While in captivity, kidnap victim Patty Hearst became afraid to have any of her own thoughts. She had been yelled at countless times for appearing to think by her captors who were afraid psychics would use her thoughts to locate her. Even after the FBI captured her, she couldn't use her brain. She didn't know if she was coming or going. Her mind was shot. After getting out of the Moonies, Steve Hassan was unable to read even though he had been an avid reader to the point where he had previously wanted to to become an English professor. He said it took him a year to recover, to retrain his brain to work again.
Something similar happens in many controlled and abusive environments such as dysfunctional homes, corporations, the military, and even yeshivas, particularly one place I know where the very idea of a bochur thinking at all was viewed as chutzpadick. There was a constant mockery of the baal habayis' and particularly a young person's brain. I see this in many yeshiva boys. They are afraid to give their own pshot on anything, so programmed they are that they are not qualified. You need to think and offer your ideas while at the same time recognizing that your idea is not the final word on the subject and may be inaccurate or even totally wrong. By the way, that's true of all people - even scholars and experts - but of course more true of young and less educated people. It's not so complicated, yet that approach is not used in many places. The world will not end if you are wrong. It's OK. Share your thought. These crazy control freak middle management rabbis will accuse you of destroying the Oral tradition or whatever for having a thought they don't like. That's an example of another cult technique called phobia indoctrination. How can I be a nobody and at the same time tear down the Torah? They are trying to destroy you at both ends, making you feel like you are of no importance but at the same time you are so powerful that you are destroying Judaism because you privately shared a question or well meaning explanation with the big shot rabbi, who is so arrogant that he isn't going to be affected by anything you say. At this place, this was taken to the extreme. It had a fundamental problem that they recruited talented, but the dean was kind of a dope and was intimidated by them. So he set out to mock the very idea of them using their brains in any way other than to say "why does Tosfos says this?"
"He taught his talmidim that most questions beginning with "Why?" (unless they are in the form "Why does Rashi or Tosafos say this?") are more likely than not to be products of the yetzer designed to deflect from a full Torah commitment. In question and answer sessions, he refused to answer as many questions as he was asked. First the questioner had to acknowledge what was really bothering him and how the information sought was relevant to his life."
Incredibly, that description of him is from a hespid. It is meant as praise. Sounds like an indictment to me. That's a cult leader. Yes, Judaism can be a cult. He was quite relentless. I would say his main goal was to shut down thinking. Many BT yeshivas have a questions and answers class where the students try to get answers to such questions as why the Jews in the desert killed the children of Midian, why we break the first-born donkey's neck (the back of the animal's neck is struck with a hatchet, until the windpipe and food pipe are severed. See Yerushalmi, Sotah 9:5.) and toss the goat off the mountain. Am I allowed to say, these actions seem cruel? Even now, thirty years after leaving that place, when I ask those questions, I feel a terror creep up inside me and a hand covers my mouth. I feel guilty for asking for at that place that's how we were made to feel. These questions were mocked, shamed. I feel guilty for asking. My thoughts just stop in terror. That's called thought stopping, a trait of cults. I know by now that's the madman still inside my system and I stay with my question.
But many people allow their thoughts to be stopped. They feel guilty for having a mind. They are told, the gadolim say X, you must obey. The gadolim say to vote for gimmel. If you don't follow, you can never do teshuva. I have been told this. But what about the gadolim in the Edah Charedis? They say not to vote at all. It's so manipulative this phrase "the gadolim say." Gadlim disagree with one another all the time. You see it in the Gemara and you see it today. In Eretz Yisroel references to the authority of the gadolim as if they are a monolithic group are rampant. I think it's a reflection of Israeli military culture. The old Litvacks didn't work that way. Rav Moshe Feinstein was once asked if it was permissible to build a eruv in a certain city. He said it wasn't. They built it anyway. Someone asked, aren't you going to combat them? No, he said. He explained, they asked for my opinion and I gave it. That's the manalist approach. (Note, his father when young and grandfather were chassidic.) Today, particularly in Israel, everyone goes to war. This is Zionism. It's turning Judaism into a cult as influenced by Zionism.
There's an intense contradiction in the yeshiva world. They'll tell you Torah study is the purpose of life, yet they severely limit your ability to think. If study is the ikur, then you must be able to think.
Once you become afraid of your own thoughts or view them as sinful you have been murdered. I remember thinking, don't we have a yetzer tov too? In many of these places, all they talk about is the yetzer hara. You start to see yourself as evil. You have a kind of mental autoimmune reaction where you start attacking your own thoughts.
"A cytokine storm, also called hypercytokinemia, is a physiological reaction in humans and other animals in which the innate immune system causes an uncontrolled and excessive release of pro-inflammatory signaling molecules called cytokines. Normally, cytokines are part of the body's immune response to infection, but their sudden release in large quantities can cause multisystem organ failure and death."
