Q&A: Definition of Haredi
Definition of Haredi
Question
More than once you’ve said that you don’t identify yourself with any group ideologically, since your views do not align with any group. I thought that this approach is not correct. After all, every group includes many individuals who do not think exactly like the group they belong to, yet we still define them (and it seems to me that you do too) as Haredi or religious, as the case may be. Because in the end there are a few threshold conditions that determine whether a person belongs to a certain group. I’ll give the Haredim as an example, since I see myself as part of that group, even though I disagree with it on many issues: in my opinion, what defines me as Haredi is first and foremost the Haredi institutions in which my children study. And this is not a circular argument (I’m Haredi because I’m in a Haredi institution, and it’s a Haredi institution because Haredim study there, etc.), since a Haredi institution aims at and educates toward a full Haredi ideology—with regard to the state, with regard to conservatism, and so on.
That is, there is an essential difference between the definition of Haredi-ness and the definition of a Haredi person. Haredi-ness includes within it an entire doctrine of agendas, but a Haredi person is defined as Haredi the moment he sees himself as more affiliated with an institution that educates toward those values than with another institution that educates toward different values. And in reality this is indeed the case—a young man who grew up in Haredi society, got married, and sent his children to study in a non-Haredi institution would be regarded by the public as “less Haredi,” not only sociologically but also ideologically.
There may perhaps be another threshold condition for defining someone as Haredi, namely wearing a black kippah on his head, but my impression is that usually these two conditions appear together.
I’d be interested to hear your opinion on the matter. Is defining a person as Haredi a fiction, or is there something real to it?
Answer
This is a semantic question and therefore not interesting. Define Haredi however you want and classify me accordingly. These classifications don’t interest even my late grandmother.
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t write that I don’t deal with definitions. I wrote that I don’t deal with semantics. In the question here there is no right and wrong. Define it however you like, and derive the conclusions from that. With regard to poetry, the problem is the opposite: not choosing between several definitions, but finding one coherent and exhaustive one. I assume that in that, my grandmother actually could have been interested.
By the way, there were 7–8 columns there, if I remember correctly. My grandmother apparently showed quite a lot of interest.
Grandma is the best. I just didn’t quite understand what the difference is between a definition and semantics. That itself is what I was trying to say—that there is a right and wrong here. It seems to me that with regard to poetry too, you began by saying that it’s obvious to everyone that there is a text considered poetry and one considered literature. Here too, it’s obvious to everyone that there is a Haredi person and a non-Haredi person, and I tried to explain that rationally.
I explained. The difference is that here there are several definitions (some of which were even mentioned in your remarks), and there is no right or wrong. We’ve exhausted it.
So the 4 columns you wrote on the definition of poetry would have interested Grandma, of blessed and saintly memory?