The Hareidi Option

This article originally appeared in Conversations 43 (Spring 2024). Conversations is the print journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. Conversations focuses on major themes confronting our community. www.Jewishideas.org
 

Many students from Modern Orthodox homes learn from Hareidi teachers at some point in their educational journey, an influence that plays a role in the “move to the right.” There are frequently not enough Modern Orthodox educators available, especially in schools outside of the American Northeast such as those in Memphis and Chicago. Secondly, parents often lack the ideological awareness required to identify subtler Hareidi positions held by staff members. How many parents understand hashkafic differences among yeshivot and seminaries?[1]

Beyond the above factors, some do understand the choice and make a pragmatic calculation. In the challenging times of our postmodern condition, a more Hareidi institution may be a safer bet for keeping children in the Orthodox orbit. Though the Hareidi dropout rate is larger than often acknowledged, we will assume here that Modern Orthodoxy has an inferior batting average. Understandably, parents and educators think that the Hareidi voice will keep their children frum. 

Children who turn Hareidi will still share our love of Shabbat and Talmud Torah; they will appreciate the solemnity of Neilah and the joy of Purim. They can support one of the many Hareidi hesed organizations such as those that provide meals at hospitals. If one lives in America, issues of avoiding army service and not receiving a secular high school education cease to be problems.[2] Why not adopt this strategy?

The ensuing pages will explain potential perils in this plan; indeed, no risk free options exist in this world. We will explore various Hareidi positions that many Modern Orthodox Jews will find extremely problematic. I admit at the outset that some of this essay's examples highlight more extreme ideas in the Hareidi world. To counter the critique that I am cherry picking, I offer the following responses.

I am actually not utilizing the most extreme voices such as Neturei Karta, Satmar hasidut, R. Menashe Klein, and the like. The voices I do cite are usually either significant rabbinic authorities (R. Wasserman, Hazon Ish, the Steipler, R. Dessler) or teachers at mainstream institutions (Chaim Berlin, Toras Moshe). The ideas surveyed have a place in conventional Hareidi discourse. Even if competing visions exist in the Hareidi orbit, someone joining the Hareidi world may not adopt more moderate versions. Furthermore one cannot find other Hareidi leaders explicitly criticizing the positions outlined here. Thus, the risk of our children becoming attached to a harsher Hareidi view remains quite real. 

A second critique of this essay could claim that the surveyed opinions have a basis in ma’amarei Hazal and can be justified as is. I think that this will be true for some examples and not for others. In any case, my argument is not that none of this has rabbinic backing but that these are not positions congenial to Modern Orthodox Jews. For example, one can find traditional sources stating that, after a thousand years, the edict against polygamy has run out but we would think poorly of someone who relied upon that position. 

Many of the sources involve disciples or family members citing prominent rabbis. I assert at the outset that I do not assume the accuracy of all of these stories. If the stories are true, my argument becomes stronger since it turns out that famous rabbis affirmed these ideas. If the stories are false, they still reflect a mode of discourse in the Hareidi world that goes unchallenged. Thus, the problem remains intact, albeit in less intense form. We shall now explore Hareidi attitudes to women, gentiles, Zionism, divine providence, faith, as well as other categories. This exploration reveals dramatic difference between communities.

Women

Modern Orthodox Jews resist the notion that men bear a higher ontological worth than women but this idea appears in Hareidi literature. R. Dovid Kastel, a Rosh Kollel in Yerushalayim, writes that “a big portion of a woman’s purpose is to be a helpmate; therefore, men are more fundamental than women.”[3] In his portrayal of the ideal Jewish family structure, R. Avigdor Miller, mashgiah in Yeshivas Hayim Berlin for twenty years, writes “There cannot be two kings…The wife is submissive…He is the captain, but she is the First Mate whose counsel is respected.”[4] When Rav Michel Shurkin, long time rebbe at Toras Moshe, was disappointed about the birth of a daughter, R. Moshe Feinstein consoled him by saying “what difference does it make to you if someone else raises the iluy who marries your daughter?"[5] Note that the consolation relates not to the worth of the daughter but to the cognitive capabilities of the son-in-law.

