, and opportunity to understand that challenging authority is a personal duty. Therefore, she says, the responsibility lies with those who understand the systems and with the leaders. Rabbi Eliyahu Levi argues that the Haredi public suffers from over-criticalness, illustrating this by comparing it to the public outrage over Pindrus’s “D9” remarks, while Haredim constantly challenge the authority of their leaders. He says the idea that Haredi society is a voluntary community inside a sovereign state is mistaken, and presents it instead as a community claiming the sovereignty of the Torah and Jewish law, where law is binding and the state is a violent body that uses violence through laws, licenses, prisons, and guns. He argues that the Haredi community has no guns and that its sovereignty is weak, and that in practice there is in Haredi society a freedom of action that he calls lawlessness, a situation of “every man does what is right in his own eyes,” problems of governance, building violations, and relative ease in opening institutions and businesses. Dr. Yaffe sharpens the point that the problem is not mixed authorities but the absence of education to challenge halakhic authority from within the Haredi world, and that internal criticism is labeled Reform or “your destroyers and wreckers,” without a beit midrash engagement with criticism of Jewish law. Rabbi Abraham rejects the comparison to state coercion and argues that the coercive mechanisms of the state are based on choice, separation of powers, and review, whereas in some cases here we are dealing with a bunch of thugs. He repeats that Haredi society is a collection of norms that are not Torah, and therefore this should not be presented as coercion in the name of the commandments.
Screening in seminaries, a yeshiva high school, and collective punishment versus educational caution
The moderator describes a case in which parents send a son to a Haredi yeshiva high school, and the daughter is not accepted into a suitable seminary because her brother is in a yeshiva high school. He defines this as collective punishment that does not fit with “children shall not be put to death for their fathers” and resembles cruel societies. Rabbi Abraham says that if a society sees this as an important value and fears educational destabilization, he understands why it does not accept her, and argues that this is not collective punishment but educational caution. Rabbi Eliyahu Levi says he sees here the same line as ethnic screening, and argues that there is no right to reward or punish on the basis of numerus clausus and no rationale for it, raising the question of how the state allows this. Dr. Yaffe argues that there is an intersection here between social norms and religious law, and that there is a system of “love your neighbor as yourself” that conflicts with the norm of screening, so halakhic law should override the social norm when children are embarrassed and harmed by cruel policy. Rabbi Abraham repeats that the original question is screening because of a brother in a yeshiva high school, not because of ethnic background, and says that the girl is not guilty but the other students are not guilty either, emphasizing that children usually do not make these decisions and that parents pay prices for their choices. He presents the opening of yeshiva high schools as a move in a social struggle and asks why one expects the other side to continue accepting the children of those trying to change society.
People leaving religion, ostracism, the “right of exit,” and the ability to choose as adults
The moderator moves the discussion to coercion to “be Haredi” through the attitude toward people leaving religion, as raised in the series “We’ll Meet Again,” and describes reactions of alienation, ostracism, sitting shivah, severing ties, and forbidding participation in events as coercion aimed at keeping a person a Haredi citizen. Rabbi Eliyahu Levi introduces the concept of the “right of exit” from legal discourse, which expects Haredi education to provide the ability to integrate easily into secular society, and argues that from a sociological perspective this is nonsense, because no society gives its children a right of exit. By analogy, he says that secular society does not teach Rashi script in order to enable integration into yeshivah, and recounts that when he went to academia it took him three months to integrate into a degree program, and others did it too, while for ba’alei teshuvah it is hard to reach the level of a yeshivah like Hebron. He says the discussion should be about what is important to teach children, not about a “right of exit,” but he distinguishes between not preparing a child for other options and making it impossible to choose as an adult, and directs criticism at Haredi society for not allowing people to choose when they grow up. He says this returns us to the question of coercion regarding the commandments and to a Torah-halakhic discussion about the relevance of coercion today, and he states that in his view there is no place today for coercion regarding the commandments, though that requires justification from the sources.
Parenthood, the Chatam Sofer, Abraham our forefather, and the emotional experience of severance
Dr. Yaffe objects to the comparison about the “right of exit,” noting that a functioning state has a passport, and argues that moving from Haredi society to academia is extremely hard and almost impossible for many, whereas a talented secular person could reach the level of a bachelor’s degree in Torah studies within a few years. She says she cannot speak on the halakhic level about permitting transgressions or heresy, and cites the Chatam Sofer in the introduction to a responsum, where he says that the Jewish tradition begins with Abraham our forefather because he knew how to educate the children and keep them within the home. She emphasizes that Abraham is known for hospitality, for feeding and giving drink, and calls on parents to see children as deposits from Heaven and not only as a task of “that he may command his children after him, and they shall keep the charge of God.” She says that severing a child should be an immense devastation for parents, and asks how there can be parents who do this without experiencing such devastation.
Conclusion: expanding the space of choice, choosing one’s environment, less fear, and Torah study
The moderator asks how to enlarge the space of choice even if the mountain is hanging over our heads like a barrel, and how to “break the barrel and preserve its wine” as parents, educators, and public figures. Dr. Yaffe reads from “Rav Ashlag, the Kabbalist known as the Sulam,” about freedom of will as the ability to choose from the outset one’s environment, books, and guides that influence one toward good ideas, and concludes that we will always be subject to some system, so the choice is to choose a moral, humane system, and “the Torah of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.” Rabbi Abraham says that a general suggestion to be moral is not a practical solution, and again places responsibility on the individual, suggesting that people should do more than they think they can, with less fear, because the fear instilled in them is exaggerated and unrealistic, and society may sometimes absorb changes within certain limits. Rabbi Eliyahu Levi concludes that the real problem is not coercion but a state of “every man does what is right in his own eyes,” leading to “might makes right,” which produces injustice, suffering, and “the destruction of Torah.” He presents the answer as more Torah study, which defines what is right and proper and makes it possible to criticize social phenomena in the name of Torah and distinguish between Torah and violence and forcefulness.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] Please sit down, please sit down. Okay.
