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| What’s missing from this picture? (Shutterstock) |
A follower of ours reads an announcement page of engagements that lists only men while riding a bus where women are seated behind a curtain. These extremist practices started with insular Hasidic communities and became the norm because not enough people stood against them.
Mishpacha/Bina/Ami erase women not because it’s a Jewish thing; it’s an extremist thing, and it’s done for dollars so they can sell more magazines. Agudah used to publish pictures of women, but now they don’t.
If you don’t want mainstream Orthodox Judaism to look like this in 15 to 20 years, you need to say something now.
While I agree with the sentiment, I’m not sure that “saying
something” will change anything.
This is the reality today: a reality in which overly
stringent practices that were once considered fanatic are now considered the
norm. So much so that not observing them is practically considered irreligious.
The list of these stringencies seems almost endless. And
seems to be increasing in frequency.
Except for the Chasidic community, which in America was
still in its infancy until the mid-1960s, religious observance was never like
this. Even in the most right-wing circles, many of these practices were unheard
of.
True, there was room for improvement back then in some areas
of observance. For example, mixed dancing at Orthodox synagogue events was
fairly common in pre-Holocaust America. And there was precious little Jewish
education being taught at any significant level, if at all.
The changes for the better in those two areas were positive
developments. Much of the improvement in Jewish education was helped along by
the massive influx of Holocaust refugees who were willing to enroll their
children in the newly formed day schools.
But these positive changes did not stop at those necessary
improvements. They have gone far beyond them, to extremes that, in my view, are
harmful to us socially, educationally, and financially.
The reason can only be what I have called the “Frumkeit
chase.” The idea is that one segment of the religious community does
not want to be outdone by another segment in the stringencies it observes. So
it adopts them as well.
One example of stringencies that hurt us is the
not-so-subtle move away from a decent secular education. What was once a
common, respectable secular curriculum in non-Chasidic high schools, is
becoming far less common. And, in some cases, has been eliminated entirely. We
are increasingly following the American Chasidic educational model and, perhaps
more significantly, the Israeli model.
Being more conscientious about modesty did not stop with
ending mixed dancing. It has morphed from a healthy interaction between the
sexes into a near-complete avoidance of the opposite sex under almost all
circumstances.
For example, families that once invited one another for a
Shabbos meal stopped doing so once their children approached puberty. God
forbid a boy from one family should have a conversation with the girl of
another – even at the Shabbos table!
Young people of the opposite sex now meet after their
parents conducted a search for what they believed would be a good match. The
couple would then date a number of times (about 8 dates) before deciding
whether to marry or break it off.
Recently there has been talk about reducing the number of
dates to 3 or 4, citing the successful Chasidic approach in which a couple meet
only once or twice before getting married…
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