In a July 2014 Commentary essay entitled “What You Don’t Know About the Ultra-Orthodox” Jack Wertheimer a Conservative expert on American Jewry wrote:

One might assume that the intensity of Jewish living in Haredi communities would spark some curiosity if not admiration among their more acculturated Jewish counterparts…. Nothing of the sort has happened. Anyone following Jews’ discourse about their communities cannot fail to note the near-universal hostility and derision directed at Haredim. Indeed it is hard to escape the conclusion that no other Jews are as reviled by their co-religionists.

What kind of way is that to open a column appearing just before Tishah B’Av a week in which we hopefully reflect on the root causes of the Churban? Because for there to be any hope of banishing intra-Jewish hatred we’ve got to be able to raise the very disturbing question of who in today’s Jewish world harbors animus toward other Jews — and why. I quoted Wertheimer because I’m going to offer a limud zechus on behalf of the Jews he wrote about.

For one thing non-Orthodox Jews often don’t arrive at the animosity he describes on their own. Jews religious or otherwise aren’t hard-wired to hate. But many Jews bereft of Torah do carry around a burden of guilt and envy they’re not even consciously aware of because the Jewish soul knows what it’s missing. And it is those emotions that give rise to “bageling ” propelling the secular Jew upon meeting or speaking with a frum Jew to make some Jewish reference in an effort to identify himself as Jewish and make a connection with a “real Jew” — i.e. religious Jew.

Recently commentator Peter Beinart wrote poignantly in the Forward about a Friday afternoon encounter with an older Satmar couple in his dad’s Brooklyn hospital room. The husband had become his father’s roommate overnight after suffering chest pains during a family wedding. But as Shabbos drew near and the couple was anxious to get back to Williamsburg for sheva brachos they left with the intention of returning the next night but without doing the sign-out paperwork.

In the course of a short essay dissecting his feelings Beinart runs through the range of reactions he experienced. There was bageling:

She began speaking to me: “We came here last night from a wedding our grandson.”

I said “Mazel tov.” Why didn’t I just say “Congratulations”? Her external appearance marked her as Jewish. Mine did not. Had I said “Congratulations” I would have kept my anonymity and my distance. But I wanted to signal that I was part of the club.

“You’re Jewish!” she exclaimed.

And suppressed guilt:

“You belong to a synagogue?”

“Yes.” Why am I trying to impress her? Why do I care what she thinks?

“…You keep Shabbos?”

“Uh well I don’t work on Shabbat. And I don’t usually answer the phone. But I turn on lights. That doesn’t bother me. It’s still a restful day.” More frantic self-justification. Who made her queen of the Jews?

She turned to her husband: “He half keeps Shabbos.” 

And resentment mixed with envious respect for Jewish authenticity too:

I wonder what it’s like to be obedient to one invisible authority no matter where you go. My loyalties are fragmented. They change depending on where I am. When I go to the hospital the hospital becomes my authority….

[Their departure] made me resentful. Which other secular obligations do they disregard? Do they pay their taxes? Do they serve on juries? I remembered a friend telling me how he watched a Haredi man on a plane meticulously following the rules for laying tefillin while flagrantly disobeying the pilot’s instructions for everyone to sit down.

What if [the rabbi’s] condition deteriorated? I judged them as reckless and arrogant. And I envied them.

As night fell the hospital grew quieter…. An orderly came by and noticed that the gurney next to us was now empty. He looked confused and I almost said “The Jews left.”

How is it that one Jew’s attitude towards his Orthodox coreligionist is expressed through innocuous bageling while another harbors the darker emotions Wertheimer describes? The resentment secular Jews may feel will often be based on generalizations about Orthodox Jews derived from isolated personal experiences with individuals or impressions gleaned from others. There may be bad memories of an authority figure in their past whom they describe as Orthodox. Perhaps the person was verbally abused or financially wronged by an Orthodox Jew. It might be the fact of a new growing Orthodox presence in a community with its perceived consequences for quality of life. And of course visibly Orthodox Jews with their strange appearance and ways are an embarrassment and make it all the harder for an assimilated Jew to blend seamlessly into the surrounding culture.

And then there is the role played by external agitators. Those who’ve had little or no contact with Orthodox Jews are vulnerable to negative and distorted narratives fed to them by the both the secular-Jewish press which in Marvin Schick’s words “over the years has specialized in targeting Orthodox Jews depicting us as engulfed in wrongdoing ” and the heterodox movements.

One doesn’t have to be a member of those groups to know the kind of talk their leaders are wont to engage in. The president of Reform’s rabbinical association in a multi-page attack on Orthodox Jews in Reform Judaism magazine entitled “Who Are the Authentic Jews?” concluded that it is not “those Jews who have by their tribal exclusivism their obsession with the punctilios of ritual their contempt for Klal Yisrael their manner of dress their romanticization of the past and yes their fanaticism separated themselves from the community….”

Bar-Ilan professor Ze’ev Maghen recalled his first Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv when he and his wife attended the local Conservative synagogue:

When it was time for the rabbi’s sermon — the most important sermon of his rabbinical year — he spent an entire forty minutes doing one thing: lambasting Orthodox Judaism and its supporters in government. I have seen this time and again in Israeli Conservative and Reform congregations. To hell with peoplehood: we have to win. 

When Jews — good people who’ve been denied their spiritual birthright — are bombarded by the religious leaders they respect with this sort of hate speech should one be surprised to read that “near-universal hostility and derision directed at Haredim” exists?

Yet ask a frum Jew what he thinks and feels upon witnessing a non-Orthodox Jew violating the Torah and he’s most likely to respond that he feels pain compassion or regret along with perhaps some guilt given the responsibility of all Jews for each other. At the very worst — and it is indeed unfortunate — he may say he doesn’t feel much at all so inured is he to the sight. Yom Kippur sermons devoted to excoriating non-Orthodox Jews? I’ve never heard one and don’t know anyone who ever has.

But before we pat ourselves too soundly on the back we’d do well to recall that we don’t have the challenges our brethren have regarding intra-Jewish brotherhood — we don’t feel threatened by them due to feelings of Jewish inadequacy and ignorance. Yet when it comes to relating to our fellow Orthodox Jews where we do have challenges resulting from many of those same factors — feelings of religious inadequacy discomfort at being associated with them acceptance of lashon hara isolated negative experiences — how do we fare?

Our nisayon vis-à-vis our nonobservant brethren isn’t a challenge of too much emotion but too little; not hostility but apathy toward their plight and giving up hope for their Jewish future. Theirs in turn is to see us as we truly are to realize that we want the best for them and are pained for them.

But what if we were to do something that would help both communities of Jews with our respective tests by beseeching the Ribbono shel Olam on our fellow Jews’ behalf? We do it for individual Jews languishing unjustly in jail; why not for millions of nonobservant Jews trapped in a prison of another sort through no fault of their own?

The choice need not be between either doing nothing or galvanizing kiruv on a mass scale which is a vision that to this day has not materialized. We can do something truly effective. We can daven. Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 670. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com