Q&A: Formerly Religious Zionists
Formerly Religious Zionists
Question
Don’t you think that if there is such a high percentage of formerly religious people from the Religious Zionist world, that means there is something seriously wrong with the education / ideology of Religious Zionism?
Doesn’t it mean we need to be more conservative? Maybe the solution is actually to be more liberal and open, but the main point is that we need to examine ourselves and see whether we are making a mistake.
Answer
Of course. Who disagrees with that? The problem is not only the result; there are problems in the matter itself as well (even if there were no formerly religious people at all).
I’ll just note that I’m not sure there are more formerly religious people in Religious Zionist education than in Haredi education. It’s just that in the Haredi world there are quite a few formerly religious people who wear a frock coat and sash until the end of their lives. Some of them are not even aware that they are formerly religious (they don’t allow themselves to admit it to themselves). Beyond that, despite all the pressures and brutal coercion that takes place in the Haredi world, there are quite a few formerly religious people there in the usual sense too, meaning those who left completely (I understand there are thousands every year).
In general, it’s hard to make statistics about a phenomenon that happens in secret, is denied, and is forbidden to talk about. It’s worth watching the film “In Secret,” which was broadcast last week on Channel 1, about the phenomenon of coerced Haredim.
Discussion on Answer
First of all, nobody knows the scope of the phenomenon. Certainly not the Haredim. They’re the last ones to know, and of course they have an interest in minimizing it. But beyond that, as I wrote, there are various kinds of coerced people.
I don’t think that’s correct, among Haredim you’ll simply go on living religiously, because you’re not allowed to entertain all kinds of heretical thoughts and nonsense.
At most you’ll work and chat in the coffee corner; there’s no shortage of atmosphere for keeping yourself occupied.
If you want to say that if they were in their Religious Zionist equivalent they’d be very “lite,” that may be true, but at the end of the day right now they’re in the Haredi public, so they’re like a reasonable-plus Religious Zionist.
So if that’s the case, isn’t Haredi education preferable? 🙂
By the way, in Haredi places in my opinion the coercion is much more sophisticated than just on the personal level; it’s also on the family level. For example, it’s not clear they’ll accept your children if you have or do certain things… and there’ll be problems with matchmaking, etc. It’s indirect pressure.
To Y,
But in the end it’s not worth much. What kind of World to Come is that for someone who never committed a transgression in his life because he was afraid of the society around him? It’s like someone who stayed in bed all his life so as not to commit a transgression—but not for the sake of Heaven (and that’s fine: “If one sat and did not commit a transgression, it is as though he performed a commandment”), but because he was afraid of the society he was born into. What truth is there in that? Does the Holy One, blessed be He, want that? I’m not sure you can even call that commandment observance. If inwardly he doesn’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, what meaning does his refraining from transgressions have at all? And likewise, what does it mean that he’s not allowed to entertain heretical thoughts? It’s like asking someone not to think about a white elephant. From that moment on he’ll think about it all the time. Even if during prayer he rocks hard and squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that wrinkles form around them.
But this whole discussion is irrelevant to reality. All these threats can work on undeveloped people, like children. Once those people develop, the social threat won’t hold up. That’s exactly what happened with the entire secular public. After all, it itself is a product of the old Jewish education (which the Haredim claim is their education). That education too taught separation from the Gentiles and from enlightenment. It didn’t work. People grow up, and scare tactics don’t hold for long.
In short, a truly modern Religious Zionist person, acting with awareness, could never go back and become this kind of Haredi. He’d go crazy. Teenagers do not normally go back to being children. So this whole discussion is empty. The Haredim simply think everyone else is like them. But that is not so. The others (the Ashkenazim who are not Hardal) are more developed people than they are, and Haredi education would never even occur to them. And Rabbi Michi is an example of such a mistake. He tried to be clever and send his children to Haredi education, and it blew up in his face. If someone is unhappy with the level of religiosity in Religious Zionist institutions, then let him teach his children at home.
Whoever can explain to me Emanuel’s obsession with trying to yank Rabbi Michi by the sidecurls, I’ll pass him a half-finished bottle of body wash through a narrow crack that will open in the shower door.
Emanuel, I can only sign my name under your words (including the ones about me).
As a student in Haredi institutions, I lost my faith and stopped observing the Sabbath and Yom Kippur.