This can happen with your thoughts. You get a thought and you immediately contradict it. As Patty Hearst said, humans are fragile. They crack up from the mental oppression. "My spirit resembles the tower which crumbles Under the tireless blows of the battering ram." (French poet Charles Baudelaire, "Song Of Autumn"). Patty was such a "mess" - her word - when she got out of the SLA that her brain wasn't working normally. “My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.” (Baudelaire). She didn't know if she was coming or going. She was emaciated, spaced out, unsure of her own identity. She was dazed and fragmented and lost. She didn't even know how to go about defending herself in court. It's like her mind was broken. She couldn't use it, just like many of us after bad yeshivas experiences. You can't formulate a thought. You have a good brief thought - your conscience is trying to speak - but you immediately contradict it. You can't follow through on anything because you are not allowed to think. I know many baal habatim who have this problem. Their brains are broken. They have been yelled at so many times by their captors. They have been threatened with death, with damnation. They can go the rest of their of their lives like this. They can't really function.
This is not what is supposed to go on with Orthodox Judaism. But it happens often. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik was very good at not doing this to people. He encouraged them to have their own minds. Yes, that approach produced some rogue rabbis, but it also created many healthy, productive students whereas many of the heavy handed rabbis broke many people. The Lubavitcher Rebbe also used this approach. He let people think. Both of these great men were roundly condemned by many in the yeshiva world (but not by the saint Moshe Feinstein).
The way some of the corrupt ones approach it, you are only yetzer hara but somehow the rabbi, who might be younger than you, who might be no smarter than you, who might be dumber than you, who may be less knowledgeable in many areas, is all yetzer tov. I know personally five prominent rabbis - all who were treated by many of their followers with incredible deference - who were involved in sex scandals. I know the cases. All were guilty. So I guess rabbis can have yetzer haras too. Dare I say it? I dare.
Patty Hearst before the kidnapping
Patty after capture by the police. "Shortly after her arrest, signs of trauma were recorded: her IQ was measured as 112, whereas it had previously been 130." Hearst wrote in her memoir, Every Secret Thing (1982), "I spent fifteen hours going over my SLA experiences with Robert Jay Lifton of Yale University. Lifton, author of several books on coercive persuasion and thought reform, [...] pronounced me a 'classic case' which met all the psychological criteria of a coerced prisoner of war. [...] If I had reacted differently, that would have been suspect, he said."
Incredibly, Patty Hearst was the only person involved in the famous Hibernia bank robbery to go to prison. The kidnap victim whose involvement in the robbery could so easily be explained as coercion, about whom you can so readily make the case of reasonable doubt - she went to jail. She was sentenced to 35 years! But that was reduced to 7 when the first judge passed away - may he rot in hell. In 1979, President Carter had the good sense to commute her sentence after 22 months served; although she remained on probation. "When Carter commuted her seven-year sentence in 1979, he was prevented by law from issuing a subsequent pardon." He tried to get Bush to do it and
pushed Clinton to do it. She wasn't pardoned until 2001. Clinton waited 8 years until his last day in office. Ronald Reagan and Bush I ignored her entirely. The people who kidnapped her, who were so obviously running the robbery, the government never pursued them. That's how insane the world is, how stupid people are - law enforcement, the jury, the judge, the press. “I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.” ― Charles Baudelaire. Actor John Wayne spoke after the Jonestown cult deaths, pointing out that people had accepted that Jim Jones had brainwashed 900 individuals into mass suicide but would not accept that the Symbionese Liberation Army could have brainwashed a kidnapped teenage girl. Yes, people are that stupid.
Here's part of the jury that convicted her. The NY Times account says they did it with heavy hearts, but that doesn't change the fact that they were myopic. All you need is reasonable doubt and what she went through produces that. People can crack up. She did. I realize she did some odd things: travel across country without trying to escape, shooting up the sporting goods store, giving generous eulogies to her "fallen comrades," keeping the amulet or whatever it was from William Wolfe. But all that doesn't matter. The terror she went through could produce a total mental crackup that produces this behavior. But the jury couldn't get their minds out of their comfy Northern California lives and grasp what this girl went through. Her behavior was so unlike her, her condemnation of her family, and her use of all that radical cliches that she never used before indicate a mind that had collapsed.
Many people who question any system, any cult operation, get treated like Patty Hearst.
But Patty lives on. She got her smile back. So can you.
Postscript:
Want more evidence that Patty Hearst was innocent. Look at this article on Elizabeth Smart. She so obviously was kidnapped and terrorized. Nobody suggests that a 14 year old Mormon girl ran off with a deranged hobo drifter that she had met a few times. Yet, she lost her identity to her captors. She also didn't try to escape. As you'll see below, she was talking to police and the policeman was begging her to say she was Elizabeth Smart and she couldn't do it. This is common. It makes no sense to people who have never been kidnapped. The brain collapses.
"Elizabeth, is it you? Just tell me it's you."
