My Feminist Response to the Haredi Marriage Crisis

With all of my opposition to modern feminism, it is easy to lose track of the fact that I am a feminist if of a nineteenth-century John Stuart Mill School. I believe that human beings can better themselves through reason, as they pursue their own good in their own way. It helps if they are left to themselves and are not shackled by tyrannical governments and societies. Since women make up a little more than fifty percent of the human race, this applies to women as well. Women need to be brought in as equal partners in society and government and this can most effectively be done through education and suffrage. I do not recognize the concept of "women's rights," only human rights. Also, since I deal with rights solely within the context of protection from direct physical harm, I have no interest in waging war against "patriarchy" or deconstructing "male" modes of thinking. Feminists would be correct in criticizing me for employing a distinctively Enlightenment/male discourse and attempting to shove women into it, thus making it impossible for women to ever truly be "equal" in its most extreme sense. I do not care; what I offer is a logically consistent system and if women do not wish to take it they are free to try their luck with traditional patriarchy.

My nineteenth-century feminism was awakened by a recent article I saw on the Haredi website Cross Currents, "Avoiding Corruption in Shidduchim," by Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum, which attacked the current manifestation of marriage dowries within the Haredi world. Rabbi Rosenblum argues that the practice of insisting that the prospective in-laws of Haredi men be expected to support their future sons-law while they sit and study in order to gain their daughters a respectable match creates its own back-door materialism, as marrying the girl from the wealthiest possible family becomes a status symbol. I thought it was a very good article. That being said, I was struck by the fact that the article and subsequent comments all focused on the boys vs. in-laws dynamics. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that there are young women involved here, being asked to make life-altering decisions in support of a system that relegates them to if not second class status then at least to secondary roles. So I put up the following comment:

Something should be said here about the situation of women. I think that it is interesting that women remain passive figures even at your hands, Rabbi Rosenblum. I was just talking to a married a Haredi woman about her decision to become a speech therapist and asked her what her goals were in growing up. She responded that her goal in life was "to be a Mommy." A very wonderful girl, but there are lots of people who want to be mommies and many who might even make good mommies. Why should any bochur [young man] take someone simply because they will make a good mommy, unless this woman can support him by becoming a speech therapist or has a father who can support him? Change has to start with women valuing themselves as individuals, beings with unique talents who cannot simply be replaced like a spare part.

You can say that I was channeling Mary Wollstonecraft in seeing women's equality as starting with women taking control over their lives. To be fair, there is even here a bit of the modern feminist in that I am asking a modern question; what does it mean when one party is the activist initiator and the other remains passive to be acted upon? One can also pick up from my comment that, however I may like individual Haredi women as people, I have little respect for them as beings capable and deserving of the sort respect and equal treatment that the Haredi world is not giving them.

Cross Currents took down my comment. I guess suggesting that women need to come forth as individuals in control of their own lives is too radical for some people. I can get used to the idea. Mothers lock up your daughters for I am coming with my radical feminist doctrines. I offer them the chance to be people and even to be respected for it.

Would Haredim Make Good Terrorists? Some Thoughts on Radical Religious and Violent (Part II)

 (Part I)

It occurred to me that this argument, that successful terrorist organizations require agents with high defection constraints and this is best accomplished by recruiting candidates with long histories of service to the group's social welfare network even before they became terrorists, would explain why certain terrorist and counter-terrorism strategies used in television shows might not work in practice. In season two of 24, one of the major twists is the revelation that the point man in a plot by Islamic terrorists to use a nuclear device over Los Angeles is a blond haired blue eyed American female raised as a Protestant and whose family is unaware that she converted to Islam let alone has become an Islamic terrorist. If I were running a terrorist organization and had the good fortune to come into possession of a nuclear bomb (supplied by a conservative cabal looking to push the United States into a war with specific unnamed Muslim countries), would I be willing to trust this bomb to an American woman who was not raised in the system and has not even made the sacrifice of coming out to her family about her extremist beliefs? This would undermine the anti-profiling premise of this sequence of episodes. Certainly, if the government is looking for Middle-Eastern men I could recruit an all American white female, but do I have any that I can trust? If terrorists are dependent on people from very specific backgrounds then they would be vulnerable to profiling.

