BeyondBT Now Censoring Names and Links

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the supression of ideas. -- Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World

It used to be that my favorite baal teshuva blog BeyondBT would let some of my comments in, assuming I wasn't actively arguing for atheism, etc. Now they won't even do that.

In response to Tuesday's post in which a guest contributor asked the question How Can The Average Orthodox Jew Achieve Kiddush HaShem and Reduce Chillul Hashem? I posted the following comment (paraphrased from memory) which could not be less objectionable:

One of my favorite quotes from a rabbi:

"I wanted to change the world, but I realized it was too large of a task for one person, so I tried to change my community. That was also too hard, so I tried to change my family. That was also too hard, so I decided to try and change myself. And though it was very hard, I finally changed myself. And once I changed myself, I discovered my family changed, the community changed, and the entire world changed." - R' Israel Lipkin Salanter

(The quote has long been one of my favorites. Googling for the exact quote, I found it on blog-friend Ezzie's blog!)

It a quote from a rabbi, directly on point and not remotely subversive. I figured it would probably get through the moderators.

But no. I received a polite email saying that the comment was appreciated, but could I please change my name and remove the link to my blog? I wrote back saying that this is the name I respond to blogs with and the link is a link to my blog and I wasn't comfortable changing either one. They wrote back "ok" and then deleted the comment.

Blogs for people joining Orthodox Judaism hide opposing points of view from their readers. Blogs for people leaving Orthodox Judaism link to both supporting and opposing points of view. We think our arguments can hold up if allowed to compete. They think it's better to hide.

That's been pretty much my experience in the real world, too. Skeptics are excited to debate (when they're not afraid of repercussions for "outing" themselves.) Believers tend to become uncomfortable and defensive if you even hint that something they believe might not be true. Skeptics devour arguments from both sides. Most believers stick to arguments for conclusions they prefer. (They call this "chizuk," or "strengthening," as if "strengthening" a belief is a good thing.)

The Single Greatest Problem in Orthodox Communities

Do you want to know why so many people leave their Orthodox communities?

It's because the communities engage in social shunning of anybody who doesn't fit in. It used to be that communities contained both ultra-Orthodox rabbis and people who drove to shul on shabbos. Talmud scholars and those who thought the whole Talmud was a bunch of nonsense. Those with OCD-levels of halakhic compliance and those who sometimes ate shellfish.

Now if you're different in any way, you're shunned. Orthodox Jews have gotten so terrified of exposing their children to anyone who they deem a bad role model that they just kick out everybody who's not perfect (by their standards.) And they do it to kids, too. In many right-wing communities, if you talk to girls on a Saturday night, you might as well be a crack dealer. They'll treat you the same way.

I have a friend who was suspended from a right-wing yeshiva for reading secular novels. Many friends in Israel were not allowed any secular magazines. A well-respected yeshiva allowed either a computer or a phone line, but not both. God-forbid a bochur accesses the internet.

Do you think it was like this in the shtetls of Europe? You think there weren't open apikorsim and people who worked on shabbos in the same communities as the greatest Torah scholars? There were. Talk to people who are old enough to remember.

My grandfather was from Lithuania. He was a rabbi from a long line of rabbis. He shook his head at this nonsense going on now with the know-nothing black-hatters who think everybody's got to be a certain way. He told one of them, a young up-and-comer more right-wing than most, "You know, it was never like this in Lithuania." The rabbi's answer? "This isn't Lithuania."

You want to keep kids from leaving? Let them have beliefs that aren't 100% Orthodox. Don't make them hide it, or be ashamed. Let adults voice their honest beliefs and questions and doubts. Even if Orthodoxy is correct, there's no way everybody in these communities believes the party line. Quit being the thought police. Show the kids that there are alternatives in life. You shouldn't have to be only one kind of person to live in your neighborhoods.

Want to keep kids off drugs? Don't dismiss the ones who don't fit in as "rejects" or "bad apples" and maybe they won't start hanging out with all the other "rejects" and "bad apples." Don't pretend marijuana's the same as heroin. Don't act like talking to girls leads to stealing cars. Don't denigrate women or girls who wear pants as if they are prostitutes.

You think halakha is the One True Way? Fine. Tell your kids that. Tell your neighbors. But you don't have to frantically hide your kids from everybody who thinks maybe God didn't write the Torah. You can disagree with homosexuality without kicking gay adults (even those with partners!) out of your neighborhoods and letting kids know that they'd better stay in the closet until they're old enough to get the hell out.

You guys are trying to create this ideal society where everybody does the right things and thinks the right things all the time, where "right" is defined so narrowly as to be impossible for at least 20-30% of your children. Grow the hell up and join the real world, where not everybody agrees with you and not everybody has to act exactly the same. I mean, the whole everybody wear black-and-white with the same kind of black hat is a parody of itself. This isn't a religion, it's a fantasy world.

This post inspired by G's post at Serandez.

Frank Zappa on Crossfire

I thought this was fascinating. CNN's Crossfire, 1986. A glimpse of the culture wars from 20 years ago with Robert Novak, Frank Zappa, and others.



Via metafilter.

Link Roundup

Abandoning Eden is thrilled to be moving in with her (non-Jewish) boyfriend, but doesn't know when, if, or how to tell her parents, who frankly sound pretty scary. She also has a post about protecting her parents from reality. Congrats and good luck, AE!

The Holy Hyrax has a fascinating post examining various ways that Arachim censored their version of the Venetian Haggaddah, originally printed in 1609. Bare arms and the man in the moon? Censored. Disturbing racial imagery? No problem.

Beyond BT has a typically mirror-world (to us skeptics) post about having the seder without extended family.

DovBear thinks the rabbis are right to be scared of blogs.