Modern Orthodox Jews would not denigrate the intellectual capabilities of women in the way that some Hareidi literature does. R. Yisrael Eliyahu Weintraub, a one-time mashgiah in Yeshivas Chayim Berlin who moved to Israel and became a close confidant of Rav Eliezer Menachem Shach, writes that “men need to develop their knowledge and wisdom” but women were not given this role; rather, they have the ability “to be fully dedicated to someone higher than them.”[6] He counsels husbands not to explain deep matters to their wives but to go with simplicity. ”A little fear of judgment never hurt anyone.”[7] R. Miller concurs. He advises women to look good for their husbands and not talk too much. “Talking and talking, you’re advertising that you have nothing in your head at all.”[8]

These themes find powerful expression in additional stories told by R. Shurkin. He relates a story from his youth in which his older sister asked their father to learn some gemara together. His father’s face turned white and then the father gave his daughter a ten dollar bill and told her to go buy a new dress. Note that he did not distract the sister with Tanakh or with works of Jewish thought but with clothing. Men study the depths of Torah whereas women like pretty dresses. R. Shurkin subsequently asked why the sister could not learn and his father told the following story. The father met a European Rav with a single daughter to whom he taught Torah. However, this learned daughter was unable to find a shiddukh since she considered every fellow too weak in learning for her. According to the elder R. Shurkin, this episode shows the perils of educating women.[9] What kind of world makes their peace with the idea that bright and educated women cannot forge a healthy relationship with a husband?           

More extreme versions of the need for tzeniut are rampant in the Hareidi world with the inability to show women’s pictures a prominent contemporary example. A book recording practices of the Steipler provides numerous examples. In his later years, he refused to read notes handwritten by women and would insist that the husbands write out the requests.[10] He would be careful not to walk between little girls in the street.[11] He cites the Hazon Ish as saying that, in the times of the Sanhedrin, they would have killed women who wear pants.[12] I think we can safely say that these sayings and practices convey an exaggerated sense of women as sexually charged individuals.

Gentiles 

R. Kastel writes that “gentiles only have seven mitzvot because they are truly nothing but only as a drop in the bucket and [exist] to help Israel.”[13] R. Miller affirms that the function of the nations is “to supply Israel with opportunities to gain Perfection.”[14] Many mainstream Hareidi works assume that gentiles are incapable of great acts. R. Itamar Schwartz’s popular Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh states that goyim never perform acts of selfless love.[15] Similarly, R. Moshe Dan Kestenbaum’s impressive Olam Ha-Middot affirms that gentile acts of compassion are truly self-serving.[16] The same attitude spills over into approaches to secular studies. If gentiles bear such little worth, they would obviously not produce great works of wisdom. Rav Shurkin tells that a discussion once broke out in his shul questioning if culture has any value. His father overheard the conversation, lifted his eyes, and said “Culture, nivul peh” and the debate ended.[17] R. Shurkin cites a Maimonidean ruling that the gentiles hate us and pursue us and, his father wondered, given such animosity, how even secular Jews could involve themselves in gentile culture.[18] The irony of basing such opposition on Rambam, who wrote that Aristotle almost achieved the level of prophecy, is lost on Rav Shurkin. I think this approach to gentiles and their wisdom is quite foreign to Modern Orthodox Jewry.

Zionism and Secularism 

Both R. Elchanan Wasserman[19] and the Steipler associate Zionist leaders with Amalek.[20] According to R. Shurkin, a yeshiva fellow considering army service consulted with R. Moshe Feinstein who cited a tradition in the name of R. Chayim Soloveitchik that the Zionists are suspect of murder and one should not enlist.[21] The Klozenberger Rebbe sketched a contrast between the rest of Jewish history and the modern era. For some nineteen hundred years of exile, great rabbis led Am Yisrael and the Jewish people did not face total destruction. Since secularists took over the leadership, we lost six million Jews in the Holocaust, Russian and American Jewry face major assimilation, and the Jews in Israel are as if in the Warsaw ghetto albeit with some weapons.[22] His account glosses over the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Chmielnicki massacres and the extensive suffering of Jews at many points in the long exile. Furthermore, granting that the Holocaust is a tragedy of greater proportions (something the Hareidi world tends to downplay), it is unfair to blame it on secular Jewish leadership without a clear causal connection.