That didn’t stop me from continuing to study very diligently in kollel for a few more years.
To The Most Beautiful Girl in Kindergarten,
I’ll explain the obsession (and I’ll forgo the body wash if it has SLS and phthalates).
One of the things that drives me crazy about the Left is their approach that when they fail to realize their ideology, they smear the leader of the opposing camp (and don’t accept that he was chosen by the right-wing camp or by Likud voters. It’s like their attitude toward Iran and Russia: there the regime is guilty, not the people), and then they start engineering consciousness in their self-unaware way. And when I see someone who is supposed to be critical (Rabbi Michi) getting swept up by that brainwashing and consciousness-engineering, and because of what seems to me his instinct for provocation joins them (“Look, I’m not like everyone else. I’m special. I want journalists to get punched in the face, and I’m also not like every ordinary right-winger. I hate Netanyahu and Trump too, like the ‘intelligent’ crowd”)—and I know he got swept up because he uses the same terminology they do about those figures—then it makes me think evil is taking over the world. I can somehow deal with Hitler existing (I can fight him), but Bernie Sanders and the media are impossible for me. As the Kotzker Rebbe said, he prefers wicked people to fools, because wicked people do harm and know they are doing harm, while fools do harm and think they are helping (those fools are the simpletons in the Book of Proverbs). I need to go back and read chapters 7 and 73 in Psalms to preserve my sanity.
To the Rabbi,
Regarding what I wrote to the girl, I hope he’ll take it in good spirit, because I’m speaking from the heat of the heart. And by the way, regarding what I said about him: I read here an old article of his from the period of his semi-Haredi phase—the article: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%AA%D7%92%D7%95%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%90%D7%94
He slandered Modern Orthodoxy there (according to his view at the time: close to Conservatives or Reform). I, as someone from Gush, and even though I don’t see myself as a typical Gush person, if there even is such a thing, never could stand statements like that. And that’s also exactly what I can’t stand now in the general world media. I see what happened to the rabbi with his son in the Haredi yeshiva as a kind of punishment from Heaven (really a punishment from the earth, in the sense of “pride goes before destruction”) for the condescension he had back then toward that public, whose left edge he is now almost at (the edge being the people of the Religious Kibbutz movement and Torah Va’Avodah loyalists). So it’s worth learning from the past and not making the same mistake again. As for me, I never argue about Bibi and Trump (except for what happened here with the rabbi). I just run away from it. I know how to identify someone who is trying to incite me and tell me what I’m supposed to think, regardless of any facts in what he says (there aren’t any. Those people are never interested in the truth. They’re busy selling their sociology and playing Don Quixote, the fighter for justice against the enemies of democracy—I hope I myself am not sinning here in that same “justice warrior” way. It’s a typically idle Jewish profession and pretty popular today). And when everyone tries to do that to me, I keep my position that when the discussion is contaminated, I have no opinion on the matter (as with the issue of the effectiveness of conversion therapy for homosexuals). Other than the opinion that those trying to do that to me are not good people—which is firsthand knowledge. You can identify it easily.
Moses, why study in kollel if you don’t believe?
With God’s help, the fifteenth of Kislev 5781
To Emanuel—many greetings,
A great thing the friend of the most beautiful girl in kindergarten taught us when she said: “When she smiles, I smile too”: a smile is contagious. When “the most beautiful girl in kindergarten” smiles, all her friends smile with her too.
The lesson to be learned from this is that instead of souring and frowning at a reality that is not as we would expect, we can with a bit of a smile, with a bit of a pleasant countenance, sweep the downtrodden along with us. So why complain when you can uplift?
Not for nothing does Isaiah describe the future redeemer, who will redeem his people from the flood of troubles, as a child: “For a child has been born to us, a son has been given to us, and the authority shall rest upon his shoulder… Of the increase of authority and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness…”
A child’s strength lies in his being full of innocence and hope, “unstained by the poison of despair,” and with that power he will draw the world toward the good. So, “Put on a smile, it’s all for the good” 🙂
With blessings, Pedatzur Fishel Peri-Gan
To P. Tz.,
Where I’m from in Gush we say, “Put on a stern donkey-face, everything is complicated”…..
