The rise of the radicalizing rebbeim
We need to shake off denial.
Our frum society has a largely separate educational system. Personally, I think that is an excellent thing in many respects. We avoid many issues that way. But one thing that results is that women have no clue what their male counterparts are being taught.
A female relative of this blog send me screenshots of a fascinating Imamother thread.1
As a man, I will not share the full thread, but the question is an important one. The OP’s question is a common one: Her yeshiva bochur in a mainstream institution is coming home with extreme black and white hashkafos.
Here is an example
:
Tonight I was shmoozing with him about kumzitzes and music. (He is very talented musically.) I said that a kumzitz can be meorer a person. He said that his rebbi quoted a certain adam gadol (I will not name here) as saying that people think they are nisorer from music, but when was the last time you saw a man leave a frum concert and go to learn in a bais medresh. Just because someone is crying doesn't mean anything, it can just be emotion.
This is a very common sentiment in the yeshiva world. Even the ones that accept music as an outlet, its just that, an outlet. It has no religious significance and is certainly not as important as “going to learn in a bais midrash”.
The woman asks how she should respond to her son. Many other women joined the thread saying that they too have experienced this with their teenage boys. Some provided advice.
But what was shocking was that it took to the middle of the thread until someone said this:
Why are the people who are teaching our boys constantly have the least mature perspectives?
I disagree with most remarks here. While teenagers are black and white thinkers, the people teaching them should not be.
My [husband] has mentioned how harmed he felt and how betrayed he felt when he left his top yeshiva and realized things really weren't like it was portrayed there.
It's ok for teens to be black and white. But we should expect more from our sons rebbeim and institutions.
This was followed by a bunch of women saying that essentially that the rebbeim are doing their best to be nuanced, but its the teenagers who are taking it black and white, as is age appropriate.
Unfortunately, there are no men allowed on Imamother (which is a very good thing), so here is a male perspective from someone who went through the system:
You ladies are living in lala land. Many upper-elementary rebbeim and mesivta rebbeim have black and white mindsets.2 The idea of nuance is foreign to them, if not outright kefira (or worse baalebatish). The amount of times I heard that there is no such thing as a devar reshus - either its what hashem wants so its a mitzva, or not, and its bitul torah and an aveira is astonishing. Many love painting everything in extremes. Even worse, in many institutions, if you have more nuanced positions, you will not be hired as a rebbe. You need to instill the only torah mindset or people will not send to your yeshiva!
And the mesivta and upper elementary rebbeim are open-minded when it comes to the beis medrash world. Some of the people who run certain batei medrash have beliefs that are the equivalent of an ayatollah. Lack of nuance is the selling point for these people. I have had rebbeim curse out the state of Israel, mock baalei batim as idiots or second class, put down mental health, and possibly take the most extreme position on almost any position possible.3 A few of these people are narcissistic and abusive. (See the post linked below)
And pretty much ANYONE who has gone through the system have come across such people. They are hardly uncommon.
You ladies have been warned. It’s fine for bochrim to lack nuance. But there’s a good chance their rebbeim lack it too.
A few caveats to the warning above:
Obviously, there are many many amazing rebbeim. And such people exist in every society.
That said, our society has two issues that don’t affect others: We seemingly reward and value extremism (the top yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael is run by someone with extremist for America views) and furthermore, we have a mitzva of bizuy talmidei chachamim, which is an extremely important mitzva as we need to respect rabbanim, but unfortunately leads to people being unwilling to call out poor behavior and poor middos and poor beliefs, forgetting the halacha that bemakom chilul hashem, ein cholkin kavod lerav.
Why did I write this post? I have no intention to merely chareidibash. Rather, I had a conversation with someone who was really adversely affected by this system. He went OTD in the end (not that this was necessarily the cause). I too was adversely affected by it. And I love Hashem and his Torah. I do not want people to spread their own twisted extreme hashkafos and blame Hashem for it.4
Some anthropologist investigating frum society should join Imamother. The website is a gold mine of understanding frum beliefs.
Yes, not all. Of course not all. Maybe even not most. But a worrying amount.
Check out R’ Gershon Ribner for someone doing a good job spreading such idiocy. See here and here or read this RJ post. Or read his book, where he tells a bochur to embarrass a girl for “tznius”. R Ribner is just someone doing publicly what is usually said behind closed doors. (The fact that he says it publicly is likely part of his appeal and why he is viewed as harryish).
As for why so little people seem to be fully affected by this, I suspect that most people take the teachings with a grain of salt. (The natural born Israeli chareidim certainly do). But in America, where these hashkafos are a foreign implant, people take them seriously. I certainly did. And when these teachings are taken literally - that every second not learned you will go to hell, and that your own personal interests aren’t important - it causes extreme psychological damage
Too many rabbeim are bachurim who never grew up, and I think that is a large part of the problem.
That is not true. All day learning was geared for an elite fee that chose that. To extrapolate that to the modern day rule is wrong and killing bochrim.