XGH is back and required reading, as always. Even DBS is back, albeit with only two posts so far.

An Agnostic Bar Mitzvah and the Fraud of Orthodox Judaism

I was moved by this:

glumbert - Ballsy Bar Mitzvah Speech

I am so sad that I didn't have a community as nurturing as this boy's. I can't imagine the crowd I had at my bar mitzvah reacting with appreciative laughter if I'd been able to be as honest as this kid. What do you think would be the reaction in an Orthodox shul? Would he be booed and interrupted? Would the Rabbi have launched into a stinging condemnation afterwards? That'd be my guess, although I can't know for sure.

How can your religion be authentic if people can't be honest about their doubts and beliefs? The way every Orthodox bar mitzvah speech is wholly accepting of Orthodox dogma reminds me of when Saddam Hussein won 100% of the vote in his last "election." Total B.S., and for the same reason. They can't handle the truth.

Children should be encouraged to seek honestly for the truth, not pressured and censored into being the perfect little ditto-heads that Orthodox kids are, at least publicly. Can you imagine a bar-mitzvah boy getting up there and saying that he doesn't know if God exists or whether Moshe "really" split the sea? I can't see an Orthodox boy even saying "I couldn't really relate to this parsha." What does it say about your religion that there is so little room for honesty and openness?


(Via Random Good Stuff.)

Followup: Gil Student and Censorship

In the comments section of the very post that claimed his censorship policy was "not out of fear but out of annoyance," Rabbi Student censored a comment in a way that can leave no doubt that it is in fact about fear and not annoyance.

Commenter Modeh B'Miktsas provided a list of blogs that allow free discussion "for those skeptics who don't know where else to post." The comment could not be construed by any rational individual as rude or annoying, but Rabbi Student censored it with this explanation: they can find these places on their own.

What is the purpose of making it harder for skeptics to find places where they are welcome to comment? The only possible explanation is that Rabbi Student is, in fact, afraid of open debate, not just for himself but for all the doubters out there. He is afraid that if both sides are allowed to argue their point of view, people who are on the fence will be swayed by the skeptics.

Modern Orthodoxy's State of Denial

I wasn't going to post about this article in the Times because I didn't think it would be very conducive to good conversation. But after being surprised by the responses to it by some Orthodox people I respect (Chana, Gil Student) as being generally tolerant and open-minded, I decided I have to.

The event which opens the piece is as follows:

Noah Feldman went to the Modern Orthodox high school Maimonides as a teen. As an adult, he is not Orthodox and has married a non-Jew, who is Korean-American. He brought his wife (then girlfriend) to his high school reunion. At the reunion, a class photo was taken. Later, the photo was sent out as part of an alumni newsletter. Except he and his girlfriend had been removed from the photo.

This story struck me as something out of Orwell, or from the former Soviet Union. Deciding not to publish the photograph, adding a disclaimer, or even attaching a letter from a Rabbi addressing why intermarriage is unacceptable would have been one thing, but falsifying a photo to pretend that a person doesn't even exist is dishonest and shameful.

It's also emblematic of the Modern Orthodox community's state of denial. Philosophically bound to the traditional Jewish rule of law, halakha, while at the same time overtly influenced by modernity, there are a few subjects they prefer to think about only in the abstract. It's easier to rail against the evils of intermarriage when you don't have to look Prof. Feldman in the face and tell him that he sinned by marrying his wife, that his family is somehow lesser than fully Jewish families. It's easier to maintain that the Torah is correct to call homosexual sex an abomination when you pretend that there are no gay people in your community.

I've seen this denial firsthand. I grew up in a very modern Modern Orthodox community. But what I experienced was not a community courageously combining modernity with its sacred beliefs, but one threatened by reality.

For example, I knew one family that refused to allow their future mother-in-law's live-in boyfriend into their home because they didn't want their younger children to think living together before marriage is normal. My Orthodox readers are probably thinking to themselves that that sounds perfectly reasonable. After all, they really don't want those kids growing up to think cohabitation is okay. But look how they're doing it! They're not having the couple over and then explaining afterwards to their children that it's not the halakhic way to act -- they're pretending the man does not exist because his very existence implies that there are alternatives to the halakhic way of life.

And what of all the debates that rage in the J-blogosphere about evolution and the Documentary Hypothesis and whether the Exodus actually happened? Do Modern Orthodox communities courageously address these issues, encouraging students to ask tough questions? Or do they largely pretend the issues don't exist, or are easily parried by answers like those of the Aish HaTorah crowd?

And what of those of us who simply decided we don't believe in Orthodoxy? Does the MO community honestly deal with the issue, saying that some people simply leave for any number of reasons? Or do they avoid talking about us when possible, pretending that leaving is simply not an alternative, and when the subject does come up, do they pretend that we all left because our daddies didn't love us enough or we couldn't resist the allure of drugs and sex?

Erasing people from a picture because they do not represent the ideal you wish to encourage is a cowardly act of denial. Noah Feldman didn't kill anyone, or commit a robbery, or even deliberately hurt anyone's feelings. He's simply a living example of a normal person who has made a choice that's made every day in this country. Rather than accepting the fact that it's possible to grow up Orthodox and go on to marry a non-Jew, this particular editor decided to pretend it didn't happen.

Listen, if you want to be Modern and Orthodox, you're going to have to have a little more courage than pretending those of us who are living reminders that your path isn't for everyone don't exist. You're going to have to honestly address the challenges to traditional Judaism raised by physics, biology, cosmology, textual criticism, and ethics.

You should also consider the morality of what you do. Is it moral to shun a person for deciding that your religion isn't for them? To pretend that they never existed? People like Feldman and me are as worthy of love and respect as anyone else is. That our very existence is a threat to your worldview is no excuse for the way you treat us.