From Doublethink to Dissent

An Anonymous Guest Post

Preamble: The following article was originally written and posted on my personal blog in June 2009.  I took it down for fear that my children might be thrown out of their "moderate charedi" schools - ironically, for exactly the reasons I rail against in the article itself.  In light of current events in Beit Shemesh receiving national attention, and because the original reasons for removing the post from my own blog are still applicable, I hereby submit it for anonymous re-publication on Life In Israel, with contemporary edits in brackets.

Warning and Disclaimer: This article contains several gross generalizations. I am fully aware that there are very large numbers of people, including several of my very good friends, who are going to be innocent "collateral damage" victims of these generalizations. The reader is therefore notified that, מכאן ולהבא, all generalizations made are specifically intended to exclude all those people to whom they do not apply. Read this paragraph again, then carry on. (Note to programmers: please insert a "break" statement after the word "apply". I don't want you stuck on this blog forever; you have work to do.)

Something really doesn't add up.

I've blogged a few times about [my Rosh haYeshiva], his commitment to balance, to moderation, to avoiding chumros, to just plain old common decency. I'm not going to rehash that now.

And in response to these articles, I have had overwhelmingly positive feedback, both online and offline. People wishing there were more people like [him] in the world, people looking for moderation, people searching for a voice of reason and sanity. People of all stripes of Judaism - including a good many people who dress only in black suits and white shirts with velvet or satin yarmulkes. In common parlance, that means charedim (I think we've long since lost the connotation that Yeshayahu HaNavi intended when he coined the term).

And that's what doesn't add up. To the casual observer, charedi society today seems like nothing resembling these values. Not balance, not moderation, not accommodation with the outside world, not unconditional love for all other Jews, irrespective of where they're holding, and drawing them closer - but rather extremism, rejectionism, insularity and building walls to protect themselves from those - even religious Jews - who are not exactly like them. And the shtick you have to go through to win approval! Can't send your children to this school if they have siblings in that school, or if you eat food with the wrong bada"tz hechsher, or if you aren't in full time learning, or if your wife wears/doesn't wear a sheitel... if they don't go to this school then they won't get into that yeshiva, they won't get a good shidduch, blah blah blah.

So if the society is full of shtick, and the people living in that society are telling me that they are against the shtick, then who exactly is running the society, who is making the rules, and why are people complying with them?

I'm currently re-reading Natan Sharansky's excellent book, The Case For Democracy. In this book, Sharansky describes his experience of living inside the "fear society" of the Soviet Union, and applies the lessons of how the USSR was destroyed to the Arab world today, making his case for how to transform today's "fear societies" into "free societies". He describes three kinds of people in a fear society: True Believers, Dissidents and Doublethinkers. The True Believers (TBs) are the ones who really believe that the society they have created is a good thing, and they are the ones who prop it up, who proselytize and brainwash, and who enforce compliance. The dissidents are the ones who are opposed to the regime and who are unafraid to speak their minds. And the doublethinkers (DTs) are the ones who don't really, in their heart of hearts, agree with the regime, but they are afraid of the consequences of non-compliance, and therefore toe the party line and do as they're told. Very importantly, Sharansky points out, it is nearly impossible to tell what proportions of TBs or DTs are in the population in a fear society, because they are indistinguishable by their actions.

I won't go so far as to say that charedi society today is like the USSR or today's Arab states, but l'havdil elef havdolos, there are certain similarities, particularly in the "town square" test: can you walk into the middle of a public area and loudly proclaim your views, no matter what they are, without feeling threatened by violent retribution? You certainly can't drive through RBS-Bet with an Israeli flag on your hood, nor can a woman wear culottes in certain charedi neighborhoods without the threat of being physically attacked.  Compliance with other chumros may not be enforced by the threat of gulag or summary execution, but if you get on the wrong side of the "tznius police", they can make your life a misery in other ways.

And however watered down the analogy may be, I think we also have here the same categories of TBs, DTs and dissidents. Judging by the responses I've had to my previous articles, it looks like there are a lot of DTs out there. DTs who wear the uniform, not because they think it's a good thing, but because it's what they're expected to do. DTs who look the other way when the TBs get violent, not because they agree with the violence, but because they're afraid to speak out. DTs who go along with all the shtick of chumros upon chumros, not because they want to bring themselves closer to Hashem, but because they fear if they don't they will be ostracized, excluded and rejected.

I personally live on the fringes of charedi society, and despite many of the negative things I have written about here, I identify strongly with the charedi commitment to Judaism, to Torah, to taking our obligations seriously and living Jewish in the fullest sense, rather than tolerating our religion and finding compromises that allow us to live comfortably despite it. I have a lot of friends and contacts who are fully in the charedi world, shtick and all. I'm not sure I know any True Believers at all, and if I do, I can count them on one hand. The vast majority are normal, balanced people, who want to achieve closeness to Hashem through personal, internal struggle, not the superficial narishkeit of how long their tzitzis are.

DTs often think there's no harm in accepting chumros, if they serve their purposes of being accepted into charedi society in whatever context. I'm coming here to tell you that yes, chumros do harm. Motzi laaz is a big one - casting negative aspersions on people who are keeping the basic halacha. What about yuhara - arrogant pride that you're doing things "better" than everybody else? Derech eretz kadma latorah - if you go into somebody's house, are you going to embarrass your host by refusing to eat his (perfectly kosher) food because you hold by a "stricter" hechsher?  Show me the chumra and I'll show you the inherent kula. Not that all chumros are bad, but they have to be weighed up (see Mesillas Yesharim Chapter 20); it's not necessarily, nor even often, the safest route to be more machmir.

In summary, this is a call to all charedi doublethinkers to become dissidents, after a fashion. Obviously don't throw everything out - but don't reflexively accept the shtick that the True Believers are imposing on you. If you think it's good, then do it. If you don't see the value in it, don't be intimidated. Evaluate the gain of a chumra versus the loss. If you hear people saying "Daas Torah" or "The Gedolim Say", run a mile - because as one senior Rabbi told me, that's a sign of insecure people trying to squash debate. Rule of thumb: the gedolim didn't say it, and even if they did, it's a quote taken out of context or patched together by askanim with an agenda, who asked misleading questions to get the answer they wanted. Here's an example of that.

If enough charedim have the courage to dissent and refuse to comply with the shtick and narishkeit, then just maybe we might start seeing a transformation within that society, towards a gentler, kinder, more balanced environment - truly a society of charedim lidvar Hashem.