R. Weintraub is quite extreme in this regard. He forcefully rejected an initiative to pair yeshiva students studying with Israeli soldiers in which the yeshiva fellows would learn and pray on behalf of their brethren in combat. His objections include the fact that earlier gedolim did not create such projects, that this initiative comes from a false feeling of inferiority on the part of the yeshiva students, and that he does not want any form of partnership or relationship with the secularists.[23] He cites Rav Velvel Soloveitchik’s reaction to the 1956 Sinai Campaign. 

Those who were saved were due to the merit of the bnei Torah because the merit of Torah causes wondrous salvation. Those who were killed, may the merciful one protect us, were because they (the Zionists) were involved in this and if they had not been involved, no one would have been killed. It emerges that only those killed are on the government’s account but they have no connection to the great salvation that occurred for that goes to the account of those toiling in Torah.[24]   

Let us survey the past seventy-five years of Jewish history. A Hareidi community decimated by the Holocaust was able to rebuild itself and the world of yeshivot largely by reestablishing yeshivot and communities in the land of Israel due to the Israeli government allowing them to manage their own school system with a minimum of interference, offering health care and other services, and granting them an exemption from army service while other Israelis patrolled the Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, and Jordanian borders and fought in multiple wars. Is this citation of the Griz the Hareidi reaction? Actually, we saved all the lives and you did nothing! The lack of hakarat hatov and the desecration of God’s name (observant Jews repaying generosity with animosity) are frightening. No Modern Orthodox Jew would advance such positions.

This attitude generates some revisionist history. Let us hear again from R. Miller.

The Zionists (also ‘religious Zionists”) delight in accusing the East-European Torah-leaders as “responsible” for the destruction of the Six Million, because they were not enthusiastic over the Zionist settlement of Eretz Yisrael. But it is common knowledge that the Torah-scholars founded the Jewish community in the Holy Land, and that the Zionists refused immigration for the orthodox.[25]

We appreciate a declaration about not blaming the Torah leaders but that is no excuse for blaming the Zionists. His “common knowledge” is based on Ben Hecht’s Perfidy about which Deborah Lipstadt has said “he makes claims in there about the Labor Party, about Ben Gurion, not caring about what was going on in Europe, which is, again, historians now show, has simply not stood the test of time."[26]
 

[1] See the comments of Joel B. Wolowelsky in his Letter to the Editor, The Torah U-Madda Journal 8 (1998-199), p. 329-331.

[2] Some object to my using the term "Hareidi" for the American version. If readers prefers to substitute "yeshivish" or "black hat" it will not change the basic argument.

[3] R. David Kastel, Darkei David Sotah Vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 5752) p. 313.

[4] R. Avigdor Miller, Awake My Glory: Aspects of Jewish Theology (New York, 1980), p. 339-340.

[5] R. Michel Shurkin, Meged Givot Olam (Jerusalem 5762) 1:60.

[6] R. Yisrael Elyiahu Weintraub, Iggerot Daat (5771) p. 168.

[7] Iggerot Daat, p. 200.

[8] Q and A: Thursday Nights with Rabbi Avigdor Miller Volume 3 (2014) p. 314.

[9] Meged Givot Olam  I:15-16.

[10] Orhot Rabbenu (Bnei Brak 5756), 1:197.

[11] Orhot Rabbenu 1:197.

[12] Orhot Rabbenu 1:226.

[13] Darkei David p. 314.

[14] Awake My Glory, p. 147.

[15] R. Itamar Schwartz, Bi-Lvavi Mishkan Evneh Volume 1 p. 119.

[16] R. Dan Kestenbaum, Olam ha-Middot (5772), p. 174

[17] Meged Givot Olam 1:79.

[18] R. Michel Shurkin, Meged GIvot Olam Volume 2 (Jersualem, 5775) p. 56.

[19] Kovetz Ma'amarim (Jerusalem 5765) p. 202.

[20] Orhot Rabbenu 3:147.

[21] Meged Givot Olam 1:60.

[22] Cited in ki-she-Yahadut Pogeshet Medina ed. Yedidya Stern et. al (Tel Aviv 2015). P. 238-239.

[23] R. Yisrael Eliyahu Weintraub, Einei Yisrael, (Bnei Brak 5770) p. 433-434.

[24] Einei Yisrael, p. 434.

[25] Awake My Glory, p. 151.

[26] BBC Documentary on Rudolf Kastner "Setting the Past Free." Lipstadt's comments are at the 20 minute mark.