Y-Love's Feedback
I am privileged to have many people about whom I care deeply read my blog.
So sometimes, I do receive Email about something that I write -- and I like how infrequently it comes, so I don't put my contact information out on the blog's index page. :)
So, one of my good friends sends me this in his Gmail to me today:
I have a comment.I know you support Charedi politics in Israel, and...I'm unsure if you are Charedi totally or not...I think you are, after reading the article. I ask after this "Those who seek to exterminate the charedim, b'kol dor va'dor omdim aleinu l'chaloteinu, and even if the mindset survives "just barely", we believe G-d will always see to it that somewhere on His planet is SOMEONE who keeps His word as written."DO you think that Charedis are the only ones who keep the word as written? I'm SO NOT trying to be divisive...I'm asking for knowledge. I mean, we all have things we find acceptable and not, I'm wondering what "types" of observance you find acceptable, and, obviosuly you agree most totally with that which you practice. I'm largely ignorant of the differences with Charedi, and confess with I see a Mitzvah Mobile I usually don't approach it, even if I would sincerely love to put on tefillin, or anything else, because I am scared of offending or doing something against my beliefs, regarding Rabbi Schneerson, and the Moshiac thing. This has, in general, caused me to not seek to learn so much with Chassidish people, in general. Please know, I'm not trying to be offensive, it's my fear of offending that is partially keeping me from doing so.
*thinking* I've never been more unsure of whether or not to send an email....but I trust that you will at the least know I'm not INTENDING to be an ass, and will cut me some slack if you don't care for the words...
Another one of my friends told me he had "ideological problems with the hareidi", after he and I were seeing eye-to-eye on virtually every issue, and he was teaching me about new issues.
I think the mainstream usage of haredi is horribly out of sync. Again: charedi means one who shakes out of reverence for G-d, trembling at His word.
Think of any equivalent English term. Yeshiva Orthodox. Torah Orthodox. Traditional Orthodox. Hell, even my personal peeve, Ultra-Orthodox. None of these terms necessarily denote anything Chassidic, Lithuanian, "black hat", or even Ashkenazi. But if I say, to anyone familiar with the term, "I was hanging out and then 3 charedi guys got out of a cab", instantly the person envisions either the Lakewood Bus Service or Monit K'far Chabad and anything contrary to that image results in cognitive dissonance.
I consider every traditional Orthodox person to be charedi. Whether the person calls himself dati, dati le'umi, "just plain Orthodox", Chassidic, yeshivish, Sephardi, Mizrachi, Ethiopian, or Lithuanian. Are you Orthodox? Would you compromise your beliefs? Would you compromise your traditions? No? Don't even check what color your hat is, to Y-Love, chances are, you're charedi.
And while charedi does differ from Modern Orthodox, I'll even go further.
It was said at a wedding I recently attended, granted in jest, that it may be forbidden to be Ashkenazi in America. The rabbi contended, since when one is in a new place one is beholden to follow the traditions of that place, and the first Jewish immigrants (q.v. the Touro Synagogue, Jewish settlements in the early South) to colonial America were Sephardi, the tradition of America was therefore de facto Sephardi and any Ashkenazi who came would have been required to become Sephardi upon arrival.
While this garnered guffaws and angry glares in Ashkenazi Chaba"d audiences where I repeated the story, it does bring out a point.
Let's say that it exists -- minhag America. The American tradition. What would it consist of? Today it probably looks quite "modern." But if, 200 years from now, everyone were wearing aluminum outfits, and a group of Jews were still wearing 2-piece suits and/or still eating turkey on the 4th Thursday of every November, they would have been uncompromising in their tradition. In other words, charedi.
This is in stark contrast to "adapting". However, perhaps one could contend that the Modern Orthodox tradition IS to adapt and in their belief of Torah and G-d's law meaning to be followed in its entirety, G-d's Law is (not that I agree with this at all) "adapt to your surroundings", and that would in effect make them charedi too.
The word has become synonymous with a specific group of Ashkenazi Jews and that must end now.
Any Jew who says "I believe in the Torah and G-d and I believe His law is to be followed and this is the way I do it and I'm not changing for anyone" should feel proud to call himself charedi (or any other terms he or she chooses, but "charedi" is not off-limits for any Torah-believing Jew). A ba'al teshuva who eventually adopts such a mindset has become charedi, and this neither requires them to vote for Sha"s nor to patronize Borsalino Hats, Inc.
My friend who has "ideological differences with the charedi" is one of the most uncompromising people I know, on fire with love for G-d and Torah. He is charedi in every sense of the word. And he'll probably never sit at the tisch bei der Rebbe munching on cold pa-cha.
And I will probably never muse over "the old country" while humming a Galizianer niggun.
And ain't a thang wrong with that.
Comments
Well, I still prefer the term fundamentalist.
Posted by: DK | February 6, 2007 06:35 PM
I admire the sentiment behind this post, but "charedi," for good or ill, has come to mean those Orthodox Jews, whether Ashkenazi or Sephardi, who tend to seclude themselves off from the secular world, keep a great deal of chumrahs, dress in the traditional way, etc.
It's like the world "terrible." "Terrible" originally and perhaps truly meant something that inspires a sense of sublime, awesome (another word that has been so corrupted) fear: "yirat shamayim," basically. Now we use the word to mean "bad." Something that inspires yirat shamayim is anything but bad, but, hey, language evolves.
Because of the tone part of my post might be taken as, I want to state clearly I've got nothing against the Charedi lifestyle- every person should do what they (with the advice of their Rav taken in mind) think is best for their neshama and their avodas Hashem. For some people, that means being directly "a light unto the nations," fully integrated with secular society. That doesn't mean they compromise mitzvot- one can't be a light with a burnt-out bulb. For others, that means withdrawing from the world to put all energy into direct, traditional, interaction with Hashem. Either way, it's fine.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 8, 2007 10:29 PM