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DY: No. But the Chareidi community has failed to recognize that there are too many of those in their community and that the constant addition of Chumros has bred that attitude in far too many people.
Feivel, for all you know, someone folloing a sunvlass chumrah cljld in fact bbe dispeasing Hashem by not making use of sunglasses to protect eyes.
I have nothing against chumrahs; follow them to your hearts content. Just don’t infer that this is what Hashem wants ( after all, how do you know? ) and/or impose them on others.
No. But the Chareidi community has failed to recognize that there are too many of those in their community and that the constant addition of Chumros has bred that attitude in far too many people.
In other words, you think yes.
DY: Sort of, but it’s not inherent. The number of and response to radicals weighs heavily on what the community itself thinks.
DY
Do you think there are people for whatever cannot do a certain chumra and then feel that cannot live up to the standards for everyone else and then leave?
I’ve never met any.
There are plenty of people who have left Yiddishkeit l”a because in their homes they only saw Yiddishkeit as a bunch of rules, due to poor chinuch and poor role modelling. It makes no difference if those rules are halacha or chumra. In fact if someone, on his own (not merely due to community pressure) takes on chumras, he shows his children that Yiddishkeit is not a burden to him, but something he cherishes.
actually, when you speak with some of these people you will hear the opposite. They were given over chumras as if they were halachos and I have heard them say that they had a lot of problems with that. some complained that they were taught that wearing certain clothing was “on equal footage” with keeping kosher. Regardless of whether or not their complaints are valid reasons to leave, i have heard first hand the the rules Gd made were good enough but that they could not live within the confines of the “extra” rules their parents put on them and were told it was all the same. Again, this is not about them being right, this is what some of them say.
One girl said that she thought wearing short socks was actually on par with breaking shabbos.
Unfortunately most people out there aren’t singing the praises of their chumros, even tho they should be.
Just as an aside sam, there is no ocular condition known to medical science wherein it is dangerous to be without sunglasses on a short term basis. Sunglasses are worn primarily to decrease discomfort and squinting, and for cosmesis. There ARE certain situations where the regular use of uv or infrared blocking lenses (not necessarily sunglasses) is theoretically advisable to prevent the long term progression of certain chronic conditions. But to almost need eye surgery because someone was without sunglasses for a few hours or days is utterly ridiculous.
Again, this is not about them being right, this is what some of them say.
I wasn’t addressing what they say. I’m sure you’re right that many do blame it on chumras.
I once wrote a fairly long post on this, but I don’t have time to find it now.
but in this particular conversation, we were talking about their perspective. which is what they say.
I was simply answering ZD’s question as I understood it.
Besides, what someone says is not necessarily their perspective; it’s the perspective they want to project.
DY
Did you read the book Off the Derech by Faranak Margolese. She documents a few cases in the book where a Chumra lead to someone going OTD.
One example was of a boy who refused to wear a hat. The father would not budge and it became a struggle over the hat and eventually the kid went OTD
Incidentally, have you read the article titled “Why Are Young People Leaving Religion?” by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman on the OU website?
He looks at the issue of kids leaving Yiddishkeit as part of a phenomenon occurring in other religions as well. He pretty much blames it on the internet.
Thank you DY for recommending Rabbi Dr. Berman’s article. Professor Berman, whom I know personally, is a scholar and a real anav. He is well known for having written books illustrating the greatness and beauty of the messages of Torah Shebichtav as opposed to other ancient cultures.
True, he and others blame the internet. However, he does not simply play the blame game, as all know the internet is here to stay and is almost surely going to befuddle our and our childrens’ best efforts to ignore it.
He offers sound advice and suggestions. Well worth reading.
I read the article and I took it with a grain of salt. As I saterized in the anti-vaccine thread, but it went over people. The Internet (and Tzniut) have become the whipping boy for every social ill in the frum community. Someone got a cold and the internet is blamed. Someone got a parking ticket, It was because of Tzniut.
People have been going OTD for centuries and there wasnt an internet whipping boy for it. The Haskallah was not founded on the internet.
People leave religion because they are disastified with it, that disastification can come from perceived corruption (sometime real unfortunatly) because they dont see it having meaning in their life to frankly too much of it and seeing falsehoods in it and inconsistancies.
