Several weeks ago New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote a piece assailing Orthodox Jews and since attack pieces like this are sadly not infrequent in the media this was not surprising. But what was indeed quite surprising and saddening was a response penned by an Orthodox writer of some note in the Jewish Week. She wrote that she “was deeply disturbed” by Bruni’s column because of her instinct to “protect my people ” and went on to say that in the Orthodox community there are “isolated cases … not ‘patterns of criminality.’$$separatequotes$$”

But then her self-avowed protective instinct seemed to wane writing that she “must acknowledge that within the ultra-Orthodox community a strong patriarchy … can go unquestioned sadly leading — at times — to the scurrilous behaviors you’ve described.” And just to make clear her willingness to offer the “ultra-Orthodox” up to the wolves in place of her “people ” she doubled down on it:

If it appears I am making a distinction between types of Orthodoxies you’re right. I am. Increasingly there is a universe of difference between modern and ultra-Orthodox Jews and journalists who pay attention will note the not-so-subtle differences.

Quite an irony all this. Just one year ago she and I were both participants in a symposium in Jewish Action the Orthodox Union’s quarterly magazine on the topic of Jewish unity. In her essay she wrote of her belief that “the only way unity and true ahavat Yisrael can be achieved is to believe in one’s heart and to illustrate through one’s actions that family comes first.” Well said.

But there too she felt the need to follow with a swipe at her fellow Orthodox Jews writing that many non-observant Jews she works with “give more tzedakah than most Orthodox Jews I know and they donate more of their time [to various good causes] … but I would venture to say that they are not seen as part of the family for many of my coreligionists.” Putting aside the dubious substance of her remarks do I detect a pattern here with protestations of love for all Jews followed by qualifications of who deserves that love more than others?

But beyond the ill will implicit in gratuitously calling the media’s attention to an ostensible divide in the Orthodox world — on one side those the Times columnists dare not criticize and on the other those they can feel free to savage — the entire notion of a “universe of difference” between us is simplistic and largely untrue.

I was intrigued by what she meant with that phrase and so I e-mailed for clarification. After some apparent resistance to explaining herself she wrote back that she was referring to the issues of “support of Zionism women's roles national service integration of Jewish and secular studies attitudes to non-Jews and participation in the world at large rabbinic authority higher education role of learning and prayer.”

Oh those. That’s the clichéd list regularly trotted out in the media and I was expecting something more creative and perhaps closer to the truth. Suffice it to say that many of those items are at best true of only a certain segment of either one or both sides of the supposed Orthodox chasm.

Take for example “higher education”: The UJA-Federation’s 2011 New York Jewish Population Survey reported that 55 percent of “modern” Orthodox men have a college degree while 45 percent of “yeshivish” men do. No “universe of difference” to behold there. And has this writer recently been to one ofTouroCollege’s numerous campuses or to variousNew York’s law schools and firms? The same is true of “attitudes to non-Jews”: In the abstract both the existence and absence of inappropriate bias towards non-Jews are to be found in similar proportions across Orthodoxy; in practice however I know many chassidic Jews who get along at least as swimmingly with the non-Jews they encounter or deal with as do their modern

Orthodox brethren.

As to “women’s roles” once again in the real world — the one in which out-of-touch stereotypes are irrelevant — there’s little or no practical difference among most of Orthodoxy’s various sectors regarding women at work or home; only in regard to women’s religious roles is there any divergence and even that is largely limited to the feminist fringe. And I still haven’t figured out what was meant by “national service ” “integration of Jewish and secular studies” and the “role of learning and prayer.”

Beyond these specifics there’s a larger phenomenon this writer has missed entirely which most analyses of the Orthodox community regularly fail to note too: That a large percentage of modern Orthodox Jews are such sociologically but not ideologically and are in fact very receptive to the outlook of the fervently Orthodox world in many respects. The shiurim they attend the leaders they admire and heed the material they read are often perhaps even more often than not those of a chareidi perspective.

Finally there is the observable reality of how Jews of different types interact with each other regardless of this writer’s laundry list of “issues.” In my contribution to that Jewish Action symposium I noted that while work will always remain to be done to bring Jews together in this imperfect world of ours

$$c$$at least from where I sit the absence of unity in the Orthodox world is greatly overstated … on an interpersonal level at least in the various shuls and other religious and social venues in New York and wherever else I go both here and in Israel Orthodox Jews of all stripes mix easily without rancor and to the contrary with a great deal of goodwill and camaraderie.$$c$$

The writer concludes her response to Bruni with the observation that when “it comes to religion it is time for a media approach with greater subtlety and objectivity.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Comfort Zone I recently had another opportunity to check up on the revolution-in-progress in the People’s Republic of Oorah at the summer training camp for what I refer to as the “littlest revolutionaries” otherwise known as The Zone. It’s axiomatic in the field of kiruv that no matter how brilliant and convincing one’s shiurim may be the real catalyst for making life changes is the warm personal connection between Jew and fellow Jew and nowhere is this more evident than at Oorah’s camp.

It’s fascinating to observe how the all-enveloping cut-it-with-a-knife-palpable atmosphere of love and genuine acceptance breaks down the barriers between them and the yeshivah bochurim who are their counselors and Torah Mates. We can’t know what paths in life all these youngsters will take but of this we can be reasonably certain: If they ever meet up with someone engaged in broad-brush defamation of frum folks they will stand up and say “I know these people and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I was incredulous watching hundreds of kids whom one assumes to be jaded by all the dazzling technology and entertainment in their lives back home crowding around the head table at the Friday night seudah vying eagerly to win the decidedly low-tech stuffed animals being tossed by a man with a long beard to those kids who correctly answer his halachah riddles. Rav Chaim Mintz doesn’t tell jokes or lead cheers but these kids know a real Jew when they see one someone who’s a genuine maamin and genuinely cares about them. 

Of course kids are never really a blank slate; they’ve surely got lots of bubbys and zeidys rooting for them to make their way back despite the Jewish wildernesses they come from. Last year 10-year-old Brian K. (not his real name) aNew Jersey public school student spent his first summer at The Zone and the mitzvah he most connected with was tzitzis. He came home proudly wearing the pair he received in camp and wouldn’t even take them off for his mother to wash them. Thanks to Oorah he began attending a Jewish school this year and each week he’d attend the nearest ChillZone where Oorah keeps the summertime inspiration going year-round.

One week his father came to pick him up and heard the ChillZone leader telling the kids that when the Vilna Gaon was about to leave this world his talmidim found him holding his tzitzis and crying. He explained: “In this world I can buy a mitzvah for just a few kopecks but no amount of money can buy me a mitzvah in the next world.” Brian’s dad went over to the leader afterward and told him “I thought you might want to know that my son is a direct descendant son after son of the Vilna Gaon.”