Sandy Police Sgt. Victor Quezada pleaded with the teen to confirm his belief that he was standing before the girl the entire nation so badly wanted to find.
With a lowered head and tears in her eyes, the 15-year-old responded simply: "Thou sayeth."
The girl in a gray, curly wig and dirty clothing had previously denied being the missing teen, at one point telling officers: "I know who you think I am, but I'm not that girl. That Elizabeth Smart girl, that's not me."
Elizabeth was spotted walking down State Street in Sandy Wednesday afternoon with a man and woman. The three wore jeans and T-shirts, and had jackets tied around their waists. Elizabeth wore sunglasses and had a T-shirt draped over the back of her head in a "makeshift veil."
Sandy police officers questioned the three on the street for about 45 minutes after responding to two citizen calls that the man resembled a street preacher wanted for questioning in connection with Elizabeth's June 5 disappearance.
Officer Karen Jones was on the scene within two minutes. When asked, the man, now known to be Brian David Mitchell, identified himself and his wife as "Peter and Juliet Marshall" and said they were traveling with their daughter, "Augustine."
When asked directly, Elizabeth said her name was "Augustine Marshall."
The trio was unable to produce photo identification or an address or date of birth, which raised Jones' suspicions.
After a second officer arrived, Jones left to check the names on her computer, and Troy Rasmussen began questioning the three.
"They described themselves as preachers and said they were on the Lord's mission to spread the gospel," Rasmussen said.
With his attention on Elizabeth because of her odd disguise, Rasmussen asked the girl to remove her sunglasses. She refused, saying she had just had eye surgery in San Diego.
He then asked Elizabeth why she was wearing a wig, which caused the girl to become "a little upset."
By that time, Rasmussen had already decided the girl was likely Elizabeth Smart and told Jones, who contacted Salt Lake City police.
After hearing Jones' description of the three, dispatchers in Salt Lake instructed officers to detain them and immediately sent detectives to the scene.
Two other officers soon arrived, and Elizabeth was taken aside while Jones stayed with Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Ilene Barzee.
For the first time, Rasmussen addressed the girl by "Elizabeth" rather than "Augustine." She did not react to the name change.
"I said, 'You know there's a lot of people looking for you,' " Rasmussen said. "I said, 'Your family's really concerned. If you're in trouble we're here to help you.'"
The girl lowered her head and tears welled up in her eyes, he said. "And I knew for sure that that's who it was."
Still, she would not acknowledge that she was, in fact, the missing teen.
"She denied being Elizabeth the entire time we were out there," Quezada said. "We kept telling her, 'Do this for your family, do this for yourself. Do the right thing, just tell us who you are. We know you're Elizabeth Smart.' "
Finally, Elizabeth affirmed her identity with the Bible phrase.
"Her eyes were welling up with tears at the time, and you could tell she basically gave up the charade," Quezada said.
Throughout the questioning, Jones said Mitchell and Barzee sat and quietly quoted scripture. There was never an attempt to escape, and the couple did not resist when officers handcuffed them and placed them in separate police cars.
Mitchell, 49, and Barzee, 57, are being held in the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated kidnapping.
Elizabeth was also handcuffed and taken to the Sandy police station where she was questioned and reunited with her family.
The officers have not seen the teen again, nor have they spoken to any members of the Smart family. Still, they are pleased to know they had a part in bringing Elizabeth home after nine long months.
"Police officers see a lot of this kind of stuff day in and day out, but we're still human beings," Quezada said. "It was a nice warm feeling . . . when she finally said it was her. It was a nice warm feeling inside saying, 'You're going to go home tonight.'"
Hey Patty Hearst jury. This is for you. This girl was standing besides a crew of armed police officers, one of which was pleading with her to say she was Elizabeth Smart and she couldn't do it. Forget escaping. She just had to say her name. Couldn't do it. Her rag tag crazy kidnapper would have been powerless against them. Couldn't do it. The best she could do was go into that crazy King James Bible speak that her captor had trained her to use and make the slightest hint of who she was. Patty went through something similar as do all kinds of nice people when in the power of violent madmen.
And how about the police putting her in handcuffs. What schmucks.
And it's the same with so many others. How about Amanda Berry and the other two girls in Cleveland? For 10 years they were stuck in that house. You'd have to think they had some kind of chances to escape. But the mind is crushed. Same with
Collen Stan. Between the rape, death threats, isolation, dehumanization, and programming, the mind gets taken over. It's an amazing thing. And this can happen on different levels, to different degrees. And it can happen in the frum world too. It happens in BT yeshivas, not to everyone but to more than a few. You don't need the actual violence because the Torah is true and the con men latch on to that. The soul knows Torah is true so misrepresenting Torah has a powerful effect. So you also get death threats and worse than that eternal life threats. You get sexual abuse through sexual deprivation. And the mental programming, well that's just rampant and easy to do with Torah material, which can be very confusing.
To stay frum you have to realize what may have been done to you.
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