Moving Between Worlds
MY POINT isn't the specifics of Hirsi Ali's early life so much as its utter foreignness to anyone raised in the West
By Yonoson Rosenblum
A recent Yom Tov guest thought I might be interested in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography, Infidel, and lent me a copy. Hirsi Ali begins by describing her birth into a preliterate, nomadic society in what is today Somalia. The country did not yet exist; loyalty was to one's tribe and to one's clan within it. From an early age, her grandmother coached her in learning the family genealogy going back at least eight generations.
Blood relations mattered a great deal. So did honor, in particular the honor of the family. From a very young age, it was drilled into her that she must avoid any stain on the family honor, or suffer horrible consequences.
Later, the family moved to Saudi Arabia, where no woman could leave the house without a male chaperone, and the sounds of husbands beating their wives at night were a regular occurrence.
MY POINT HERE is not the specifics of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's early life so much as its utter foreignness to anyone raised in the West. But she is not the only one who has lived, or is living, in a foreign culture.
This past Shabbos, it occurred to me that my own life would seem similarly foreign to almost everyone with whom I grew up. I was sitting on the couch immersed in Dovi Safier's fascinating account in Mishpacha of the life of Rav Yechiel Mordechai Gordon. And perched next to where I was sitting was a Ramban on Chumash waiting to be opened, if I could ever manage to put down Mishpacha.
The world of the early 20th-century Lithuanian yeshivos has become my own, and those who grew to greatness there have become my heroes, even though none of my immediate ancestors learned in those yeshivos. And my intellectual focus, particularly on Shabbos, is the writings of great Torah thinkers, many of whom lived a thousand years ago and who were often themselves unraveling debates that took place in the Babylonian yeshivos up to a millennium earlier.
If I were to try to describe either the yeshivos or the thought of the Ramban to any of my college friends or law school classmates, they would draw a complete blank. I would be speaking about a foreign country and culture.
THAT BECAME EVIDENT TO ME this past summer, when I spent several days in Lower Manhattan doing research at the offices of the Orthodox Union. That research project provided the occasion to get together with several old friends whom I had not seen in nearly 50 years, though we have had sporadic correspondence of late.
I stayed two nights in Tribeca with a law school friend and his wife. I also had dinner at a nearby kosher restaurant, with my high school debate partner and his wife.
My former debate partner is a real rags-to-riches story. He was the only one of my close high school friends who did not come from a relatively affluent background. And the only one to make a lot of money: He was a tax partner at a major New York law firm, and subsequently vice president and general counsel of Ford Motor Company.
I enjoyed these two reunions immensely, and we certainly had no trouble finding things to discuss. I still spend a lot of time thinking and reading about topics that are on my friends' radars.
Yet we spoke little about the core of my life as a Torah Jew. True, neither of my friends are Jewish, but I doubt it would have made much difference if they were. Even with Jewish friends from the past, their lives are not built on the same calendar, and they have little comprehension of traditional Jewish sources or of the institutions in which they are learned.
I found much to admire in my old friends and had no trouble figuring out why we had been so close many decades ago. I still enjoy their company. Nevertheless, there was a great deal about my life over the last half century that could not be shared and is inaccessible to them.
What I am describing is how I live in two worlds at the same time. The one of my upbringing and secular education, in which I still swim comfortably. And the other, the Torah world in which I now live and in which my wife and I have raised our children and grandchildren. The latter is the one that provides my primary sense of identity: I am a Jew bound by the mitzvos of the Torah and devoted to its study.
IN SOME SENSE, that duality has long typified Jewish life, even when we were confined to European ghettos. Hebrew University historian Jacob Katz describes in Exclusiveness and Tolerance — I'm relying on memory, not any recent reading — how many Jews in the medieval period and beyond would leave their ghetto confinement during the day to commercially interact with the larger gentile world around them. Some court Jews even became proficient in the culture of the surrounding gentile world and moved easily in that society.
But even those who circulated outside the ghetto looked to the Jewish community in which they lived for approbation. Their identity was based on the standards of the Jewish community. The ghetto was their home. And it was the good opinion of their fellow Jews that was their chief concern. Even today, that historical pattern has long described most contemporary Torah Jews outside Eretz Yisrael who work outside the confines of the community.
In the Israeli chareidi world, however, there has traditionally been much more suspicion of venturing into the outside world. In the early years of the state, the Torah community was small and felt itself to be besieged and vulnerable. Yaldei Tehran and the treatment of new immigrants from Arab lands gave credence to those suspicions.
As the Torah community has grown exponentially, that feeling of vulnerability has lessened to some extent. The statement announcing the creation of the precursor to the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, for instance, specifically spoke of an eagerness to share responsibility for the larger society.
In addition, the necessity of earning a livelihood has forced many in the community to earn their daily bread outside the confines of the community. To date, that trend has been largely led by women, who are able to use their secular training to secure well-paying jobs in accounting and other fields. But not only.
The distinction between those willing to venture beyond our "ghetto walls" and those who are not is part of what divides traditional chareidim and the so-called "modern chareidim." And that distinction often, though not always — I'm thinking of the many highly successful chassidic businessmen — underlies different educational models, in particular the approach to non-Torah studies. Those differences are being played out today in the proliferation of new parties under the label "chareidi."
Even in modern times, earning a living does not require a secular education if one is blessed with entrepreneurial skills, the willingness to take risks, and some starting capital, as many millionaires in Lakewood can attest.
For those lacking those qualities, however, a good education is usually the best route to earning a livelihood — though, happily, skilled craftsmen are in far higher demand today than college graduates with a degree in gender studies.
NOW, THE ANALOGY drawn above between Jews who once ventured beyond the ghetto gates to earn their livelihoods and present-day chareidim who enter the larger Israeli society to do so is not perfect. Most important, the larger Israeli society is mostly composed of Jews.
And that creates both new challenges and new opportunities. First, the challenges. Any Jew who ventured forth into gentile society prior to Emancipation knew with certainty that he was entering foreign territory among those who likely despised him. It never occurred to him that he could be part of that society or that it had anything to offer him.
That is less true when the surrounding society is composed of one's fellow Jews, speaking the same language. Plenty of contemporary chareidim identify with Israel's remarkable achievements and its willingness to defend itself, while eschewing its popular culture. And to the extent that they also want to be part of the larger society, while retaining their chareidi identity, they view military service as a necessity. But in any event, their Jewish identity takes precedence over their Israeli identity.
At the same time, because the surrounding society is composed primarily of Jews, a Torah Jew who mingles in that society has the opportunity to uproot stereotypes about Torah Jews and through his behavior attract those with whom he comes into contact to Torah, or at the very least arouse their curiosity about the nature of Torah.
Finally, there is one point, based on the historical models, that I think is crucial to make. No one should assume that those who do venture out do not continue to identify with the chareidi world, including its emphasis on Torah learning as the supreme value.
True, they may seek to expand alternative models for those not cut out for or not able to sustain long-term Torah learning. But it would be a tragic mistake to dismiss their concerns or drive them from the community as "not really chareidi," which can only become a self-fulfilling prophecy.