Dear Heshy: Why do you hate Charedim so much?

Dear Heshy,

As a long time reader, I think I know you pretty well and I’ve been wondering why you hate Charedim so much. It seems that almost every post on this blog is aimed at tearing down the Torah way of life and I can’t understand why. If I wanted hatred, vitriol, and stereotyping against the frum community I could visit dozens of other sites, I used to come here for the laughs and you’ve greatly disappointed me.

Why do you even care about the Charedim, do they personally impact you? I understand that moving to the left coast probably made you a liberal and liberals feel the need to comment on that which they don’t know. Do you really know what its like to live in Israel? Do you really understand our battle to keep the kosel sacred, to keep our children in yeshiva, and to follow our gedolim without questioning because we don’t know every angle they are taking. I can’t believe the way in which you speak against our gedolim, whether you like it or not, they are smarter than you and have the entire Jewish nation in mind when they make their decisions.

Your support for institutions like Women of the Wall, Footsteps, Friendship Circle, and Tomchei Shabbos makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t believe I ever gave you a donation, I can’t believe I ever called myself a fan of Frum Satire, ever since you got married your writing is filled with such hatred that I felt compelled many times to hack your site and fill it with words of Torah.

Used to be a fan,

Dear Used to be a fan:

I’m not surprised by your message, let me explain to you how blogging reactions like yours work. You probably visit my site once every 3 or 4 days, one day I happen to write something that pisses you off so much that you convince yourself that I’m just another hate filled blogger and I used to be better. The same thing happens to people on nearly every post I write, if the post gets a lot of comments, I can almost guarantee that one of those comments will start off with “you used to be so much better” and proceed to tell me how lately I’ve sucked. That used to bother me, until I realized the psychology around such idiots. The “You used to be” commenters are a dime a dozen, I’ve been getting those comments for at least 7 years now. The problem with commenters like that, are that they expect me to stay the same, do you know how much I’ve changed and grown in the past 7 years. I’ve lived in over 10 different communities, found a career and a wife – I’ve also stopped paying for porn, that’s why I’m so rich.

I’m not sure where you gathered the information on my Charedi hate, yes I think they are a dangerous faction in our society, in fact I think they’re going to destroy Israel way faster than the Arabs ever would, but hate is such a strong word. I love all Jews (besides the gays and feminists of course, they’re responsible for all evil in the world) and despite my animosity towards their extremist practices I don’t hate them. You see, one of the biggest problems in the frum community is that any sort of questioning or disagreement is viewed as hate. I’ve been noticing more and more anonymous letters on frum media sites that are directed at all of those “hateful bloggers” that seek to destroy the Torah way of life.

In fact, I’d like to dedicate this post to all of those bloggers who disagree with anything in the frum community, yet are branded as haters. Unbeknownst to many of you, many bloggers that post and discuss the negativity of the frum community are actually seeking positive change. Up until recently, everything that made anyone frum look bad was deemed as worthy of shoving under the rug, kind of like sex abuse, except more wide sweeping. Prior to the internet, nothing bad happened, everything that frum people did was full of honesty and integrity. That same opinion still prevails in many places, but now whenever someone decides to write about said negative things, they are full of hate and obviously aren’t frum.

Here’s the real deal about publicizing things that were once shoved under the table, many feel that it’s a chillul hashem and should remain within community realms, but that is not my approach. In my opinion (and many others nowadays) it is better to bring negative stories to light in an effort to help bring change because the community alone usually prefers secrecy over change. The guy who sent the letter above is probably of the opinion that nothing should ever leave the community walls, because obviously daas torah knows best. Unfortunately for daas torah, many people don’t follow blindly anymore, the shtetl days are over with and disagreeing with daas torah doesn’t mean you hate them.

One can have plenty of ahavas yisroel without agreeing with everyone.

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