Benjamin,

If they gave you a choice between Haredi children and Ha-reiidi children, which would you choose?

Regards, Moshe “the questioner” Goloventzitz

Rabbi, the question is very well defined; it’s the necessary conclusion following the answer to Dvir (again about Ha-reidim…)… If I’m mistaken, I’d be happy for an explanation… ?

Benjamin,
if you had the choice between a kind-hearted, innocent Ha-reiidi child (for example, from a moderate Ha-reiidi school of thought) and an educated idol worshipper in the full sense of the term (someone who joins every Harry Krishna thing)

which would you choose?

School of thought*
Joins a cult*

[Rational, I think you can rely on the readers to make the obvious emendations on their own, based on adjacent keys on the phone and autocorrect.]

Rational (relatively), I deliberately chose to phrase it the way I did in the question. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference between a Ha-reiidi cult and the Hare Krishna cult… given a situation where the only choice is between secularity, where there’s room for everyone—the right and the mistaken alike—and Ha-reiidism, where only the mistaken find their place, my choice would be to leave all options on the table, that is, to choose secularity.
As someone who has lived for decades among Ha-reidim, both from the inside and from the outside, and as someone who knows secularity from childhood, I feel I have standing to speak when it comes to choosing between the two options. I absolutely understand that to an outside observer, someone who has never been in secularity, my choice sounds completely absurd—but it seems to me that feeling is rooted in unfamiliarity.

How do you know I never lived a secular lifestyle?
Of course I didn’t mean to challenge you, only to understand your point of view, which is a bit strange to me—after all, the Ha-reiidi does not violate the prohibition of idolatry, whereas a member of an idolatrous cult does. I admit I’ve never lived among Ha-reidim, so I can’t really understand where that revulsion comes from, even toward moderate Ha-reiidi circles. And apparently, from your point of view, they’re just as far from the truth as secular people.

Rational (relatively), there is a big difference between a religious person who lived for a certain period of life in a secular lifestyle and someone born into that reality. To live a secular lifestyle is a taste of the forbidden fruit, but in essence, in the mode of thinking, nothing changes; a formerly religious person who went off the religious path remains that by definition forever. I’ve lived among moderate Ha-reidim for almost 20 years; before that I lived among followers of the Chazon Ish. In practice, there is no difference between one kind of Ha-reiidism and another; the error is the same error. Secular people are certainly closer to the truth than Ha-reidim…

Benjamin,
if you prefer a secular person over a Haredi person, that basically implies that the value of wisdom is greater in your eyes than the value of serving God, because you prefer a person who is not committed to God’s will over a person who is committed to God’s will. Think about it.

Have a good week, Shai. The question was not about preference but about a single possible choice; I chose the less bad option.
I do not see Ha-reidim as more committed to God’s will than secular people.
I wrote in the past that the Ha-reiidi cult is perceived by me as based on satisfying social, cultural, and psychological needs and nothing more. A person who doesn’t feel a lack in one of the above needs can forgo belonging to the cult.

Benjamin, I’ll comment on one point in what you said, and after that I’ll leave the discussion (I’m not saying you’re not allowed to reply to me; I’m simply saying that after my remarks I won’t see a need to continue discussing).

Even the most fundamentalist Ha-reidim—and you say, from your acquaintance with different shades of this society, that there’s no difference between types of Ha-reidim; I don’t know if that’s true, but you certainly have more experience than I do in the Ha-reidi sphere—I personally don’t think that just because a certain group’s ideology is extreme, distorted, or illogical, that means the members of that group don’t really believe in their principles or in what they say, and that everything stems from complicated inner psychology. It seems very odd to me to assume that the Chazon Ish, the Satmar Rebbe, and their students, for example, didn’t really believe in what they wrote, did, and said, and that in fact their whole purpose was to establish some social or inner psychological need.

Think about it: even if your opponent seems delusional, detached from reality, and even wicked to you—that doesn’t mean he has no opinion of his own, no positions of his own, and no worldview of his own.

Benjamin,
I’ve been following your questions on the site for some time, and I don’t see that for you “all the options are on the table,” as you put it… everything is very one-sided, one-dimensional, no less than your brainwashed Ha-reiidi brothers…
I’ve known many secular people in whom brainwashing was evident, and a cheap, hypocritical “ideology” full of contradictions, so your generalization is bizarre. Among other things, that’s why Rabbi Michi said your question isn’t well-defined.

Beyond that, you raised a few serious questions for me.

Have you never known Haredim who keep the commandments for reasons that are not psychological?
Would you not be able to educate your child, as a Haredi, to serve God in a genuine way? Are you really so certain in advance of your own educational failure?
And if it is indeed possible to soften his “psychological needs,” wouldn’t it be preferable that along the way he also keep the commandments written in the Torah? (As is well known, that is what God wanted from us—unless you don’t believe that, in which case the whole discussion has no basis to begin with.)

Yosef, I do not dispute that there may be Haredim who keep the commandments for reasons that are not psychological, etc. My claim is that belonging to the Ha-reiidi cult as such stems from social, cultural, and psychological motives, and not because of some theology connecting commandment observance with membership in the cult.
It may be that I would have succeeded in educating the child to serve God from within belonging to the cult, but that service of God is limited and has only technical characteristics. In fact, it is a completely different service of God—a mistaken service of God, one in which I see no value at all.
How can a Jew even serve God while handing his intellect over to another authority, that is, to the authority of the “great ones of the generation”?
As for your last remark: certainly, from my point of view one should keep the commandments. Psychological needs should be met by any permitted activity, like any normal person; the same goes for cultural and social needs. Is there no culture besides Ha-reiidi culture? Is there no society besides Ha-reiidi society?
Belonging to a cult solves problems for people who were problematic to begin with—people who have built-in flaws in their personality. The cult comes to answer a failure in satisfying needs, and does not serve as a solution for normal need-fulfillment for those who are not deficient.