Good for you, but I really am despairing. “Through the wrath of the Lord of Hosts the land is darkened, and the people become as fuel for the fire…” And true, chronologically this comes before the prophecy about Immanuel, but these are the birth pangs of the Messiah—and neither they nor their reward do I want (“Let him come, but let me not see him”). And what can I tell you—after Trump lost, and seeing the spirit of madness of the Left covering the land, and after Rabbi Michi too got swept up after them—it seems maybe God really has forsaken the land, or at least is doing everything to cause its inhabitants to stumble (the Zionists)… and I wish I’m wrong.
With the blessing of Immanuel
To Emanuel—many greetings,
When the Left goes wild, that’s actually a good sign. It means they’re bitter and frustrated because they’re not in power, so should we sink into depression because of their frustration? I’d start getting nervous when they begin to smile 🙂
I’m not saying we should be euphoric. We have some serious problems and we need to think carefully about how to deal with them, but sinking into despair prevents coping. When we look at what troubles the Jewish people went through and came out of strengthened, we draw strength to deal confidently with our own problems, which are far less than what our ancestors went through in exile and subjugation.
As Alterman said: “Do not put on glasses, neither gloomy nor joyful; look with your eyes, with open eyes. The bad must be seen in order to fight it. The good must be preserved in order to be comforted by it.” When one confronts problems out of faith and joy, one can move the world.
With blessings, Yaron Elimelech Zehavi-Zorkin
Trump still hasn’t definitively lost; maybe his appeal to the Great ‘Bye-Din’ will bring him victory? 🙂
To the esteemed questioner: it was predictable that your question would turn into a comparison between the Haredi public and the Religious Zionist public regarding the number of formerly religious people, or in Haredi jargon, “dropouts.”
A correct method? There’s no such creature.
A Haredi method? A Haredi outlook? There’s no such creature.
Can you group together Satmar Hasidism and Chabad? Breslov and Lithuanian Bnei Brak? The Jerusalem Faction and Ateret Yisrael Yeshiva? Vizhnitz Hasidism and Hebron Yeshiva???
All of these call themselves Haredi and are completely different from one another in their outlook and in their service of God.
I’ll conclude with the Steipler’s answer to Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Neria of blessed memory (the son of…) when he was a young man in Yeshivat HaNegev (it appears in the memorial book Afik BaNegev).
Rabbi Neria asked the Steipler whether it was permissible to follow Rabbi Kook’s path, and the Steipler answered that he was not familiar with his path, but that he (the Steipler) does all his deeds according to the Shulchan Arukh.
With God’s help, the fifteenth of Kislev 5781
Education is not a simple matter, because there is no “master key” that opens all hearts. Every person and every youth has the unique path suited to him, and therefore the sage said: “Train a youth according to his way”—the way unique to him.
There are people for whom openness is good, and broadening horizons immunizes them against the spirit of the times; and there are people for whom openness to different outlooks brings embarrassment and confusion, and they thirst for clear and unequivocal guidance. Some are nourished by intellectual analysis, and some are enlivened by the feeling of the heart. Some are people of spirit and some are people of action.
Therefore, even within one family there may be polar differences between the sons. One asks in order to deepen, while his brother asks defiantly; one asks out of curiosity, and one accepts everything innocently without questions. And each one must be given the response that suits him.
A “datlash” need not reach the state of being “formerly religious.” We should understand in advance that the wavering young man is “religious, suited to a different path,” and we should look for the path in the service of God that fits him and gives life to his soul.
With blessings, Pedatzur Fishel Peri-Gan
From the same generator that produced the brilliant coinage “datlash” = “religious, suited to a different path,” I also heard another one: “dati” = “bizarre childish opinion,” and I do not know which of these is the better one, this or that, or whether both together are good, “for if a man live many years, let him rejoice in them all,” let him learn, and in the end his mouth is foolish madness, and a second helping of ruin and grief will fill the cup from there and from there.
With God’s help, the fifteenth of Kislev 5781
Indeed, in religious thinking there is a combination of the ability to wonder and ask piercing questions together with the simple faith of a child who trusts his parents and teachers. The believer asks the hard questions, but his trust in the Torah and its sages brings him to the insight that every question has a deep answer, and even if at the moment I do not understand, there is a strong chance that later the matters will become clear and explained.
With blessings, Pedatzur P.F.G., may he live long and well
From what I understand, the phenomenon of the coerced is actually very small, and the secular world likes to make a big deal out of it as if it’s all the Haredim.