On the flip side, the show MI-5 (a British version of 24) has an episode devoted to a project designed to undermine Islamic terrorist cells in England by getting active members to turn and then agree to attempt to turn other members. The story focuses on the recruitment of a black convert to Islam by using his ex-girlfriend from his pre-Muslim days to get to him. If real life terrorist groups behave like Berman assumes they do then it is unlikely that they would ever allow a black convert to be in a position of serious responsibility where he could turn on the group. On the flip side, if I were a terrorist mastermind, I would look at the MI-5 episode as an excellent example of why I do not want to trust converts, no matter how sincere they sound and instead stick to people who have come up through the system.

Ultimately, there is both a liberal and a conservative side to Berman's argument. On the conservative side, he demolishes the common apologetic argument for groups like Hamas that they are primarily a social service network that only incidentally also maintains a militant wing. From Berman's perspective, it is precisely this social service network that is the foundation for terrorist activity so no separation can be made. This though also has a liberal face as Berman argues that counter-terrorism, instead of a military approach, should be focusing precisely on these social services by offering alternatives.

To step away from terrorism, this book is primarily about the economics of religion, particularly of the Haredi system, which is the inspiration for Berman's more general ideas. This book could be read as a study of the Haredi system, sidestepping any concerns about terrorism. Personally, I find Berman's study of Haredim to be a useful refutation of the sort of Haredi apologetics offered by Jonathan Rosenblum. Barring spectacular individuals, the Haredi yeshiva system is not useful as an alternative to secular college in preparation for competing in the job market. As Berman notes:

Israeli secular education in the 1990s had a return of 9.4 percent, a pretty good investment (a little higher than the U.S. return). Ultra-Orthodox education, on the other hand, was a terrible investment, at 1.8 percent. In other words, for every year in yeshiva a student was forgoing a permanent raise of about 7.6 percent, which they could have realized by spending that same year in a secular school. (pg. 73)

It is important that Haredi groups like Satmar do not get credit for their social services. The usual defense for Satmar is to point to their admittedly extensive social services, both in and even outside their own community. Kiryat Joel has the highest rate of poverty in the United States. Their philosophy of attempting to shut out the world is the greatest mass system of poverty creation that remains legal. As with the case of terrorism, the social service network is not something distinct from the extremism; it is the very foundation of the entire system that creates radicals and allows them to continue in their beliefs. (One of the reasons why I am a Libertarian and wish to eliminate government welfare is the knowledge that such policies will be the destruction of the Haredi community as they are faced with having to adopt Modern Orthodox policies or starving to death.)

This brings me to the big question that I came away from this book asking; for all this talk about the similarities between the social systems used by Haredim and Islamic radicals, would Haredim make good terrorists? In fact, Berman's major example of a failed terrorist organization is the Jewish underground that came from the Jewish settler movement. They lacked a system of culling out potentially untrustworthy recruits and were all too easily infiltrated by the Israeli government and neutralized. The Haredi system is very useful if you want to send out riotous youths to smash traffic lights and burn garbage cans or even to harass immodestly dressed women. This does not require any great planning, there is no valuable intelligence to sell, nor does it threaten any high-value targets. Imagine a Haredi youth calling the Israeli police: "hay I have a tip on a planned demonstration against chilul Shabbos. All I want is that you get me out of this life and give me a full year of college tuition with room and board." With something so basic, one could rely on moderately committed youths, motivated more by boredom than ideology.

As I see it, the Haredi system would not be effective for higher defection constant jobs like terrorism. It is not that they lack an effective social welfare system. The problem is that their system is almost too successful and is able to survive and even rely on free riders. The Haredi world is loaded with people who have been trapped into the system and would leave if only they were not dependent on the Haredi social system. (One of the few things that Unchosen got right.) In theory, these would be precisely the sorts of people who would turn traitor the moment they had something to sell. Would these people even be useful as drones, to be given specific low-level missions without any valuable intelligence to defect with?

