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Wednesday, February 07, 2018

If all women are required to cover their hair and bodies with maximal modesty, some women in Hasidic neighborhoods of Jerusalem now wear a burka-like veil over their clothes, in imitation of Islamist female garb....



 ....In recent times, in some of the most populous centers of Hasidism, notably the domain of the Satmar Hasidic community in Brooklyn and elsewhere, the more sinister cultish side of Hasidism has been on prominent display. With their notorious history of closing ranks around male community members guilty of sexual abuse, domestic violence, and various types of financial criminality, the Satmars have, in effect, revised the Besht’s cardinal insight that everything can become a route to God to something more like, “Everything outside our community is irrelevant, exploitable, or a path to mortal sin.” It’s a dramatic retreat from the Besht’s world-embracing, profoundly joyous vision of Judaism. But as Hasidism reveals, some of the dangerous, structural tensions in the Hasidic project were there from the start....

The tsaddikim “served as intercessors,” write the authors, “providing the channels through which their followers could commune with the divine.” Indeed, the Besht himself supposedly remarked of the Maggid: “He doesn’t just know the Torah, he is the Torah.” It’s hardly surprising that the veneration such a stature inspired could veer close to idolatrous reverence. Some of the Hasidic tsaddikim were altruistic, theologically dynamic community advocates; others were crooks, charlatans, and vainglorious petty despots. The institution of the tsaddik was only as benign as the character of its individual representatives.....

In time, most Hasidic leaders came to identify all forms of innovation with corruption. As Rabbi Simcha Yisakhar Halberstam remarked at the start of the 20th century,

experience has taught us much, that all those who sought to innovate and to eliminate any item from the ancient practice have brought upon us an erosion and destruction of the fundamentals of the faith, and consequently we must not shift even in the slightest and only conduct ourselves as our ancestors have.

It no longer mattered that the ideal behavior of the ancestors was itself quasi-mythical, or that the movement defending this ancient, imaginary essence of the religion was itself a product of modernity.

The end result was chillingly intolerant.

Much of Hasidism’s rich variegation was lost in the aggressive campaign to reach a state of total fundamentalism. As the movement became increasingly aligned with Ultraorthodoxy, which shared its cultural antipathies, if not always its approach to prayer or study, Hasidism grew more homogenous still. The tremendous losses suffered by the Hasidic community in the Holocaust reinforced the movement’s most reactionary tendencies.

Hadisim’s radical conservatism plays out on the family front in dictatorial control of sexuality and a rigid gender segregation that usually relegates women to the role of childbearing facilitators for the temple-and-study centered lives of the men. When Hasidic women leave home to work for money, as is increasingly necessary in this poverty-stricken community, it’s so that Hasidic men can perform the real work of service to God. Beyond the longstanding social constraints, Hasidism also describes a “one-upmanship” that’s taken hold in some quarters whereby community members flaunt their respective fundamentalist credentials. If all Hasidic men wear side-locks, some today grow their side-locks longer and longer. If all women are required to cover their hair and bodies with maximal modesty, some women in Hasidic neighborhoods of Jerusalem now wear a burka-like veil over their clothes, in imitation of Islamist female garb.

 It’s difficult to believe that the lure of the outside world has not grown in tandem with the increasingly punitive approach to piety and life as such. Yet, with its high fertility rate, the Hasidic population continues to grow at a rate well above average. And leaving the folds of the community has proven to be a challenge few people can successfully accomplish.....


 READ IT ALL & WEEP!
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-hasidic-question/#!

4 comments:

UOJ gets Results said...

Remember when Hershel Schlechter's chassidim were moping pathetic excuses to cover up the Ivanka fiasco after it was exposed here?

Now it's Haskel Lookstein's turn to desperately cover up when their chazir feeselach are held to the fire. Some Brisker chevra somehow crossed paths with a groupie who is close to Lookstein and confronted him about it.

Get a load of this nonsense that he answered them!

Lookstein, Schlechter & the Monsey chaya were lenient with the gerus, considering it a case of giyur "lechumra", as there was "clear proof" that Ivana was halachically Jewish being that her mother's maternal grandparents were buried in a Jewish bais hakevoros in Russia. Therefore, Trump's other grandchildren from Eric and Donald Jr. are also fully Jewish, since they are both also married to Jews. All Trump's grandchildren are therefore Jewish.

Ad kan the Lookstein lokshen.

Just a few 'slight' problems with this.

Ivanka's mother Ivana was born in Moravia to a Czech father & an Austrian mother named Marie Francová.

And did I mention that Haskel has no credibility? And not just because he vocally backed Marc Angel years before Ivanka in the Open Orthodox drive to mimic the Reform & accept "gerim" who are not mekabel mitzvos.

Paul Mendlowitz said...

Lookstein, Schlechter & the Monsey chaya were lenient with the gerus, considering it a case of giyur "lechumra", as there was "clear proof" that Ivana was halachically Jewish being that her mother's maternal grandparents were buried in a Jewish bais hakevoros in Russia. Therefore, Trump's other grandchildren from Eric and Donald Jr. are also fully Jewish, since they are both also married to Jews. All Trump's grandchildren are therefore Jewish.

SERIOUSLY?

UOJ gets Results said...

Yes, Briskers are usually more exact with details than your average citizen.

While we don't know at this point if Lookstein actually mouthed this excuse, which his groupie claims he is just repeating from Lookstein, it is at the very least the 'story' being put out on his behalf.

I heard this just today.

Anonymous said...

ancient cemetery legends is an old dirty trick. there was a shvantz avaryan who brought his shiksa to a 1980s beis din that a leib pinter mechuton was sitting on. pinter's mechuton was not exactly being a medakdek bahalacha to put it mildly, the bum that he is, and the avaryan knowing some halacha to instruct the shiksa how to fool people played a large role in pulling off the fraud. the avaryan was spreading rumors about the maternal grandmother being buried in some inaccessible beis hakevoros as plan B in case Pinter's mechuton got with the halacha program.