[Speaker B] Good evening, everyone. I share the feeling of frustration that we meet and it’s hard to talk, but still, if possible. Okay, thank you. I have to begin on a personal note before we get to the tougher questions. I’m very moved to be standing here tonight. Can you hear me now? Okay. I’m very moved to be standing here tonight before this important audience, and to discover that I know most of you as well, and that’s a great privilege for me. So thank you very much to all those who came, and I’ll do my part to make sure you have a wonderful rest of the evening. And good evening to my fellow panelists. It’s a great privilege for me to moderate this panel with you. You gave me a good excuse to hold a note card, because I can’t remember the whole résumé by heart. So good evening to Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, doctor of physics and a senior lecturer at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan. And my friend Rabbi Eliyahu Levi, editor of the website Tzarikh Iyyun. This time I’ll be editing you. And to Dr. Nechumi Yaffe, faculty member in public policy at Tel Aviv University and vice president at the Tzomet Data Institute. Did I forget anything? No. Okay. Thank you. The Torah describes the revelation at Mount Sinai, and it tells us that the Jewish people said, “We will do and we will hear.” And the Sages praise this: “Who revealed this secret to My children?” And the poets of the Jewish people throughout the generations, and the composers of the Jewish people throughout the generations, really loved referring to “We will do and we will hear” and singing it. People sing less about the other part that the Sages describe. The Sages expound the verse, “They stood at the foot of the mountain,” that the Jewish people stood under the mountain, as if the Holy One, blessed be He, held the mountain over them like a barrel and said: If you accept the Torah, good; and if not, there will be your burial place. That part gets sung less, but you can’t ignore the question it raises. The question of what I’ll call the space of choice in the religious world today, in the Haredi world today, is a weighty one both from the Haredi side and from the broader side, from the perspective that looks at Haredi society from outside. That is, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that a very large part of the Haredi worldview, of the Haredi steps taken as a form of defense against the outside world, stems from the fear that a large space of choice will cause people to choose differently. A very large part of the effort is devoted to reducing exposure as much as possible, reducing temptation, which in other words is also perhaps reducing the space of choice. Maybe you’ll respond to whether that’s really so. But also, from the general side, it seems to me there’s no need to elaborate on how central the concepts of freedom and individualism are in the broader culture today. But not only that. In addition, along with the sanctity of freedom that prevails today, I think the concept of forcefulness has also expanded as a result. That is, if in the past when we spoke about forcefulness—today people speak only about violence, which unfortunately is again something we’re occupied with—but the definition of forcefulness has broadened a lot in our generations. And we no longer discuss only the question of whether one coerces people regarding the commandments, and whether the religious court can take forceful steps of one kind or another to separate a person from transgression. We’re also supposed to advance and address subtler forms of forcefulness—today, with our psychological awareness, exploitation of status and exploitation of power are also considered a kind of coercion in some way. So that too is something we need to deal with as part of coping with the spirit of the times; we also have to deal with the question of how much we allow, how much we… Okay, so good evening again. We’ll begin with questions, and you can divide up the work among yourselves—who starts first, who starts second. If you don’t manage, I’ll consider intervening. Okay, so first question. Recently a story made the headlines that people on social media called the Didi Phone affair. It involved a cellphone shop in Bnei Brak whose owners sold smartphones or various filtered phones that did not receive the approval of the Committee for Communications Matters. We won’t get into all the details, but in the end I think we all saw the demonstrations, some of which slid into violence, extortion, and a great deal of forcefulness. If we talked about the expansion of the concept of forcefulness, then there it was the basic kind we’ve always known. But this isn’t only about Didi Phone. The whole issue of kosher phones has recently been in the headlines because of the reform being promoted by Minister Yoaz Hendel. And in a rather unusual move, many important Rebbes came to the minister’s office to try to cancel the evil decree. And really, in terms of the facts on the ground, unlike previous decrees and earlier struggles the Haredim had with the establishment, this is not about something the state wants to force on someone—like making someone own an unfiltered phone or something. Rather, the battle is about preventing people on the outside from being able to identify whether you have a smartphone or a kosher phone. And over this tool of social identification, the Haredi leadership launched an open and serious struggle. So I’d be glad to hear your reactions both regarding the violent struggle itself and whether insisting on the ability of social identification, so that social pressure can be created, so people can say, “You have a kosher phone, you have a non-kosher phone”—is that legitimate, is it called for, and does it faithfully serve our world? Okay. I think it’s working,
[Speaker E] I’m not sure it’s working. Yeah? You have to hold it. Okay. Well, first of all I want to say thank you to this dear synagogue for hosting us, and how wonderful it is to sit in a synagogue on the eve of Shavuot and speak words of Torah. Thank you very much. They told me not to speak philosophically, just answer the question directly, but I don’t know—that’s just how I know how to speak. So I want to widen the lens a little and then address the question. I think human beings live in societies, and societies organize themselves in two ways in order to exist. One way is explicit law, which also has a punishment clause attached to it—either state law, or within the religious world that would be Jewish law. And there’s another way, which is social norms. And social norms also carry punishments, and fairly explicit punishments, and we all more or less know how to read them. Now every society needs norms, and in some sense every civilization organizes norms for itself, and that’s a good thing, because that gives security, it makes orderly and proper life possible. And then the question is to what degree a society allows deviation from the norms, and what the costs of deviation are. And I want to respond to what you said about this idea that society feels threatened and therefore coerces. So first of all I want to say: I don’t