If you insist you can do the cheap Jewish thing and have a friend lend you this book, do that. It would be hypocritical of me to complain. Better yet go out and purchase this book yourself. I look forward to hearing your reactions to it.

What Sort of Respectable Person Would Write a Blog?

Writing a blog can be a tricky task. Over and over again I find myself faced with the fact that, when writing, one is judged not by what you intended to mean but by what someone else understood you to mean. This could be a manageable task where it not for the fact that people can be remarkably lazy readers and are often looking for something to complain about. There is no defense against someone who wishes to see you in a negative light. As someone with Asperger syndrome this is made all the more difficult as neurotypicals can be counted on to read a very different text from what I write, ignoring the very literal meaning of what I say in favor of some abstract relational construct beyond my grasp. (Of course there are times that even those who are on the spectrum also failed to understand me.)

My previous post managed to raise a few eyebrows. (I have since erased this post.) The question was raised to me whether it was appropriate for me to write about a student in school and whether as a teacher and as a representative of a school I should have shown more discretion. In regards to the first issue I would point out that I was praising the student. More importantly, this was a student who speaks publically about Asperger syndrome and his written about it. I wrote my post for the sole reason of putting up a link to this person’s work and encouraging people to read it. I never would have written such a piece for a private student and if I had made any mention of a student I would have been quick to change the name and details of the event. Anyone who writes for the public domain does so with the implicit assumption that people will read it and react to it. I would even go so far as to say that writing for the public domain is to send out a public invitation to everyone on the planet (without engaging in the spamming tactics of Authentic Judaism) to come read and comment. This includes praise, but also condemnations. For example, as the writer of this blog I have de facto handed all of you permission not only to read my work but also to comment on it in the comments section, to your friends and even on your own blogs. I have also given up any right to complain if I am attacked for what I write; this includes even personal attacks and insults. (You still cannot directly malign my character. For that you have to wait until I become a full public figure and do something like publish my novel, run for public office or go on a reality show.) As to what I said about this student and his struggles, this is the reality of teenage Asperger syndrome. There can be no meaningful discussion about Asperger syndrome that does not confront this. It would be like trying to hold a meaningful discourse about being black in America without talking about racism; this would make many white people sleep more easily, but it would not be a discourse at all.

I would like to turn to the second argument, which I think is the more telling one. Every time I write something, particularly if it involves a specific individual, I take a risk that something will backfire. And as it has been demonstrated repeatedly, even very innocent remarks can backfire. As a representative of a school, that school now shares in this risk. Despite the fact that whatever I write is my personal view and not that of the school’s, what I write reflects on them. Similarly, my brother, who has just started medical school, told me that at orientation a member of the administration gave a speech to the students about the need to be careful about their actions and consider how they might reflect on the school. In particular this administrator brought up the issue of blogs, which he viewed as childish tantrums. In an admittedly very perceptive piece, Dodi Lee Hecht of the Corner of Hollywood and Sinai makes the argument that blogs are an exercise in personal narcissism as opposed to means of reaching out and sharing ideas with the public.

