If it walks like a duck

I just spent a Shabbos with hard core yeshiva guy, and while he has goodness at heart, and his religious energy is inspiring to some extent, I recall it as a pretty oppressive ordeal. Firstly, the elitism is palpable. His operating principle clearly is that the truly yeshivish people have the truth. The gentiles and secular Jews have only "lies." The Modern Orthodox are traifing up the religion. "They offer nothing to their children." As for the Sephardim and the Chassidim, they are cute, but unlike us, they don't have real talmidei chochamim. They just run around eating cake or chumas while we soar to the heavens with our schtarkite. Even the baal habatish people, the yeshiva light, are laughable in his eyes. He says all this as close to openly as one can.

And what about those talmidei chachamim in the yeshiva world? You must follow them. They have the daas of the Torah, meaning they are pure truth. You must bend your will to their incredible knowledge and genius. They are the only ones. Even shul rabbis are not reliable. "I wouldn't go to a shul rabbi." The disdain was palpable. You need the Rosh Yeshiva, the mythical figure. As I once heard a RY say, the only place to find truth is in the yeshiva. Of course, he wasn't saying that you get it from the bochurim. He wasn't even saying that you get it from the books because shuls have books. He was saying that you get it from him and him alone. This is a common outlook. I suspect to some extent it is built on the reputation of RYs of yesteryear. But that year is long gone.

I remember now when I got out of yeshiva how this mentality affected me. I felt as though I had been wrapped in chains. The BT who finally sneaks his way out of yeshiva, or bolts for the door, re-enters a world that is now seen as poison. You need to earn a living in order to get married but it's all goyim out there, and besides that you are not "in learning" anymore, and since that's the only worthwhile activity in life, what are you now? 

Remember how the kiruv guy told you that "whatever you do now you'll be better at"? Then he shipped you off the Ohr Somayach where they told you that any activity other than pilpul is narishkite. You are allowed only pilpul, lest you be punished in this world and the next. I was told that literally by a kollel rabbi that the cook at my yeshiva sent me to because he was going to be caring unlike the rabbis at my yeshiva. "He loves you already," I was told. As I walked in the room he hit me with his first of many negative remarks. I was carrying a book called "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens. His first words to me: "Why do you want to read a bleak book like that?" The love that I was promised never materialized.

They are so aggressive about it all, and judgmental. This young man  walked over to my china closet where I keep photos of gadolim and said, "I notice there are no living ones here." Actually that wasn't true and besides that all but one were alive in my lifetime. They passed away. I am in my sixties. This kid is 22. He shouldn't be commenting in another man's house, and he didn't think.

And they are punishing too. There's this sense that if you disagree about any point of it, then you are out. They sniff out the smallest whiff of questioning of anything. No shidduch for you or your children if you ever have any. While I knew from many experiences that they were never going to allow me to marry one of their daughters, nor would their daughters be interested in me, I held hope for a while that if I turned myself into enough of a robot, my kids would be able to enter that world. All of that is laughable now.

Most of these guys don't offer much in the way of explanation. They mostly overwhelm with confidence and insults and bold statements. They talk over you. They steamroll you into submission. This is a cult technique called personality breakdown. The best they can do is take vague statements of Chazal like "Make for yourself a Rav," and "Esav soneh Yaakov" and assign yeshivish meanings to them, ignoring commentators. "It's obvious what it means," they'll say. 

My guest spoke non-stop over the Shabbos, but I do not recall him ever citing a Torah source, a commentator. It was all opinion.

He also didn't mention HaKadosh Baruch Hu even one time. They replace devaikus Hashem with devaikus opinion. And since that's junk food, you need to stuff yourself with it to feel full.

This may sound strange but I wound up in Israel in part because of these people. They all promote study in Israel, which gets you here in the first place and puts you around aliyah evangelists. According to this bochur, all the American bochurim come to Israel to study for a year. While they don't usually promote moving to Israel, they do promote hypereligiosity, that every moment of life must be consumed with religious fervor, which for them amounts to their narrow form of Torah study, conspicuous chumros, and lots of disparagement of the world, mainly disparagement. That's their avodah. Hating everything, feeling superior. They can't seem to chill out ever, or just have a laugh. If there's any laughter it's mockery at someone else's expense. They don't even seem to enjoy children.

I tried that life and couldn't do it. It's so stupid. But the feeling of hyperreligiosity stayed with me and got converted over to aliyatism where the view that every waking moment of life must be crazed with religion took the form of living in Israel. In other words, religion means being miserable all the time, being uncomfortable, scared, and supercilious.

Can we call this a cult already? Because is fits the model, and leaves you lost, terrified, consumed with self-doubt, and faithlessness, ironically. And even though some of its followers can be likeable when they are love bombing, it's still a cult. I have met Moonies who are likable on some level. Don't be fooled by that. It's part of the cult technique.  If it walks like a duck....