agree with that move toward threat. I think that if society were weak and threatened, it wouldn’t have the power to coerce. I think a society can exercise power only when it’s strong. So this comes from excess power, maybe even from intoxication with power, not from weakness and not from threat, okay? And I think this whole thing of saying they’re threatened, they’re threatened—no. They’re strong, and they have power, and they can, so they use it. Because if they were in the position they were forty or fifty years ago, when they needed students to come to school and needed to screen less, they wouldn’t have done it. So it’s excess power, not weakness. And basically they found a way, through the parents, to capture the children and to mark territories of us and them. Now I don’t know whether you want us to address the Committee of Rabbis for Communications Matters itself, which all of us know privately is some kind of corrupt body, or whether you want us to talk about this phenomenon of organizations accumulating power within a society and then acting in the name of Torah while really operating something else. And I think that maybe the great gift of this Didi Phone story and all the violence around it is that for a lot of people who have difficulty identifying that place where Torah ends and bullying begins, where Torah ends and business begins—precisely in this conduct, something surfaced. So there’s also something good in it. I think for many people it was a kind of wake-up call. So there’s something good in that too. And I think that this big insistence by various rabbis—I want to say that some of them really aren’t connected to what’s happening on the ground enough to understand… I want to continue to honor a large number of rabbis, and I think one of the biggest problems is that they don’t really get genuine feedback from the public to understand what’s really going on. I believe that if people of Torah and people with fear of Heaven truly knew what was involved, they would be on the other side. Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think the question that should be asked before the question of coercion—because as the previous speaker said, there is always some level of coercion on certain matters in every society—is what is important to the society, and how important is it, or how do you determine that. And in that sense I actually arrive at a somewhat opposite conclusion from what one might expect. Haredi society, in some sense—perhaps contrary to what you said earlier, and I don’t entirely agree—Haredi society is not just Torah. There are societies that don’t define themselves as Haredi, and I think they are also connected to Torah, perhaps no less. But there is some added value, some additional element in the term Haredi beyond the term faithful to Torah, and that involves various norms—let’s call them not necessarily halakhic norms, but other norms. And in that sense, first of all one has to discuss whether I’m in favor of those norms. Before I ask whether to coerce people into them or not, and how, I first have to ask whether I’m in favor of those norms. Then, how important are they, and only then can one discuss whether that justifies coercion. Since I personally oppose the norms irrespective of coercion, it’s very hard for me to discuss whether coercion here is justified. Because I understand that if it’s very important to someone that people not have cellphones—I don’t know how important it is to him, because I don’t share that concern—but if it’s very important to him, then I can understand why he coerces. We can still discuss not hitting and not doing this or that, but at the principled level, why he coerces—I can understand it. I can’t really criticize him, because I’m looking at it from outside and not from within. Therefore, discussing the question of coercion seems to me a bit unproductive. Because in the end we have to think about the question of whether this is really important, and how important it is. And one more thing I have to say, which also relates somewhat to what you said: a society organizes itself, as you said, around certain norms. But when a society organizes itself, that means the individuals are supposed to be partners in those norms, and they can also decide that they are not partners and leave. A society that does not allow individuals to decide whether or not they are partners in the norms—or to leave if they are not partners—they don’t have to remain non-partners while staying inside; the society can say to them, listen, if you’re not partners, your place is not here. That too is a kind of coercion. But that is a kind of coercion that, in a certain sense, seems legitimate to me. When a society wants to preserve certain norms and that matters very much to it for some reason that is not clear to me—fine, then it also coerces in that direction. And therefore, in a certain sense, I want to point the accusing finger—contrary to what people usually do—not at the coercive bodies but at the people being coerced. That is, there are many people in the public, and not only the relatively few sitting here, who do not agree with these acts. Their voice is not really heard. With all due respect, yes, here and there you hear: it’s not okay to hit—fine, all true—you hear it on the margins, and in extreme cases you hear it. If a public will not allow itself to be coerced, then there will be no coercion. That’s all. Now it may be that if this public ultimately does not allow itself to be coerced, then it also won’t be Haredi anymore, because coercion is part of the definition of being Haredi. Fine. But someone who wants to remain inside yet without coercion—I don’t really know how one can define Haredi society without coercion. Coercion is an essential part of the Haredi character of the society. Again, without discussing how much and by what means—of course that can be discussed separately—but I want to shift the discussion to the fundamental questions. And I say this many times to many people who talk to me, both to individuals and to groups: there are no instant revolutions. And there are no revolutions where people can make change without paying prices. Often people come to me and say, okay, what should we do and how do we change and make revolutions—and each according to the level of extremity he takes—but he expects me to carry out the revolution for him. If you’re not willing to pay prices, there will be no revolution. The public is made up of a great many individuals, and in a certain sense those individuals also cooperate with the whole thing, because if they didn’t cooperate, it wouldn’t happen. Now it may be that someone who chooses to be Haredi knows these things and cooperates with them—then he shouldn’t complain. He shouldn’t complain. That is part of being part of the Haredi world. And again I say: obviously one can discuss beatings or things that go beyond any reasonable proportion, but at the principled level, talking about coercion in the Haredi world—I don’t see what the discussion is even about.
[Speaker B] I noticed that Ms. Nechumi agrees a bit less, so maybe we’ll give her a minute to respond, and then you, okay?