I certainly do not deny the validity of any of these arguments. I would though like to raise an issue for those wishing to piously sit by the sidelines, not writing for the public domain, and lecture those who do venture out in the public domain as to how they should be careful and even suggest that it might be better if they did not take the risk of damaging their reputations or the reputations of the institutions they represent. What would it mean if those who were “respectable” and represented “respectable” institutions did not venture into the public domain and did not blog? Take for example the students at my brother’s medical school. You have hundreds of young men and women with extensive knowledge about science and an understanding as to the implications of public policy on science particularly in such issues as abortion and stem cell research. What if they followed the advice of the administrator; what if every medical student followed this advice? What if every student studying science at a graduate level did this as well? Perfectly reasonable, why should anyone take a chance of besmirching their reputations and the reputations of their schools? What this means, though, is that our public conversation about science is now going to be held without them. The only voices that are going to be heard talking about science are precisely those who are not attached to any respectable scientific institution. In essence you are handing the dialogue over to precisely to anti-science radicals, to kooks. Now this administrator, I am sure meant well, but as with many high sounding principles there is a consequence. What he was really saying was not just that he did not want students writing blogs but that the blogosphere should be dominated by anti-science radicals. For one thing he gives up the right to complain about the tone of discourse on the internet. It might be that the price is worth it, but intellectual honesty requires that this price be acknowledge and that he take moral responsibility for what is being paid.

I like to think of myself as operating a quality blog. I do my best to avoid personal attacks. (This whole situation came about because I publically praised someone.) Readers of this blog will find that I do my best to articulate what I believe and why, not to catalogue insults. Admittedly I pay a price for this. Without a doubt I would have more readers if I were more offensive. Inevitably I will say something controversial. But if I am to be criticized for this I also request that I be given credit for what I do right. Readers will find on this blog a clearly articulated vision of what history is. They will also find a defense of Judaism. (The fact that these both exist in close proximity to each other is itself an important religious apologetic point.) To say that people like me with academic backgrounds and connections to Modern Orthodox institutions should not blog is to argue that the blogosphere should be the sounding board of those with no academic training and no connections to Modern Orthodoxy institutions.

I would even go so far as to argue that there is a particular necessity to have responses by people who are in the peculiar situation of balancing being connected to institutions, but not representing these institutions and even on occasion to go against these same institutions. The fact that I am connected to a Modern Orthodox institution gives me credibility as a defender of Modern Orthodoxy; I am no longer simply an eccentric on the side. On the other hand if I actually represented a Modern Orthodox institution I would have to act as an apologist for the institution. Anyone who never goes against an institution would simply be a de facto representative and apologist. This is one of the reasons why I would never wish to serve as a rabbi. It would mean that I would have to be the defender of Judaism at all times and at all costs. If you doubt how insidious this is I would ask that you consider the examples of Avi Shafran, Jonathan Rosenblum and Chaim Zweibel, all very intelligent men, who sold themselves out as Haredi apologists and have lost all credibility with precisely the sorts of people they were supposed to be reaching out to. Institutions will need representatives, whose job it is to make the case for the system, but these people are going to need others to give them the occasional reality check. May I suggest being in touch with a few intelligent bloggers?

Jonathan Rosenblum on Hirsch: the Op-ed Version

Jonathan Rosenblum just published an op-ed version of the speech he gave at KAJ. What I find interesting about the written version is that Rosenblum has removed all criticism of the Haredi leadership, the Gedolim, that permeated the KAJ speech. The closest he comes to criticizing the Gedolim is when he says:

His [R’ Hirsch’s] writings are filled with an enormous confidence in the power of Torah to uplift and transform every period of history. Accordingly, he addressed the entirety of German Jewry on a monthly basis on the major issues of the day. No Torah scholar of comparable stature fills that role today.

Gone is any discussion of the need for a Torah world that values all sorts of people, not just people who sit and study all day. Rosenblum also omitted his talk about the spiritual value of living in the world and going out and earning a livelihood on a day to day basis.

To me this says two things about Rosenblum. One, that, when he spoke at KAJ, there was no mistake; he did not simply sound like he was being critical of the Haredi leadership. If did not mean to say anything serious or controversial by what he said at KAJ then there would have been no need censor himself for a general audience. Two, that Rosenblum lacks the spine to stand up for his beliefs and accept the real live consequences of those beliefs. Ultimately Rosenblum wants to be able to maintain his belief in dealing with the modern world, a belief necessary in order to justify his continued relevance, while still maintaining himself as a part of the Haredi world.

