Rafi G at Life in Israel blogs that week about Jonathan Rosenblum’s latest column in Mishpacha. The column discusses the trend of going to hotels for Pesach and whether or not it’s a threat to yiddishkeit today.

While I agree with the premise behind the essay, that’s not what that post is about. It’s about one of the comments.

He writes: I think the biggest threat to Judaism today are is the charedi mold of judaism.My wife and children are in Israel right now. that past shabbat they went for a family visit to the Jerusalem zoo. (The way most Jews celebrate shabbat, as a family day with no work, not the charedi way of shabbat but hey, to each their own)They got a bit lost in Jerusalem and made a wrong turn. They came to a gated street and started to form a u-turn to get out of there. A group of charedi young men started running to the car screaming and yelling at them. They felt scared. my wife, her younger sister, and two little kids were physically scared of religious “terrorist” Jews considering they happened to take a wrong turn. I think the charedi viewpoint of their being the only version of Judaism, when in fact they are a minor sect of a minor sect of Judaism is damaging Jews and Judaism.

Two things struck me - one that Charedim are the biggest threats to Judaism today and two that they way in which most Jews celebrate Judaism should be personal choice.

We may live in a very liberal society in which anything goes - and to a assured extent as religious Jews we benefit from that attitude. However, that is

not the report that Yiddishkeit teaches us. There is no “live and let live,” rather we are taught kol Yisrael areivim zeh la’zeh.

If my fellow Jew sins - I am responsible. whether I see someone being mechalel Shabbos, it should be painful to me. Should I tell him what he is doing is wrong? That is a whole other issue, one that should be addressed to a Rav.

You may not like the way assured Charedei groups express that pain and anguish - but their report is valid. Jews who keep Shabbos, who keep kosher, who keep as many of the 613 mitzvos as possible are living Judaism as it is supposed to be lived - everyone else is just being Jewish.

In that sense - possibly its true that Charedim are the biggest threat to Jews today - seeing their way of life reminds secular Jews of all that they are lost.

Original post by Chumi Friedman

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