[Speaker E] I just want to draw your attention to the fact that we’re talking about a second- or third-generation Haredi generation. Most Haredim were born into Haredi society. They were born into a society that tells them obedience is a value, educates them that obedience is a value. It takes a tremendous amount of originality and luck and opportunity to realize that challenging authority is a personal obligation. And most Haredim don’t have that opportunity. So to say it’s on them is simply not reading the sociological map correctly. They were born into it, educated that it’s the right thing, and now they’re stuck inside rotten systems. So I feel it’s not on the individuals; it’s on those who understand the systems and on the leaders. So I kind of want to move the dial. You agree with me completely. Okay, great. Now let’s hear how you formulate it.
[Speaker A] You. First of all—okay, I’ll start from the point where Nechumi Yaffe stopped. The Haredi public suffers from over-criticalness. I know that may sound a little surprising, but I don’t know many people who are as critical of the people leading them as Haredim are, and who think it’s legitimate to do so. Just think for a moment—I want to make a comparison; there’s really a conceptual problem here. A few weeks ago Pindrus said we need to blow up the Supreme Court with a D9, and the country was in an uproar—how can one challenge authority? How can one challenge the legal authority that runs the state? But Haredim do that all the time. They constantly cast doubt on the authority that leads them. Now why is my comparison surprising? Because we perceive Haredi society as a voluntary community within the framework of a sovereign state. That’s a mistake. We adopt the conception that there is a separation of religion and state and that the Haredi community is a religious community. In other words, the sovereign state is the State of Israel and its law is binding law, but joining the Haredi community is voluntary, and the Haredi community is not able to enforce—nor should it have the power to enforce—its laws. That is the worldview through which we think, and therefore we start talking about issues of coercion in the Haredi world and how terrible coercion is within the Haredi framework. But that’s a mistake. It’s a mistake because the Haredi community is a sovereign community—autonomous, admittedly, but it claims sovereignty. The sovereignty is the sovereignty of the Torah, the sovereignty of Jewish law. Binyahu put it very well earlier when he said that being Haredi ultimately means being subject to the Torah, and the Torah is law. Now law is something binding, and I’m sorry to say, Rabbi Moshe, law is violent. The state is a violent body. The state is a body that constantly uses violence—violence much harsher than the protesters on D9. Think about the system you’re in. All of us—we are not free people. We have no freedom of movement. Try it. An eighteen-year-old wants to leave the country. He wants freedom of movement, he doesn’t want to be here. That’s very, very difficult; you have to serve three years in the army. That isn’t freedom. The state is a sovereign body that uses violence. That’s so transparent to us, but we are behind mechanisms of power all the time. You can’t park wherever you want, you can’t open a business. Think about this: to open a business selling phones you need permits from the state. To open a communications body you need approval from the Ministry of Communications. We are constantly subject to laws, and if we violate them we’ll go to prison. It won’t end with demonstrations outside your house, or even egg-throwing or things like that, which unfortunately happen from time to time in Haredi streets. It’ll end in much more serious steps: the police will come and take you, and the state has guns. The Haredi community doesn’t have guns. So the sovereignty of Jewish law, meaning Jewish law itself, and the sovereignty of the system—let’s call it the Haredi leadership; in the end there are great Torah scholars and the whole story is much more complicated—but their sovereignty is very, very, very weak. In other words, what I see in Haredi society—you can call it freedom if you want; I call it lawlessness, because I think we need order and we need a state—and what happens in Haredi society is: every man does what is right in his own eyes. There really is a situation of every man doing what is right in his own eyes. Think about it. Today in Haredi society you can more or less do whatever you want, and the worst thing that will happen is that they’ll put up pashkevils against you in the streets and maybe hold a few demonstrations outside your house. Rabbi Betzalel knows this very well—he experienced it. It’s unpleasant, but it’s not police putting you in prison. It’s not police putting you in prison. In the end there is freedom of action. What’s more, we’re constantly talking about problems of governance. We’re constantly talking about problems of governance in the State of Israel, and those problems occur mainly in Haredi areas. In other words, in Haredi areas you can do whatever you want. Building violations, all kinds of things that don’t happen in a sovereign state—on Haredi streets they do happen. If you want to open a business in a Haredi area, you need many fewer permits than in a properly regulated place. So there’s some kind of freedom there. Want to open an educational institution? An educational institution—do you know how hard it is to open an educational institution in the State of Israel? But if you’re in a Haredi area, in the 02 or 03 area code zone, it’s much, much easier, believe me. Much easier. You need a synagogue and a bit of budget, and nobody will tell you what to do or how to write the curriculum, and there really is much more freedom in Haredi areas. So on that level, I don’t know what people are talking about. It’s the wrong kind of freedom, meaning if you’re talking about freedom—
[Speaker E] No, no, no, you’re confusing concepts. No, no, no, you’re confusing them.
[Speaker A] So I’m saying the mistake begins when we define—we think about the Haredi community as a voluntary community that is supposed to accept the authority of state law, and then joining the community is joining a community from within a framework of religion and state. That’s not the way Haredim think about Jewish law. And maybe that’s the distinction between being Haredi and being—I’m not saying all Religious Zionists embrace separation of religion and state; that’s not true—but at least within the Religious Zionist world there is more recognition that there are two sovereign bodies. There is the state and there is the Torah, and there is some complicated relationship between them that has various formulations. So I think I can finish with that distinction. There’s a lot more to say here, but we have more conversation ahead, so okay.
[Speaker C] Something—if I may? Yes. Okay.