Jonathan Rosenblum’s Non-Haredi Defense of Haredism

Jonathan Rosenblum is a highly gifted speaker and writer and is without question one of the most effective apologists the Haredi community possesses. There is a certain irony to this when considering Rosenblum’s background and mode of thinking. This is made all the more poignant in light of his recent speech at KAJ. As I will demonstrate, the fact that the Haredi community relies on someone like Rosenblum highlights a fundamental weakness within Haredi ideology.

In many respects, Rosenblum’s case parallels that of R’ Yakov Horowitz of Project YES, a Haredi organization that works with at-risk teenagers. As I have already discussed, in earlier posts, R’ Horowitz’s analysis of the problems in the Haredi community and his recommended solutions are insightful and to be admired. The problem is that, in practice, they go against the very basic fundamentals of the Haredi worldview; if the Haredi community was to seriously implement what R’ Horowitz suggests they would be finished. Rosenblum is, if anything, a more extreme example.

Rosenblum is effective as a Haredi advocate precisely because he is not a product of the Haredi world and is someone who, by definition, could never have been produced by that world. He did not grow up Haredi. In fact, he did not grow up Orthodox at all, but only became religious as an adult. Rosenblum is not a product of Mir or Lakewood but of the University of Chicago and Yale. Rosenblum’s background is important to understanding his work. If Rosenblum had grown up Haredi and had gone onto the University of Chicago and Yale he would have been cast out. More importantly, when reading Rosenblum’s work you find an American conservative, not all that different from William Kristol or David Brooks. Like them, he is a product of American academia, who rebelled against its liberal culture. While Rosenblum is not a secular Jew and has made common cause with Haredim, his mode of doing so is a product not of the Haredi community but of American conservatism.

Because Rosenblum’s mode of thinking is distinctively non-Haredi, it should not surprise anyone that his beliefs are somewhat different from what one would expect to find in the Haredi community. His speech at KAJ is an excellent example of this. Judging from his speech, Rosenblum is a Hirschian; he assumes that Hirsch’s methodology is legitimate in of itself and not simply as a tool to hook people into Judaism. This is not a position acceptable to the Haredi community in terms of what matters most, as a position to be accepted internally within the community. I would love to see him try to give the same speech at an Agudath Yisroel convention.

Rosenblum, because of the situation that he is in, seems to twist himself into all sorts of interesting positions. For example, during his speech, he talked about his teacher, the late R’ Nachman Bulman, and how Rabbi Bulman, a Gerrer Hasid, was a supporter of R’ Hirsch. After the speech, R’ Yosef Blau pointed out to me that Rosenblum was being somewhat disingenuous when he referred to Rabbi Bulman as being a Gerrer Hasid. Rabbi Bulman might have come from a Gerrer family and maintained contacts with Gerrer all his life but he also went to Yeshiva University and, unlike many others, he never denied it. So while Rabbi Bulman might have been a devoted follower of R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch, he was hardly a representative figure of the Haredi community and he did not pick up his Hirschian ideals from them.

As a final example of the incongruity of Rosenblum’s position I would point to a comment he was kind enough to write about my earlier post in which he defends Rabbi Mantel:

In any event, the central point that Rabbi Mantel made is, in my opinion, incontestable: no one should think that the Hirschian derech is one easily followed and unless one is vaccinated with Rav Hirsch's pure yiras shomayim [fear of heaven], it is fraught with danger. I felt that he offered a necessary corrective, or Hegelian antithesis, if you will, to some of my remarks.

First of all, Rabbi Mantel went much further than simply saying that to be a Hirschian one needs to truly be motivated by a fear of heaven; doctors, lawyers, and professors can also fear heaven. Secondly, I would like to call attention to the nature of the defense that Rosenblum uses, that there is a need for a Hegelian antithesis. Officially, in the Haredi community, one is not supposed to be familiar with the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) beyond what you need to pass the Regents exams in high school. My guess is that Rosenblum did not pick up his knowledge of Hegel in a Haredi yeshiva. More importantly, the notion that a society needs to be balanced by contradictory viewpoints is a distinctively non-Haredi idea. A Hirschian or a Modern Orthodox worldview can grant a legitimate place to its opponents, even to Haredim, but if you are going to be Haredi you have to assume that all other positions are inherently illegitimate; there is the opinion of the Gedolim and everything else must be rejected.

