And I say, it doesn't have to be so hard, but we make it hard. So I'll modify the statement a bit. It's not hard to be a Jew, but you will make it hard if you are not careful.
How so? Well, by not following the Torah. The Torah says marry young. Many people marry older, sometimes because their rabbis keep them in yeshiva too long, sometimes because they are looking for romantic perfection or money or looks or yichus or some other kind of demand that is far above what they are bringing to the table. Many make dating too difficult, mostly by making it rigid and terrifying and by making the men do all the work and then judging them for every appearance of a misstep. So dating becomes painful and marriages start with baggage and start with people who are set in their ways.
The Torah says to teach your son a trade, but the schools don't teach them a trade, yet require full dedication. Yeshivas won't let bochurim go to trade school or college or do apprentice work. They enter marriage broke and inexperienced and then immediately crank out kids.
The Torah says to be frugal, yet the OJ world has $80,000 weddings, and people fly to Israel twice a year, and install granite countertops in their oversized kitchens, and buy $400 dresses and suits, and go to restaurant after restaurant. Many people insist on living in New York where houses cost a million dollars when they could move to much more affordable parts of the country.
The Torah says that you can live anywhere, best to live in a good community. It does not say to live in Israel. But aliyah evangelists push people to move across the world to a pained country that is run by atheists who are trying to draft every yeshiva bochur into their army, where small apartments cost $800,000, and jobs are not available for Haredim. Want to make your life difficult? Want it to be hard to be a Jew? Move to Israel. That's the best way to ruin yourself.
The Torah says to study what the heart desires. Yet yeshivas have every bochur spending day and night attempting lomdus on yeshivishe mesechtas of the Babli. They do almost nothing else. And while the Babli was written down in the local language, and the Rambam's commentary on Mishnayos was written in the local language, yeshivas study in Aramaic and Hebrew without teaching grammar, which is necessary for learning a language properly. So the bochurim have a poor grasp of Hebrew but are told to study night and day in Hebrew.
The Torah says that a woman must obey her husband. Many rabbis teach the men to obey their wives. Many of them, like whoever wrote the Artscroll commentary on Siddur, tell the women that they are superior to their husbands. Nobody is going to obey their inferior.
The Torah teaches all about mitzvos. People who claim to teach Torah don't teach about mitzvos, their meaning or value, or their rules. They just make abstractions about their derivation and threaten you with hell if you violate them.
The Torah talks about G-d. People today do not.
These are some of the ways that people make it difficult to be a Jew. There are many more. What's the result, marital problems, financial problems, religious confusion, and kids going OTD in droves.
It has become difficult to be a Jew. But it didn't have to be.
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