[Speaker E] Well I obviously don’t—okay, I want to explain something. There’s a confusion of categories here. My claim is not that the problem of violating the norm is confusion between democratic and Jewish, and an overlap between two systems of authority. My claim also ties into what you said, except that within the system, or the religious system—forget the secular world, okay?—once there is no education to challenge religious authority, okay? I’m not talking about challenging external authority that has no power over you. I’m saying that once there is no education to question Jewish law from within your own world, then you have no education for critical thinking, and that’s where this story of coercion begins, okay? Inside the halakhic world. Now what happens in Haredi society is that the moment there is a halakhic ruling that actually challenges something, it doesn’t become an argument within the Haredi world. It simply becomes another category: Reform, “your destroyers and wreckers,” whatever—and there is no engagement with criticism from within the world itself. So it’s not a problem of mixed authorities; it’s a problem within the world of religious norms and authorities. That’s where the problem of coercion is. The state is simply irrelevant in this context. The reason it’s flawed is the cost of coercion within the religious world, not because of the secular world. It has nothing to do with that. Do you understand the problem? I’m not saying that… Okay, got it? It’s not…
[Speaker C] There’s no system for criticism of Jewish law?
[Speaker E] Yes. Meaning no, no—there’s no system for criticism of Jewish law. You know what, let me tell you something. I was sitting here on the first panel and I said to my friend Penina: wow, how happy I am, how happy I am to sit in a synagogue—and I even asked myself, should I kiss the ark? I mean, how wonderful it is for me as a woman to sit next to the ark and speak. How many women like me think this way? How many Haredi women think as I do? How many Haredi women question things from within the Haredi world, insist on remaining Haredi, and challenge the halakhic authority structure? I don’t know. I can’t count them—so few. So there you have it: there really isn’t one. And what happens? Those who do are labeled Reform. There is no beit midrash engagement with this. It just becomes an external category—religious authority versus state authority, versus the democratic state, thank you very much, not our business, goodbye. And that’s the problem. Okay, enough. First, your comparison is outrageous—to compare it to coercion by
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the state. The coercive mechanisms of the state are based on a mechanism of people’s choice. The bodies that exercise coercion are bodies that are elected. There is a division and separation of powers, with review over how coercion is exercised and on what grounds. You can appeal if coercion was used against you unlawfully. In the end they may even use a gun against you—but it is not the same thing as a coercive system that is grounded nowhere, just a few thugs deciding to do this or that. That’s one point—only regarding the comparison. As for your actual argument, I said I completely agree; I think that is basically also what I said. The second point is that you present this as though there is some legal system here, and what do you mean to coerce regarding it? But Haredi society is not Torah. I say this again—I don’t understand the confusion. Haredi society is not Torah. Haredi society is something beyond Torah, a collection of norms. Whether you agree or disagree doesn’t matter—it’s a collection of norms that are not Torah. You can accept them, you can reject them, but they are not enforced by the power of Torah. They are enforced by the fact that the public decided, or activists decided, or whatever. But don’t present this as coercion regarding the commandments—it’s ridiculous, that simply isn’t what this is about. The public is zealous about it.
[Speaker C] So I’m saying, fine, but it’s not the public—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, just one more second—one more comment on what you said. I don’t know, I hear a great many critical people, and as Rabbi Eliyahu said, there is a great deal of critical thinking in the Haredi world. It’s not only my friends. I know many, many people. I was in that world for quite a few years. There is a great deal of criticism within that world, and that criticism does not become institutionalized and does not come out into the open. In communist Russia there was no education for criticism, or under the tsar—certainly not, okay? But people sat there and fought and died for it because they thought differently. And here too there are many people who think differently, but we don’t hear them, and they are not such miserable helpless people as you describe. I don’t agree.
[Speaker B] “I don’t agree” is a good ending for that question. I assume one could argue about it for a long time. Really, about the Torah it was said that it is broader than the sea, and I think this question is probably a Torah question, because it really is broader than the sea. We can keep discussing types of coercion, types of criticism, types of freedom. What came up here, very interestingly, is perhaps a difference between men and women that we need to pay attention to, and perhaps a difference between an outside perspective and an inside perspective. But I want to move on to the next question, even though during your discussion a lot of other questions came to mind. Still, this next one is important and I don’t want to skip it. Assuming there is room for some kind of enforcement—perhaps the word coercion is too harsh—I want in this question to put the spotlight on an interesting phenomenon. So-and-so decided to send his son to a yeshiva high school. The speakers mentioned this earlier when they talked about institutions. He decided to send his son to a Haredi yeshiva high school, because that’s what he believes in, that’s what he thinks, as Rabbi Twila said: he strengthened himself in the father’s obligations toward his son. He has a daughter who needs to be accepted into a seminary, and this daughter is very suitable for Seminary X, but Seminary X does not accept her, and the official reason is that her brother studies in a yeshiva high school. What do you think about that? Here it’s no longer just—I’ll just put the spotlight on what I mean—coercing a path through the people around someone, or whatever we want to call it.