Ironically enough, while the Haredi community may reject Hirsch they need him, possibly even more than Modern Orthodox Jews do. Hirsch provides an essential loincloth for Haredi outreach because he can appeal to people outside the community. So, as with the theory of evolution, it is okay to accept Hirsch when you are trying to make people religious as long as you do not make the mistake of taking him too seriously and become a personal believer. Similarly, the Haredi community requires people like Jonathan Rosenblum to defend them. Rosenblum is very effective at presenting a Haredi world that irreligious people can respect and appreciate. The problem, though, is that Rosenblum’s Haredi community has little to do with the Haredi community as it actually exists; if they were, they would cease to be Haredim and become Hirschians instead.

The Two-Hundredth Birthday of R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch: Celebrating his Life or Mourning his Death?

This past Shabbat I had the good fortune to be in Washington Heights and attend K’hal Adath Jeshurun’s (KAJ) celebration of the two-hundredth birthday of R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-88). Hirsch is an important figure in my life. I do not exaggerate when I say that I remain an Orthodox Jew today in large part because of his writings. He was the leading figure of nineteenth-century Orthodox Jewry in Germany. He was famous both for his uncompromising defense of traditional Jewish practice and his willingness to incorporate secular knowledge into his thought. KAJ is essentially the congregation that Hirsch built, albeit transported to New York during the 1930s. At this event, there were a number of interesting speakers and events, which, for better and for worse, are a reflection of the state of Hirschian thought today.

As a featured speaker KAJ brought in columnist Jonathan Rosenblum. Rosenblum spoke about the continued importance of Hirsch to today’s issues and what Hirsch can teach today’s rabbinic leadership. Unlike many rabbis today, Hirsch’s Judaism was not on the defensive; he did not simply bunker down and try to figure out more ways to “protect” his community from the dangers of the outside world. On the contrary, Hirsch’s Judaism was on the offensive; he believed that traditional Judaism had a message for all Jews and for the entire world and that it could compete with the best of what the world had to offer. Hirsch saw Judaism as a community that encompassed many different types of people, from all walks of life. He offered a Judaism which also valued people who did not sit and study all day, but who lived in the world. Not only did Hirsch speak to the issues of the day, but he also spoke in a manner which people from all walks of life could comprehend.

Without actually naming anyone specifically, Jonathan Rosenblum had attacked the Haredi rabbinate for being out of touch. What followed can only be described as a farce. As if to prove Rosenblum’s point, after he was finished, KAJ’s rabbi, R’ Yisroel Mantel, promptly stood up and gave an impromptu speech, bemoaning the fact that we do not have Rav Hirsch anymore and that his doctrines have fallen into the hands of doctors, lawyers, and professors, who use it to belittle Torah. In this day and age what we need to do is listen to the rabbis, the gedolim. In effect R’ Mantel attacked Jonathan Rosenblum, at an event honoring Hirsch, for defending the things that Hirsch stood for. In essence, we have a Haredi rabbi who officially rejects the beliefs upon which his congregation was built upon yet, for some reason, stills holds his post. We have a congregation which has, by and large, abandoned the ideals that it was supposed to be the embodiment of.

This encapsulates what has happened to Hirsch and his theology; it failed to maintain itself as its own coherent movement; its inheritance has been split by Haredim and Modern Orthodoxy. The Hirschian movement has proven unable to stand up for its own ideals against the Haredi claim to halachic authority. Those who were left, who did not go Haredi, were not able to justify maintaining itself as a separate movement outside of Modern Orthodoxy. An important voice in the Orthodox world, one that might have been able to transcend the divide between Modern Orthodox and Haredi, has been lost.