Flipping out

This post has nothing to do with the recent discussions of the new Jewish music album by Ari Goldwag called Flippin In relative to some other song called Flippin Out. That was a raging debate a couple of weeks ago on various blogs. This has nothing to do with that debate.

I have noticed an unusual trend for which I do not have a satisfactory explanation or understanding. People come to Israel and they flip out. I am not referring to the Jerusalem Syndrome when I say "flip out". I am talking about their level of religious adherence.

Many people come to Israel and all of the sudden they do everything to the extreme.

For example, some people will eat only food items bearing the certification of the Badatz Eidah Chareidit kashrut authority. I have no problem with that. If somebody feels the Badatz is much more careful than other hechsherim and they are aware of the differences, more power to him! But let us look at what commonly happens. Somebody eats only Badatz. Yet when he goes back to America for a visit he is not careful to limit himself to the most stringent limiting hechsher and only eat food from some small satmar style hechsher.

Generally these people will eat every OU product on the shelf (I am not talking about the chalav yisrael issue here). There are dozens of hechsherim in Israel that are similar to the OU. I am not an expert in the differences between them, but all (or at least almost all) the mehadrin hechsherim in Israel have adhere to a superior level of stringencies and it is ignorance to reject the hechsher of Rabbi Landau or the Chatam Sofer organization (these are just 2 examples I picked out of a hat) when they will then be eating OU products in America (or imported from America) or other hechsherim.

We had some yeshiva boys over recently. They go to an extreme yeshiva. After having gone on a tiyul on a very hot day my wife brought them some artiks (ice-pops) to help them cool off. They saw the hechsher on the artiks was Chasam Sofer and they said no thank you. Is it ignorance? I do not think so. What can be wrong with an ice pop that has a mehadrin hechsher? We are not even talking about meat which is more complicated and would be more understandable (though I am not convinced about that either), we are talking about ice-pops that had a mehadrin hechsher, yet anything other than Badatz Eidah Charedit was unacceptable.

We have friends who only eat Badatz Eidah Chareidit. They are baalei teshuva from the US who moved to Israel and have hooked up with extreme elements in the neighborhood and now reject most things they considered normal until recently. The accept the rejection of Rabbanut Yerushalayim L'Mehadrin that Badatz supporters adhere to claiming the Jerusalem Rabbinate has been taken over by political elements. They reject the Badatz of Agudas Yisrael (Ger chassidim community) claiming they adhere to lower standards of kashrut (I cannot even imagine what those lower standards are and nobody has even been able to give me an example of a lower standard held by that hechsher, yet they reject it saying it is not as good), etc. They recently went to a restaurant in Jerusalem that had the hechshers of Jerusalem Rabbinate L'Mehadrin and Agudat Yisrael. They came back and commented how all these frum people were there and so many chassidim. They could not understand why all these people eat that hechsher (they were compromising on their own "standards" because of relatives in town they had to take somewhere and their own standards limit them to going practically nowhere). We asked them why they do not. They did not have an answer.

Another example I have in my head is schools, though this applies more to kollel families than to working families (it is much less common among working families). I know somebody who was living in Israel learning in Kollel. This person was very serious about his learning and was truly a talmid chacham. He was "a bit" extreme and the local Bais Yaakov was not good enough for his daughter. He had to send her to a different neighborhood to a school that only taught in yiddish and was considered pretty radical. That is fine, it is his (and his wife's) prerogative to choose such a school. Yet recently they left Israel to be involved in starting an "out of town" kollel in a place where there is no religious community. he will be sending hsi daughter to a school where her classmates are from families of shabbos transgressors and probably co-ed, at least until they have enough funding and ability to start their own school. So, in Israel the average frum family was not good enough to associate with but in yehupitzville you can let her associate with kids who might not even be Jewish, let alone shomer shabbos?

I know somebody else who lived in Israel for a couple of years and he learned in a very serious kollel here. This fellow was also a person very serious about learning. When in Israel they were a very extreme couple limiting who their kids could associate with and what hechsherim they would accept. A number of years ago they left Israel to be involved in an "out of town" kollel. He has been pretty successful there and has developed a nice small community, from what I hear.

What is their situation today? Their 11 year old daughter's best friend is a boy, because he is the only other frum kid in the class. In Israel he would never have considered letting her even speak to a boy, let alone go to a coed school, let alone go to a school with anyone less than the most observant in town. Yet in the USA he finds a place to live where he sends his daughter to a coed school with children who are mostly not religious. That is in addition to the fact that each of their kids have their own computer and are involved in all the latest cultural norms, when in Israel they would have been on the bandwagon looking down on anybody who did so.

I have no problem with somebody doing any of the things mentioned above. You want to send your kid to a co-educational school - go ahead. You want to eat a certain hechsher not acceptable to others - go ahead. I am a very accepting person. What disturbs me is the hypocritical aspect of the issue. In Israel all these things would be banned by such people and anybody doing those things would be looked down upon, yet they feel comfortable doing it themselves outside of Israel. That is what i do not understand.

I am not talking about people who have no choice and do the best they can. If they lived in a small community and became religious and that was the only school in town and the only kosher food in town and they could not move because he had a job he could not change or whatever, that would be understandable. But these are people who chose where they want to live. They chose to live in small communities with no or little religious infrastructure. They moved away from places where they kept (adopted) certain ideals. Why were they willing to give up on the ideals they were so strict about in Israel? Is it so easy to sacrifice your ideals on the altar of doing kiruv or making a decent kollel salary for a few years?

Those are a few examples of situations I am familiar with in which this hypocricy is clear. People who are normal and accepting in the US or wherever they come from come to Israel and reject everything but the most extreme. People come to Israel and flip out. I do not know why - maybe someone can explain it to me. Sometimes it can be written off as either ignorance, lack of thought, sheep mentality, politics or other inane reasons, but usually it is just fliiping out. Why?