Seclusion

by Yeshiva Guy

Isolated. Insular. Intolerant.

 

The chareidi and yeshivish community is often been described as such. It may very well be that we are those things. After all, the average bochur in a mainstream yeshiva doesn’t know what the most recent behala on the blogosphere is. The average Bais Yaakov girl doesn’t know what the latest in haute couture is. Certainly, the regular yingelech in cheder are blissfully unaware of the madness prevalent on the crisscrossing byways and highways that speed secular youth toward a life of, well, emptiness.

We are insulated.

Beautifully so, I think. Have you ever taken a walk in peaceful Meah Shearim on a Friday night? Watched the boys and girls of eight or nine play in the streets? The poetic innocence on the faces of the Yerushalmi kids twinkles in the twilit alleyways. Freshly scrubbed and bathed, they play with joyful, carefree abandon. Abandoning the yokes of a society gone insane on them, they are, in a word, children. When was the last time you met up with a nine year old who was only nine years old? We say, “oh, what a smart child you are”, chap a knip, and move on, subconsciously silencing the screams of our own childhood… itself so much more innocent. Children are meant to be children, not adults. In frightening irony, however, adults behave childishly and attempt to shortcut their children’s most vital experience- their youth. They nuke their progenies’ time growing up, and nuclear is nothing short of the result.

So as secular society stumbles forward in its mad rush towards moral oblivion, know that the seclusion of our community is good, and true, to our roots. It is Torah. Results, too, are on the side of the system. Just take a look at the thriving Torah communities built by men and women educated in the very same institutions that they now lead. Yes, the system is solid.

There is, sadly, a school of thought that has attracted some misguided students in recent years and attained a disproportionate voice in various online venues. I do not believe that the prattle of these pedagogues characterizes the majority Orthodox Jewry. Only that any voice, maintained in a forum lacking any opposite vocalization, and pedantic enough, will by default earn the following of what few students remain in the room.

These cynical Cassandras and doubting Thomases  attempt to attack our  insularness of the last thousand years or so with a few pithy lines of embarrassed, and embarrassing rhetoric. Always, it has been thus. Always, the naysayers have felt the need to fight organized Yiddishkeit. Dating back to Genesis itself, the scorner’s ban has been hurled by the cynics of every generation and geographic grade. Bans as old and foolish as when they were first sent on their way, to mock a righteous Avraham Avinu, the hurler’s never see fit to update their content or even originality.

And it is wrong. Allow me to demonstrate.

[Side note:

The propagators of said rhetoric are more often than not products of a society that has not worked for them. They are the result of an awesome factory like system designed by great men that may have wronged them- like every factory in the world, defective products are occasionally turned out. I wish, truly, that these men and ladies could find it in their hearts to forgive a system that did not intentionally do them harm.  And to understand that the defects in the systems' machinery are a result not of specific intent, but rather of an attempt to cater to the masses, to the median. Should a system with fewer tolerances for defects be put into place? Perhaps. But that is neither the purpose nor within the purview of this post.]

According to the argument, enveloping oneself in a community like the chareidi or yeshiva world’s current island-like approach leads to one thing- ignorance of the outside world. Nothing could be worse, or more embarrassing, according to them, than the yeshiva students who cannot intelligently discuss the latest developments in whatever reality TV show currently holds sway on America’s upper middle class. For shame, they cry! How dare we educate our children to avoid pop culture like the plague and focus on the most valuable of all pursuits?! Instead, they propose, expose them to the barrage of instantly available, vitally important news served up in real time on the news outlets. Have them assimilate constant reports of the violence and gore of the street.

But why? Why expose our innocent, protected youth to this? I can hear the sane voices questioning. But the voice answering from the darkness have an answer for this too.

Because one day they will be, must be, exposed to it themselves. What will happen when these children must grow up and face the world? They won’t know how to deal with it! They won’t be able to handle the ghastliness and gore of the outside world. So expose them to it early on. That’s the argument in a nutshell. And nuts it is. Here’s why.

Exposing our precious, our most precious, commodity early on to a world gone mad is patently ludicrous. It’s worse than that, actually; it is dangerous. An inaccurate analogy might be the swimming instructor who wishes to teach his charge how to swim. Wishing to do so in a no nonsense fashion and being a pragmatic instructor, he lifts his struggling pupil and bodily throws him into the raging river. In short order, the three year old boy drowns. “Swim, swim”, cries the teacher from the riverbank. To no avail. The child simply can’t deal with the overpowering, swirling waters of the river. Flailing wildly all the while, the child slowly slips under.

Taking our youth and wishing to equip them to deal with the mad milieu swirling round them can have devastating effects. To those who argue we will eventually need to do it anyway… I say this to them. For the same reason you do not choose to equip your ten year old with a .45 to defend himself using the logic of “one day he will need to know how to defend himself anyway”, we do not equip our young with potentially fatal tools.

And finally, we are intolerant.

We are intolerant of any threats on our young. Just as the herd gathers together to ensure the survival of its young by not exposing any of the kids, we too gather in on ourselves to protect our children. And we do not tolerate any charges of the unfaithful on our charges. We are intolerant of insurgents on our isolation.

So we must stay secluded.  In our perfect little worlds. But you’re welcome to join us any time.