What's the Point of Being Religious If You're Going to Act Like an Asshole?
The hypocrisy in the Modern Orthodox world I grew up in is getting harder and harder to stomach.
If you follow me or my wife on Instagram, you might have noticed Aliyah’s been mixing it up with a variety of Jewish influencer-types, many of whom have decided it was a good idea to take short vacations to places like Miami and Mexico over “Yeshiva Week Break” and share their luxe experiences with their considerable followings. In their Instagram stories, Covid is generally regarded as an inconvenience — another form to fill out, the cause of a favorite restaurant shutting down — that is if it is regarded at all.
Rightfully, Aliyah has been calling these people out on their cluelessness and their callousness. If they have any influence, they should be yielding it to encourage safe practices and perhaps even a general sense of restraint as a pandemic rages all around this country with the number of dead climbing up towards half a million.
Predictably, these women have pushed back, saying they’ve done nothing wrong and are fulfilling the letter of the law. Whether or not that’s true (CDC guidelines sure have a lot to say about travel), what struck me was the familiarity of their argument. All of these women come from the “frum” and “Modern Orthodox” Jewish communities, in which adherence to Jewish ritual law or halacha is followed “to the letter of the law.” It’s also the community in which I was raised, educated, and still consider myself an active member.
“Let’s say I took my friend’s pen” — this was a phrase that came up in a surprising number of the Talmud and Halacha classes of my youth. Like the infamous “Parking Lot Rabbi” in the Coen Brother’s film “A Serious Man” (the closest thing I have to a personal foundational text), the Pen was always the go-to at-hand example for describing all sorts of laws and mitzvot and dos and don’ts. A lot of frum people (myself included) can tell you all about the halachos of pen stealing, pen borrowing, and pen loaning. And yet, I can’t tell you a single time in my life when this pen knowledge has been directly applied.
I wonder if instead of all that focus on pen-stealing, we could have spent a little bit more time on what it actually means to care for others. Any Jewish Day School graduate could tell you that “Shaming someone is like killing them,” — and yet so many feel no shame when Black men and women are killed in the streets. From vacation perches in Miami and the Hamptons, they will castigate anyone who even suggests that white-passing Jews may have benefited from the privileges that particular skin tone affords in the US. They’ll vote for Trump, because he might not be good for humanity, but '“he’s good for the Jews.”
(Some caveats: #NotAllFrumPeople. So many religious people are incredibly giving to the larger world around them, but it’s hard to see past the community’s overall allegiance to Trump, indifference to Covid safety, and distaste for Black activism. Also, I realize that accusing religious Jews of adherence to the letter of the law and not its underlying message is a good old-fashioned anti-Semitic canard dating back to the early days of Christianity. Still can’t help pointing it out where I see it.)
Obviously, this is an overgeneralization, but it’s one borne out of extensive time spent in this community. There is so much to love about the community — we show up for each other in meaningful ways, are exceedingly generous, and do an admirable job balancing our traditions with the modern age. But if there is a tendency I’ve seen, it’s that the surer someone is of their own overall righteousness, the more willing they are to tolerate unrighteous acts as long as they’re in line with their communal worldview.
I’m sure a lot of the women my wife is publicly arguing with are fastidious in their devotion to their families, to kashrut, and to halacha in general — probably even more so than we are. I just wish they’d extend that level of devotion to the greater world beyond them.
To tie this all back to something I’ve read, “How Your Brain Tricks You Into Taking Risks During the Pandemic” in ProPublica draws the connection between risk-taking behavior and the people we surround ourselves with. We will do some incredible — and incredibly dumb — things, if that’s what we think our entire cohort is doing. Which is why it matters that anyone who deigns to call themselves an “influencer” should actually model decent behavior.
Here’s some other great stuff I read this weekend:
A Vast Web of Vengeance by Kashmir Hill, explores the surprisingly effective way one certifiably insane person could make life terrible for so many others — by ruining their digital reputations.
Has the Pandemic Transformed the Office Forever?, Pre-pandemic, the biggest challenge for my working remotely was that no one else was doing it. It’s one thing when everyone is on a zoom, quite another when you’re on an underwater-sounding conference line praying someone will throw to you. I’ll be very curious to see how that dynamic plays out when we get back to the office — whenever that may be.
Nine Investors Instantly Make $16 Billion On GameStop Stock 'Squeeze', You’ve read plenty about this story elsewhere, but the one thing I want to push back on is the narrative that this is about “the little guy” vs. “Wall Street.” Some of the biggest winners in this whole ordeal were Fidelity and BlackRock. If you don’t think that financial institutions are on every side of this trade and somewhere in the middle, I’ve got some GameStop stock to sell you. The only place "the little guy” fits into all this, is that I’m sure whatever happens, these hedge funders will find a way to make sure the losses come out of someone else’s pension fund.
The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try. Sometimes it sucks to be right. A profile of a modern-day Cassandra.
Canadian Club, Neat. American Success Story, on the Rocks. Sports Illustrated has fallen hard. So it delights me that they’re still able to publish meaty fare like this from Jon Wertheim, and that they’ve hired the incomparable basketball writer Howard Beck.
More of your ACA premiums for 2021, Healthcare writing is a full-time beat, and Libby Watson has made it her own. Be sure to sign up for her SubStack, SickNote.
'Why Do I Spend Weeks Avoiding Tasks That Will Take Me 10 Minutes to Do?', Let’s just say there’s a reason this particular newsletter comes out close to 2 AM on a Sunday night/Monday morning.
War and Palestine, by Walter Bernstein. Last week, I talked about how I missed Tablet at their best. This piece from the legendary screenwriter (and mensch) Walter Bernstein who died last week, represents just that.
The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class, I kind of thought this was bullshit when I saw the headline, but it’s actually one of the most astute breakdowns of office culture (and the culture of The Office), I’ve ever seen.
HELLO, I’LL BE YOUR TODDLER TOUR GUIDE FOR THIS TRIP OUT THE FRONT DOOR, Have you ever related to something so hard that it physically pained you?
Sadly, there’s much truth in this glass house stone-throwing. Been fighting the same battle here in Crown Heights since last March, but with the addition of all those pithy CDC guidelines... 🤦♂️
Excellent! You’re saying what I’m thinking!