repealing a chumrah

I often hear the complaint that new chumros are instituted fairly frequently and usually with great fanfare. If someone does not follow the new chumrah, he is often socially made to feel inadequate at best and barely frum at worst.

The follow up to these chumros are that often we find a situation where the chumrah hits the haredi street running and takes off like wildfire. Yet, after a period of time, be it a week or two or even a couple of months, it suddenly dies down and is forgotten about by all other than a few people.

Take for example the wigs made from Indian hair scandal from a couple of years ago. The pronouncement that sheitels should not be worn until the situation is clarified hit the street running. People did not wait for lists to be made or decisions to be announced. Rather they felt it heinous to hold on to possible avoda zara in their homes and ran to burn them in the streets. It was not just a rumor. I witnessed my neighbor burning his wife's sheitels.

If you (or your wife) continued wearing your sheitel at that time, you could forget about your daughter getting any shidduch dates. Your level of commitment to frumkeit was seriously questioned. Forget about applying for your daughter to get into a Bais Yaakov.

Yet, a few months later, after much money was wasted by poor avreichim burning their wives sheitels in an expression of religious haste, no word of the problem can be heard. Nobody made an announcement to not burn sheitels. Just the opposite, we heard from the most fanatic circles that it is assur to hold the sheitel in your house and it is a mitzva to burn, ala u'viarta ha'ra mi'kirbecha. Yet when everything was declared to be ok did we hear any big announcements? no. it just died down and a few lists were published that included practically every sheitel on the market and that was the end of the story. I still know people who have sheitels they put away in the closet weaiting to hear what to do with them and they are still in the closet because they never heard the follow up.

That is one example, but haredi society is rife with examples similar to the above.

The common complaint people have is that we always hear the chumrah but nobody talks about cancelling it. Who wants to cancel a chumrah? Nobody wants that on their name because they look less haredi.

I think it is not a situation limited to the haredi world, nor one limited to the chumrah phenomenon.

Rob in his post here commenting on a book about fads and their cycles notes a very similar experience.

He says fads are quick to be adopted. It is the sign of living in a society that believes that change can make things better. It means the society embraces new ideas. Society believes in improvement and is willing to therefore try new ideas.
And when it dies down with no fanfare it is because nobody likes to announce their failures. The fad at its beginning is something new and exciting. By the time it does down, it is not interesting to anybody. It is old news.

Sounds eerily similar to the frum world. The only difference is that the frum world today is open to change, but only change l'chumrah, which is not always for the better. We almost never hear today of a change in frum society that makes life easier or better for people.