People who are happy and fulfilled in the frum community are not going to the internet. The people going are those are who have grieveces of some sort and looking to validate those grievences and find like minded people.
In this case it might be sunglasses or a hat, but those things can snowball into bigger issues., The person find out the hat or sunglasses is just a chumra or Hashkafa and then discovers other things are also chumras or hashkafa and the who system collapses. He then goes to the internet and finds people who the same thing happend and then eventually goes OTD. Was this really the internets fault?
i have personally watched individuals use the internet to fuel their personal vendettas into world crusades, to validate some weaknesses into full blown failures. But to state that the internet is to blame for kids going OTD when it is known to anyone in the field that 7-9 of every 10 OTD kids has been sexually abused is just a very convinient way for us to wash our hands of a very serious problem. It is also a complete digression of the topic of this thread.
The topic of OTD has been hashed and rehashed on many threads, talking about chumros is important because when it is used as a yardstick for how frum or holy or special you are (as happens frequently in shidduchim or school sriteria) then it is very damaging and some posters here are speaking to that.
Chumros were not made because people felt they had mastered the halacha and want to bring it to a new level. I understand chumros to be a way of keeping yourself safe from a cliff. A way of keeping yourself on your toes in recognition of the importance of staying away from the edge of the cliff. A way of developing sensitivity to the holiness of a mitzvah and guarding yourself from getting too close to temptation.
It is sad that so many people were not taught about chumros in this light. Slamming those people for their attitude instead of taking a step back to understand where it came from just reinforces the fallacy. We keep chumros out of love, or fear, or reverance. Most people don’t know that. And MANY people who DO know that forget to pass it on to their children.
If the sunglasses thing was a fool or rashas idea, their would not have been so much support for it from posters here. Can we listen to people who speak badly of chumros and explain how they express our love for mitzvos? Can we use it as an opportunity to look at our own selves and wonder if we are, Gd forbid, using it as a yardstick to measure our own or our neighbors holiness?
If you explain it, and express your love and reasoning, the people who “don’t accept” the process can continue to do so, but it would give them an opportunity to see evidence of the real purpose of them instead of going on to perpetuate the negative thoughts or reasoning they grew up with.
And to those who develop their distate (r”l) thru altered hashkafos, that is their cheshbon. Counter their claims with facts and you have done what you can.
Old man, he does a good job identifying a problem, not such a good job with solutions. As you say, he has a defeatist attitude towards the exposure he blames otd on. L’maaseh, in homes without internet exposure (of the type he’s referring) there are fewer such tragedies, so I think he’s too quick to dismiss insulation.
ZD, you’re right, the causes in different types of homes are different. Obviously, in a home without internet, if a kid is dissatisfied with frumkeit and disregards his family’s wishes and starts spending time online, it’s very narrow minded to blame his problems on the internet. True, the internet might make things worse, but the key question might be what caused his dissatisfaction to begin with (on that we disagree. You say hats and sunglasses and perhaps stickers on Twizzlers; I say those are scapegoats for a deeper issue, as we’ve discussed).
But, Rabbi Berman’s theory is about homes where internet is accepted, and he would seem to feel that the widespread drop in religious observance, even amongst non Jews, is caused by internet.
The fact that kids from limited internet exposure homes do sometimes leave doesn’t disprove his theory, which is speaking to a much broader demographic.
I suppose if kids from those homes left frumkeit with the same frequency, that would challenge his theory, but it is widely believed that the percentages aren’t close.
But to state that the internet is to blame for kids going OTD when it is known to anyone in the field that 7-9 of every 10 OTD kids has been sexually abused is just a very convinient way for us to wash our hands of a very serious problem. I But to state that the internet is to blame for kids going OTD when it is known to anyone in the field that 7-9 of every 10 OTD kids has been sexually abused is just a very convinient way for us to wash our hands of a very serious problem.
I think you and Rabbi Dr. Berman are speaking about two different demographics.
It is also a complete digression of the topic of this thread.
What more is there to say about the non issur of wearing sunglasses? 🙂
You make excellent points about chumras.
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