Benjamin,
you claim that certainly there are other kinds of people, and then go back to your original claim that there aren’t…
There are broad parts of the Haredi sector that do not “hand over their intellect to another authority.” There are many who do not automatically obey the great ones of the generation.
Their advantage as part of the Haredi public is that, as a Haredi, the chance that your son will not keep the commandments—and likewise the future generations that come from you—is much smaller. Go and see the percentages of people in the general society who have no clue about Judaism, and get back to me.
So you sacrifice a small part of “inauthentic” commandment observance (of course, that’s your unsupported theory… but let’s leave that aside…)
so that they will keep commandments at all. Better that there be a tiny authentic part than none at all.

Yosef, perhaps you didn’t read my words carefully. I didn’t claim that certainly there are other kinds of people, not at all. I wrote, “I do not dispute that there may be”; maybe there are and maybe there aren’t. The only certainty is regarding the filling of the lacks mentioned above, similar to the way Christianity operated and influenced the pagan and deficient masses at the beginning of its formation.
From my point of view, the value of commandment observance as accepted in the regions of Ha-reiidism is null and void compared to the enormous loss that comes from mental fixation/stagnation. It is better to sacrifice everything if only for the chance that a genuine recognition regarding commandment observance will develop in a person—not a recognition compelled by belonging to a cult, but a full recognition of what is incumbent upon him as a member of the chosen people.
Certainly, the recognition of a person from the general society regarding the value of Torah and the commandments is far greater than the recognition of the Ha-reiidi, a recognition that is limited from the outset by the boundaries of sectarian dogma.

A. You present Haredism as a cult, while many fine people don’t ask a rabbi about anything, and many others even recoil from that mode of conduct and behave in a completely independent way.
B. Any person can leave this “cult” (which means it isn’t a cult…). Many remain in this group while understanding that this is the truth. A cult member too can discover the truth. (You believe that commandment observance is the truth, so can one discover it only if one is outside the group that keeps the commandments?)
C. Presumably, a person who keeps commandments out of stagnation is more likely one day to keep commandments properly than a person who is as far as east is from west from the very concept of commandment.
D. Indeed, the question remains undefined. Do Haredim do everything out of fixation—even not a single commandment properly? Even a small part done out of genuine faith is better than the zero he would do on the secular side. (It is important to understand that the fixation you speak of—the main damage is human, as a person, not as a Jew. Among other things, you are dealing here with fulfilling the will of God.)

A) Those who do not ask rabbis and recoil from such conduct are not Ha-reidim.
B) See at length: Arthur J. Deikman, Treating Former Members of Cults.
C) From life experience (personal and not only personal), this is completely mistaken; reality proves otherwise. You’re welcome to ask anyone who belonged to secularity in the past.
D) Indeed, as I wrote at the outset: a person who does not keep commandments and is not scarred by Ha-reiidi scars—a person who may even be an incomplete Jew—is tens of times preferable in my eyes to a Jew scarred with unhealable scars that prevent even the possibility of basic human wholeness.

Of course there are a few who manage to break free from the bear hug, but these are few. To illustrate the point: how many former Ha-reidim do you know who currently keep commandments?

The definition of Haredim does not depend on listening to rabbis in any way; it is mainly communal belonging.
I’ll pose you a riddle: a Satmar Hasid, a Chabad Hasid, a Lithuanian yeshiva Haredi, and a Neturei Karta member walked down the street—what is their shared definition? Haredim. Do they have anything in common regarding the ideology of their rabbis? After all, it differs essentially and astonishingly radically—so why are they all under the same umbrella?

By the way, how many formerly religious people who went off the religious path do you know who keep commandments? This is an issue that was discussed here in the past: for the most part there is a general abandonment, for some reason. That says a lot about the people who leave, before it says anything about the public they left. (This exists in every sector.)

I didn’t understand the connection between the ideology of Haredi rabbis and Haredism.
Your remark about formerly religious people who left religion is unclear to me: how and why, according to your view, would a person who is not religious keep commandments? Obviously he wouldn’t keep them!!!
One must distinguish between Ha-reiidism and religiosity. Ha-reiidism built some additional and unnecessary story on top of commandment observance, and therefore according to your view it is unclear why a former Ha-reiidi wouldn’t remain “at the very least” religious.
By the way, from my point of view this is no difficulty. The false identity that Ha-reiidism creates with religiosity is a complete fiction and not something required by reality—a fiction that drives many fine people out of their minds and out of their religion.

You pointed out that a person who is not attentive to rabbis is not Haredi. And I brought you proof that listening to rabbis is not one of the criteria for determining what Haredism is. The line connecting all Haredim is not listening to rabbis (a large part of the Religious Zionists also listen to rabbis).

What I meant to say is that usually, if a person abandons one essential thing in his upbringing, he already abandons everything. This is common in many religions and sectors, and not specifically among Haredim (in the past this was even expressed in a change in political outlook).

In any case, the point is different. Your argument is extremely sweeping and very problematic. It generalizes entire communities. And it also generalizes individual human beings, who in your view keep alllll the commandments not out of genuine faith.
In my opinion, in any case it is better to educate toward something God commanded than the opposite, whatever convoluted and strange interpretation there may be. That is the bottom line, and here I’m ending the discussion.

*who is not attentive to rabbis
**what Haredism is

We will return to you, tractate “Ha-reiidism,” and you will return to us. Our mind is on you, tractate “Ha-reiidism,” and your mind is on us. We will not forget you, tractate “Ha-reiidism,” and you will not forget us—not in this world and not in the world to come… Heaven have mercy.