A friend in yeshiva once commented to me about the guy who ran the place that it's difficult to talk to someone who argues with everything you say. Yeah, it sure is difficult, and also it's unhealthy. And I have experienced this with many Jewish people, particularly New Yorkers and yeshiva people. A guy recently asked me how I was doing. While usually I just say Baruch Hashem or fine, not meaning it, I wanted to answer more truthfully, and since I know this guy to be a follower of the Bnei Yeshiva/Eitz movement and highly critical of the state of Israel, I said not great. He said why. I said, look at this place, nodding in the direction of the street. So rather than say, I hear you brother or I know what you mean, which is what I generally do, which is what most gentiles do, he said "You prefer America?" I answered yes, to which he said coldly, "The grass is always greener." That's a line you can use about any complaint, meaning you can never complain without being contradicted. So much for the teaching that one can unburden himself by confiding in a friend. A typical gentile wouldn't do this. He'd say, oh maybe you should go back. He wouldn't just contradict automatically and in a way that really was a criticism of the other person.
Another example, I'm in Lakewood with a rabbi on a fund raising trip. I see a Chinese restaurant and liking Chinese food and not having had any in five years, I said just happily, hey Chinese food. So rather than say, oh you like Chinese food, let's get some, rather than that he says, something to the effect of you are not supposed to get excited about goshmiyus. So said this man who smokes cigarettes, takes taxis or gets driven around and never takes a bus.
Or I complement the city of Detroit to a woman (originally from New York) who lived in the area and she contradicted me by criticizing it. Later in the conversation, I said something critical of Detroit and she contradicted me by praising it.
A rabbi gave me a lift. He said, what have you been doing. I said mitzvos. He said Torah and mitzvos. He could have just said, that's great. But he had to oppose me in some way.
A man ask me what work I'm doing. I said I just got a job with the city. He said, you'll never get rich like that.
This happened to me several times on dates where I said things like I'd really like to be a college professor. "You won't make enough money that way." Or I said that I was interested in cooperative work environments. Same response. These women of course barely worked but also weren't willing to become dutiful wives.
I can think of a 1,000 examples because this goes on all the time. But much worse than these conversational oppositions, are the ideological ones. For example, a baal teshuvah trying to convince himself that secular studies are all nonsense, that gentiles are all evil, that the state of Israel is always right and the world is wrong and anti-Semitic in its criticism of Israel even in its turning of Gaza into moonscape.
Or that "you are a chutzpah" not showing respect if you dare question a rabbi in anyway. If you take him at his word and try to believe something that's not true about yourself, your mind gets flipped like a pancake and that is unhealthy. This can create a kind of psychological auto immune disease where you start to argue with yourself and talk yourself out of every thought, idea, or instinct that you have about your life.
Another example, I find it ridiculous that the men do all the work in shiduchim, particularly when dating older women who have spent a decade or more rejecting every man that schleps to their doors. In my view, such women have lost the priviledge of chivalry. Not only that the imbalance hurts the date because the women take the men for granted and even see them as pathetic. To keep doing this when it feels wrong hurts the brain. It overturns one's sense of right and wrong until his own sense of morality and justice gets warped. But the frum world won't budge on this just like they don't budge on anything.
It's not just the yeshiva world. Modern Orthodox women do it to. I was trying to arrange a date with an attorney who lived in Teaneck and was traveling to Trenton to appear in court. I lived in North Philadelphia and told her I could meet her in Trenton. She said no, she wanted me to travel to Teaneck. So here's an attorney who is bold enough to appear before a judge, which would terrify me, but I have to schlep an hour and a half to her each way when she was going to be in a place where I could meet her. I once asked a gentile woman at work, if somebody was setting you up with a guy who lived in New York and you were living in Pennsylvania, would you expect him to travel to you or would you meet him in the middle. She said, meet him in the middle of course.
A different MO woman who lived in Boston and went to Maimonides school (so she was very Modern) refused to meet me in Connecticut. She insisted I travel from Trenton to Boston for the date. This seemed to me so unfair and unproductive, but the pressure was immense to give in because I needed to get married, and they felt that they had time, so they had the upper hand. Giving in meant overturning my sense of right and wrong. Very unhealthy.
Sometimes, they contradict simple requests. I was trying to be part of a shul and asked if I could buy lockers to store tefillin. The gabbai told me no. I asked him if we could move the Hirsch chumash down one level of shelves so I could reach it. He said no. People being difficult about simple matters also overturns the mind.
Then there's the countless stories or rabbis stopping plans. The kid who wants to read the tikun on Shavuous and the rabbi wants him to study the yeshiva's mesechta, even though the Ashkenazi custom earlier on was to do only the tikun. There's the yeshivish rabbis who talk you out of being Chabad or Breslov. There's the Chabad rabbis who tell you that you must read the Tanya every day or take a mikva every day.
Then there's the usual talking you out of leaving yeshiva even if you are 30 years old, unmarried and broke.
I had a rabbi (a New Yorker) who used to contradict everything I wanted to. I called him during my return from a visit to Cleveland saying I was considering moving there. Rather than encourage he said, "you want to be in a place that's growing." He just contradicted. He didn't discuss the factors, such as affordable housing or nicer people. And as it turns out, Cleveland has grown tremendously.
I have been talked out of moving to other decent places such as Los Angeles, Manhattan, and France. I have been talked out of going to graduate school to change to a profession I like on two occasions.
The frum world is one big argument, one big contradiction of a person, a continuous battle. You wind up where you are not even a person anymore, you can't think, you can't act, you have been contradicted into oblivion.
