No Bad Questions - Freidom Fighter - Mockery Will Set you Free

 No Bad Questions - Freidom Fighter - Mockery Will Set you Free

No Bad Questions

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The kiruv world prides itself in its open-mindedness.

“Ask us anything! We will change our views in a heartbeat if you convince us! Sure you can ask about sex, and no, we don’t use a hole in the sheet, we’re super progressive!”

But ask yourself, have any of the really difficult questions that plague you (and you know what they are), been replied to with one or more of the following bullshit textbook answers?

• God knows what’s best for us
• Mashiach will come and we’ll all have clarity
• There’s a Kabbalistic reason for that
• Don’t judge Judaism by the Jews who practice it
• We have a rich tradition of handing down bullshit verbatim from one generation to the next, so it must all be true
• God is true. God wrote a book. Deal with it.
• “You could never lie about a million people being around a mountain if it didn’t actually happen.”
• “The Rabbis knew what was best for us.”
• “People were way smarter back then.” See also: “Our generation sucks.”
• “That’s a very good question you’ve asked! Many smart people have asked that too!”
• Not to be confused with its condescending inverse: “You’re not the first person to ask that question, you know…”
• “We can’t use fallible human logic to understand such profound ideas.”
• Which is the exact opposite of: “Those are just guidelines, you’ve still got to use your head to figure out what’s right”
• “You can’t use your heart, use your mind!” But also: “You can’t use your mind, use your heart!”
• “The truth is, both opinions are correct! Both are the word of a living God!”

And so your questions have gone unanswered, because those weren’t answers.

Those were justifications.

Die Trying by Shalom Tzvi Shore

Die Trying Tales and Tantrums from a life lived religiously by Shalom Tzvi Shore

This is an autobiography by a guy who was raised it seems in the Old City in an Aish insider family. He seems to have gone to a Rappaport school which are those places where they go through all of Tanach and Mishnah before starting Gemara. That sounds like a good idea except as is the rule in the frum world they screw it up with megalomaniacal inhumanity such as doing nothing but memorizing and having only 1 day off a year. Oh yeah, they have zero sense of humor too.

The book is so well written that I feel as though I'm listening to the Beatles sing harmony or watching Larry Bird play basketball. This guy was way too smart for the Aish scene or possibly any Orthodox Jewish scene because face it, we are bunch of anti-intellectual clods at best and abusive pricks the rest of the time.

Here's the book. Die Trying by Shalom Shore - Freidom Fighter - Mockery Will Set you Free

You will love it if you are a normal person. And if you are a frum person you'll hate it and that will give me joy because I want to see you suffer since you made me suffer. 

John Mellencamp - Authority Song

 John Mellencamp - Authority Song - Rock Hall of Fame - YouTube

estrangement

According to one distraught mother who calls herself Broken Hearted, outreach people cause this intentionally. In a comment to another person, she wrote:

If you are able to remove your blinders long enough to see through the haze of your new life, you may one day realize that a well funded, highly organized, well oiled kiruv machine did this TO you. They followed a tried and true method of recruiting and indoctrination. Objectors, like your parents, are systematically removed from BT's lives. Nothing special here, it's how they operate. If you ever decide to leave, I hope your family is there for you.

In fairness, let us note that several baalei teshuvah responded to this comment with accounts of how they still are connected to their families. For example, a woman named Cynthia wrote, “I am writing from the perspective of someone who did maintain close family relationships, even when we became more religious.” Nevertheless, there are many cases of estrangement in what seemed to have been reasonably normal families. 

love bombing and the lure of wealth

 

Websites and marketing aside, there's also deceptive recruiting via love bombing and the lure of wealth. As one man wrote

The outreach people come at you with an overabundance of artificial friendliness that is temporary. You get besieged with Shabbos invitations that also go away once your brain has been switched over to fear of hell for failure to comply. Much of the outreach takes place on college campuses which are billion dollar facilities that the outreach people pretend to be their own. My first Shabbosim were spent in million dollar homes, one after the next. Yet within two years they had me sleeping on a basement floor, prohibiting me from getting a job in order to buy some food because it would interfere with my Torah study.

None of that is from the Torah which demands authenticitiy and frowns on flattery and genevas daas. The latter term is translated as stealing of the mind, meaning creating false impressions. Certainly, we should be friendly but not unnaturally so and not with ulterior motives. People who didn't stay with Orthodoxy have reported to me how the same people who gushed at them with interest refuse to even look at them now. As for earning a living, the Torah actually tells you to get a job and not rely on others for support. So, we say again, yes there is all kinds of funny business going on with kiruv, but none of it is sanctioned by the Torah, none of it is proper Judaism.

freidomfighter

 

https://freidomfighter.com/kiruv/what-is-aish-hatorah-is-aish-a-cult/

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Faworkinghypothesis.files.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F02%2F52348564-on-being-aished.pdf&h=AT2y9J7BfCecdJNGJa4Ahup_F4iAJ9gpthQyBGZwwqHrrMI6VTumiskyp-_RvAfutdYgYid5txTbYHZtwYPpjCV-DHmmwMfem8vFplhPSwr0ulcSmXU320L51G4

everything is fear driven

 "It's a harsh environment because everything is fear driven, so you are living in a constant state of fear and you are taught that God exists only to be feared and you are always afraid of punishment and always afraid of doing something wrong." Deborah Feldman

Unorthodox: Deborah Feldman's escape from Brooklyn to Berlin | DW Interview - YouTube, 4:53