[Speaker E] This has a name; it’s called collective punishment. We know that cruel societies throughout history used it, and there’s no difference. Now, I’m not finished—no—I also want to say something, I want to say something. You have to understand: every society—there is no society that can exist without a certain kind of coercion, both of norms, meaning the unwritten and non-religious law, and of formal law, which in our case is Jewish law. The cost—this whole idea of “children shall not be put to death because of their fathers”—it simply contradicts religious law and also fits in with other cruel, forceful societies. I’ll just sharpen the point, of course,
[Speaker B] The seminary’s claim, for the sake of argument, is that the institution has a certain character, and a girl whose brother studies in a Haredi yeshiva high school doesn’t fit that character. Maybe that’s an unnecessary addition, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That is, I completely agree. I mean, I think—again—I don’t agree that it’s important, as I said at the beginning. I wouldn’t enforce it, because in my view it isn’t important, not because it’s wrong to enforce. But if a certain society decides that it’s terribly important to it that secular studies not be taught, for whatever reason, and it feels that bringing in someone from a family that advocates such a thing could undermine its education, I can definitely understand why they wouldn’t accept that person. I don’t understand what the problem is. I don’t agree with the norms they’re enforcing, not with the fact of enforcement. In other words, I don’t agree that it’s wrong to study secular subjects, but that’s precisely why I’m not Haredi. But if someone is Haredi—or at least Haredi of a certain kind, you can debate what exactly counts as Haredi, but Haredi of a certain kind—for whom this is important, I can totally understand why he wouldn’t accept someone from a family with a television, or a family that sends someone to a yeshiva high school, or something like that. Again, to me all this is irrelevant, and therefore I criticize it from the outside, but I don’t understand what there is to debate regarding whether this should be enforced or not. And it’s also not collective punishment, absolutely not collective punishment. It’s basically caution, usually—again, there may be cases where it is—but fundamentally such a policy is not collective punishment; it is educational caution. Eliyahu wants to—
[Speaker F] Say something. I want to put it in the most universal terms: I don’t see this distinction. It’s a huge distinction. No, I don’t see the distinction, because there’s the case of someone whose brother was accepted to Chabad, and therefore the sister will be punished, and then there’s the case where maybe they discovered that the mother is Mizrahi—we know this from seminaries we established. So I see the same line running through it, which is racism, and in fact you kind of detached the issue from the state—how can the state allow such a thing at all? This is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something else, but I don’t agree. I know it’s something else, but—
[Speaker E] In that context. No, but I basically don’t agree with what you’re saying. There is no right to punish or reward on the basis of numerus clausus; there’s no rationale for it. Rabbi, let me tell you what the problem is—thank you very much, Eliyahu—here is the category confusion. If we were in Iceland and there were a law saying only green people can enter the school, and anyone who has something blue in the family that might contaminate the green—we won’t let them into the school—you’re saying, listen, those are the rules of the society, green is green, green is not blue. Except that there’s another system here that intersects with it; it’s called the Torah, it’s called “love your fellow as yourself,” and it’s a legal system that clashes with the Haredi norm that wants to filter people around these sorts of things, and that’s a problem. Because we are Haredi, but also Jewish; also obligated to Jewish law, and this is cruelty and hurting people. And we know very well that it’s not because they’re a little more modern—it’s the Mizrahi mother, sorry, the “Frankish” mother, it’s because the father doesn’t look good to someone, it’s because someone threatens their power. And here, as Eliyahu said, if there are places where the state joins in, where state law joins with religious law, I want to say that within Haredi society there is an intersection here between social norms and religious law. I think religious law should prevail, and I think that if there are children who are ashamed, distressed, and so on because of this cruel policy, then what can you do—we are also Jews, and something has to give way to something, so the social norm should give way to halakhic law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s go back to the question. I think people here have lost track of the question a bit. And the question was that someone was not accepted not because his mother is “Frankish,” but because he has a brother in a yeshiva high school. Wait, wait, excuse me, excuse me, one second. That was the question. If you want to answer a different question, that’s fine. On the other question I agree with you—it’s also cruel, everything is true—but that’s not what we were talking about.
[Speaker G] The girl wants to study in a Haredi school—what is it her fault?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not her fault, but the other students aren’t at fault either. And if the parents of the other students—but—
[Speaker G] The student—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wants to study with her friends from home.
[Speaker A] What’s the difference between this and what you said? Can I answer? Can I respond? A twelve-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy usually—not always, but usually—do not decide where to go; their parents decide for them. And what if my children now wanted to go to yeshiva? They finish eighth grade—do you think they don’t care where they are accepted and where they are not accepted, and they don’t know where they want to study? What is with you? Honestly, it’s as if they’re not human beings. Let’s move to five-year-old children. Five-year-old children—their parents decide where to send them. I just had to decide which preschool I want to send my child to. My three-year-old—I have to choose a track for him. So it’s the parents’ decision. Now, we can put all the weight on the question that Moshe raised, the question of freedom, but I think that’s naïveté that doesn’t help us. I’m not saying that sending children to yeshiva high schools is wrong; that wasn’t the question at all. It could be—I think that in the choices I made in life, I pretty much paid the price that they wouldn’t accept my sons to Haredi yeshivot, they wouldn’t accept my sons to Hebron—let’s put it that way—or I would need a great deal of connections to get my sons into Hebron. I made the choices I made in life, and I knew this would happen, and I paid the price. But let’s not be naïve. I can’t understand why turn this into a question of freedom. There is a deep social struggle here. We are trying to change society by opening yeshiva high schools. This is a deep social struggle. What do you want—that the other side should say, okay, do whatever you want and we’ll keep accepting your children as if you’re not revolutionaries? What is this naïveté? What is this naïveté? It’s just— I don’t know why you’re saying this. My father studied in yeshiva, I studied in yeshiva, my children studied in yeshiva, and afterward they also studied in Hebron. And there have always been yeshiva high schools for a hundred years; it’s just not true.
[Speaker B] Esteemed audience, one second—thank you for the intervention. These are definitely issues that touch people’s lives. But I really do want to move toward the final two questions, and we don’t have much time. First of all, thank you very much for everything so far, and now we’ll move on. Up to now we have basically been talking—perhaps not intentionally—about coercion within the Haredi world inwardly, and then voices came up for and against, and truly the whole spectrum is visible. In the next question I want to move from coercion on Haredim to coercion to be Haredi, through an issue that has also recently made headlines—through the series “We’ll Meet Again,” this issue came into the headlines. The attitude toward people who leave religion. That is, people at a certain age, younger or older, one day decide that they do not want to be Haredi, or according to Rabbi Eliyahu Levi, they don’t want to be in this country, they want to emigrate to another country, and they don’t ask anyone; sometimes they do it, sometimes they do ask and then do it. And then there are all kinds of reactions, better and less good. Naturally the media spotlight—and for purposes of this panel we’ll discuss the less warm reactions—falls on estrangement, communal and social ostracism, sitting shiva, cutting off contact with the whole family, forbidding you to come to events, and all sorts of things like that. And here it is already a bit of outward coercion; that is, it’s not someone who is a citizen in the Haredi state and we force him not to open a shop, but rather we force you somehow to remain a Haredi citizen. What do you think about that?
[Speaker A] Okay, so already in the wording of the question you phrased it better than what you sent me beforehand, because you made the comparison—you introduced the comparison to a state. The concept of a right of exit—we hear a lot about the concept of a right of exit. For those familiar with the legal discussion, in the legal discussion they say that Haredim can educate their children however they want, but they have to give them a right of exit. What is a right of exit? The right to be able to integrate easily into secular society, I assume, if as adults they decide to make the autonomous and free choice to leave Haredi society and become secular. Now, from a sociological point of view—and I hope Nehumi will agree with me, that’s her field of expertise—from a sociological point of view, from a legal point of view it sounds very nice; from a sociological point of view, as Nehumi answered earlier to Michael Abraham’s argument, it’s nonsense. No society grants its children a right of exit. No society grants its children a right of exit.
[Speaker E] Just one second—a state does grant it; it’s called a passport, so that you can travel anywhere in the world and check, okay? A normal state gives passports to its citizens.
[Speaker A] Nehumi, please respect my freedom of speech, a basic liberty. I’ll make this polemical claim. The moment secular society teaches its children Rashi script, so that if at an older age they decide they want to go to yeshiva they will be able to integrate easily—I spent my whole life in Haredi education, and when I decided to go to academia it took me three months to be able to integrate into a fairly respectable degree program. Now, you can say that’s exceptional. It’s not exceptional; there were many people with me. So it takes three months, a year, two years—show me how many years it takes someone newly religious to reach the level of a student in Hebron, so that he can find his way around those texts. It takes much longer. I can tell you: newly religious people do not get to Hebron; they need to be ten years in a yeshiva for newly religious Jews in order to understand the language of Torah. Do they have a right of exit? I’m not complaining, because no society grants a right of exit. You have to decide what you teach your children, what matters to you. What is a right of exit? A society has to impart the values, the contents that matter to it. We can open a discussion about what is more important—learning Rashi script and being able to read a text of Rabbi Akiva Eiger fluently and understand what he is saying, or whether it is more important to know math and English—and that is a very important discussion. I agree that it is an important discussion; I’m not dismissing its importance. But again, why divert this into the story of a right of exit? It’s just foolish.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The analogy to a state, again, in my view is not correct. When you want to compare the right of exit from Haredi society, you have to compare it to the right of exit from other sub-societies, not from a state. And it’s true that every society has its own patterns, and of course it does not prepare everyone for every other possible option, and therefore I’m not sure the demand should be: prepare him for the other options. On that point I’m really not entirely sure I agree. But to allow him later to go to other options—that’s already a different discussion. And on that point I do think I have criticism of Haredi society: not because it doesn’t teach them—on their terms, fine, that’s legitimate—but because they don’t allow them to choose differently when they are older; they don’t give them the tools to choose otherwise. That is problematic. Except what? That brings us here to questions of coercion regarding commandments, questions of to what extent coercion regarding commandments is relevant nowadays. And that is a halakhic, Torah discussion that has to be had, and it is less a question of whether it is right or wrong, moral or immoral, and more a question than the discourse of liberty and philosophy and values and those general discussions we are engaged in here. Personally, my position is that there really is no place for coercion regarding commandments today either. But that requires justification. In other words, it is something that seemingly stands against many sources, and I can totally understand that other people read the sources differently, and with all the identification perhaps with the basic conception of a right of exit, I cannot simply grant a right of exit because there is coercion regarding commandments.
[Speaker E] Fine, so you didn’t connect your own right to speak, and I told you, listen, every society has a passport, a proper civic state has a passport. And I also want to respond to the comparison you gave, that within three months you managed to do a preparatory program and get into a respectable degree. So it’s obvious to me that you are not average, and if we make the analogy, I think—and it took you how many years to complete a degree, and you succeeded. Fine. So I want to say that an average secular person who comes to yeshiva can also reach the level of a bachelor’s degree in Torah studies within a few years, certainly if he is more talented than average. And I want to say, as someone who is inside Israeli academia—and apropos, the only one, even though around a hundred doctoral students started with me, no one else made the journey—wow, it is very hard to make the journey to the other side, hard and almost impossible. And even I am hanging on by my fingernails. So that analogy isn’t really—it’s like a newly religious person becoming a rabbi; it’s a very, very difficult process. The same is true of making that crisscross. Now I want to talk about another point that maybe connects a bit more. I’m not a woman rabbi and I can’t talk from that halakhic place, about whether one may in effect allow a person to commit transgressions and allow him to deny his Father in Heaven; I think that’s a halakhic discussion that I can’t say much about. I do want to talk about something else. I want to perhaps mention what Binyamin Banyahu Tvila said—he brought that verse about Abraham: “that he may command his children after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.” So the Hatam Sofer, in the introduction to his responsa, says that there were many, many righteous people, like Enoch and many other great righteous figures before our father Abraham, but the Jewish tradition begins with our father Abraham. And why? The Hatam Sofer says: because he knew how to educate the children, because he knew how to keep them within, within, within the home. Okay? And we know that what he did was feed people and give them drink, and that is what we know about his hospitality; we don’t know that he was punctilious down to the tiniest detail or something like that—we know other things. So I think we need to speak a bit about that emotional place that contains children, that accompanies children, that sees them as deposits from Heaven and wants to see them as part of “that he may command… and they shall keep the way of the Lord,” as some role beyond that place, and truly to love them as parents are supposed to love children. There is that midrash about our father Abraham, whether he stretched out his hand, and whether it was natural for him to slaughter—that whole subtle rabbinic discussion of how natural or unnatural it was for him to send his hand against the child. For parents, taking out a child should be something terrible, terrible—it should be devastation to understand that perhaps this is what they need to do from a halakhic standpoint; it should be an enormous devastation. I think that’s the discussion: how can there be parents for whom it is not an enormous devastation to do something that they may think is religiously correct? Did someone say there are such parents?
[Speaker C] I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s simply that this is the discussion—the devastation, okay, that that should be the thing.
[Speaker B] Yes, we’ll stop the question here. I definitely think I would be happy to find, if we can call it that, a halakhic permit also for parents who feel devastation, but that really is a subject for the next evening. So, in conclusion, one last question—in just a few sentences, really just a few: assuming that the mountain really is hanging over our heads like a barrel, what is nevertheless the best way to enlarge the space of choice, at least in a way that does not contradict religion even before someone leaves religion? What can we—as parents, as educators, not everyone here is Haredi but as public figures—do somehow to preserve, to break the barrel and preserve its wine? Your thoughts, please.
[Speaker E] The truth is that my friend sent me something today—Michal sent me a Torah thought, and maybe I’ll read from it. I think this came up a lot in this discussion: in the end all of us have a space of choice. It is limited, also by social norms. There is no society in the world that is organized without either law or norms, and everywhere norms to one degree or another coerce. They coerce people, and it is not always easy to manage with them. But very beautifully, she brought me something from Rabbi Ashlag, the kabbalist known as the Baal HaSulam. Just a second, I want to find his wording. And he writes like this: “There is freedom for the will to choose from the outset such an environment, such books and such guides as influence him with good ideas. And if he does not do so, but is willing to enter any environment that happens to come before him, because of that he will certainly fall into a bad environment.” Okay, I won’t read you everything he writes, but basically the insight is that we will always be subject to some kind of system. So what we need to make sure of is that the system we are in is moral, humane, “the Torah of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.” That is our choice. Our choice is to choose which systems we ultimately want to subject ourselves to. And I wish all of us that we choose well, and also in the places where we are, to push a little more, a little more, so that we become better.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sorry, but that reminds me a bit of the proposal to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meaning, how will we solve it? Let’s all be rational, come to agreements, and everything will be fine and we’ll stop fighting. That’s not a solution. I mean, if you ask me what I would do if I were running everything, that’s a good question—but I’m not running everything. In other words, the question of what to do in order to advance matters is not advice to some anonymous leader who in any case won’t listen to it. So I return to the point with which I opened. A lot of people, when they talk to me, I say to them that many times my feeling is—and again I’ll shift the spotlight to the individual and not to the establishment and the rulers, let’s call it that—a lot of people, my impression from many people I talk to, is that the fear embedded in them, sunk into them, is so great that it’s unrealistic. In other words, there is too much fear. If a person would allow himself a bit more, without fear, a large part of these things—it’s not rational—a large part of these things, in the end society will digest. Society will recognize it. If you are going down a path you believe in, and you can explain it, you can explain why you think this way and why you do it, within certain boundaries, they will accept it. And people think that over every little thing they do, immediately—I don’t know what—they’ll be crucified in broad daylight before all to see. Yes, that’s not true. And if we’re talking about practical advice, then I have no advice for the heads of the Haredi establishment, but I do have advice for people: that people should do a little more of what they think, and be a little less afraid. That, little by little, I think can somewhat change the situation. Amen.
[Speaker A] I’ll try to keep the optimistic tone of those who spoke before me in my closing words. So I really think, with respect to everything we discussed here, that the real problem with what is happening today in the Haredi public—I wouldn’t call it coercion. Rather, as I said at the beginning, there is a situation of “each man does what is right in his own eyes,” and when there is a situation of “each man does what is right in his own eyes,” there is also a situation of “might makes right.” We truly find a kind of lawlessness that allows strongmen to do whatever they want, without law and without justice. And that really is a very grave situation that produces a great deal of injustice and suffering and destruction of Torah—literally destruction of Torah. And the answer to that, I think, really fits the conclusion here, because it is what is done in this study hall, what Rabbi Bezalel is trying to do. The answer to a situation of “each man does what is right in his own eyes” and to a situation of “might makes right” is Torah study. May we have Torah. Torah that tells us what is right to do and what is proper, and then we will be able to criticize social phenomena in the name of Torah and say: this is not proper. The Torah says this is not proper. This is not—it is just violence, it is just forcefulness, it is just “might makes right.” When we have more Torah, then with God’s help we will be able to stand at the foot of the mountain. Thank you very much.
[Speaker B] Thank you very much. May we merit to choose life. Yes. Blessed be God. Thank you very much. I’m handing the reins back to Rabbi Yosef Miller—where is he?