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There was also a discussion last week about fertility = female status to check out too. I 100% agree. I don’t think people realize how completely the Hasidim in America debunk an environmental or economic cause. It can’t be environmental because they live in Brooklyn and Jersey. (A good researcher should look into microplastics and their garments however, perhaps how often they eat liver.) It can’t be economic because they are poor. It’s true that the Hasidic billionaires and millionaires subsidize the lives of the poor and that they all sorts of tax fraud schemes, but they are still poor, and in fact Hasidic women will work fully or part-time to support their husbands’ Talmud studies. So, what do they do? Having children is a status marker for both men and women; Hasidic girls at a young age learn about motherhood and how to value motherhood; they are completely cut off from America’s misogynistic culture of telling women that they need to sacrifice their life-potential to work.
It’s a mix of two things. (1) Status: I get fulfillment, social respect, attention, and conversation revolves around that; I am fulfilling God’s will by increasing the number of my people’s children; I am doing a good deed by increasing the number of my children because my people are oppressed. (2) Something we don’t have a word for: “the satisfaction in going through with the skills and stories you have heard from your youth”. It’s easy to do something you were trained in as a kid. Hasidic women don’t have to google anything about child birth or motherhood. They know everything already and what they don’t know will be explained by a wise elder over a cup of coffee (do they drink coffee? I actually don’t know). It’s not stressful or arduous at all. Not having children is stressful as you fall saliently behind your peers.
Japan was mentioned ITT as an example of a country that idolizes homemakers but has a low TFR and I think this misses something. It can’t be “you get respect from economic success and homemaking”, because then women will choose economic success. It has to be homemaking. By homemaking I mean raising children and all tasks associated with it. Japan is a consumerist culture, more so than America, and women have infinite distractions to enjoy which aren’t having children, and walking around as a mother does not grant you any status. In Hasidim, walking the streets as a mother of 16 kids would have you greeted like a saint for the blessings you have brought forth in the world.
“Artificial wombs” should be left out of this discussion entirely because it’s as ridiculous as believing in spontaneous generation. That isn’t going to happen. We are trying to raise healthy children, and they need mother-child contact for years.
The primary outgroup for Hasidim isn’t gentiles at all, and their education doesn’t really stress that they’re oppressed by gentiles the way that some secular Jewish identitarians do. The primary outgroup is secular Jews, and the enemy are those raised orthodox who leave (apikorsim - heretics), who lack the excuse of ignorance. This makes sense when you consider that the main hubs for the ultra-orthodox are in or in close proximity to (in NYC and Israel) the largest populations of secular Jews, who believe you can still be Jewish and otherwise live a normal materialist, secular life with 1.5 (or zero) children, and without praying and making the Talmud central to your entire existence.
Hasidic education therefore stresses most constantly and most seriously the evils of abandoning religion and joining the sinners next door, up to the point that some question whether secular Jews are Jews at all in some spiritual sense, despite the fact that (at least by matrilineal descent) they are unquestionably Jewish according to Halacha. Chareidi commentary about the gentile world is often confused or limited, especially outside of Chabad and a couple other groups that engage with it; dissident rightists pick out the occasional choice quote, but in truth, it’s not something they think about much at all.
The outgroup of Hasidim is gentiles. Secular Jews are the subject of intense outreach attempts by Hasidic organizations. Hasidim would love nothing more than every maternally-born Jew to become Hasidic. They spend money attempting to do this. There’s a first person account of this in Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (which is an amazing read). The head of a Hasidic dynasty (Rubashkin) personally made time to recruit a secular Jewish journalist, drawing a firm line between us (Jews) vs them (Iowan Christian Whites). There are abundant quotes by Rubashkin to that effect. Rubashkin had him put on teffilin, and at a dinner party spoke at length about how he should have lots of Jewish children. Rubashkin only ostracized this secular Jewish journalist when he learned that the Jewish journalist was sympathetic to the mistreatment of the gentiles by his Agriprocessors business. Once the Hasidic head realized the Secular Jew was siding with the gentiles, there was no more cameraderie and he was no longer a member of the ingroup. But for every moment before, he was greeted and invited and loved as a fellow Jew.
I can take screenshots of the book if you’d like. It’s probably the best single piece of evidence of the relationship between the workings of ultra orthodox Jewish ingroup vs outgroup dynamics. The Hasids truly hated the gentiles and likened them to animals, and they rejoiced at the prospect of scamming them. To the secular Jew they extended a sympathetic hand and beckoned them to join their side, all while advising him to have lots of children, criticizing him for only having one.
Now, compare this to the “new Orthodox Jews” of Colombia. Hundreds of Colombians converted to Orthodox Judaism, following every custom, but the head rabbi of Colombia has specifically excluded them from the eligibility of birth right. They are only “Jewish” as a parallel community that can’t taint the actual orthodox community of Colombia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/14/converts-judaism-colombia/#:~:text=The%20emerging%20Jews%20are%20not,They%20are%20a%20parallel%20community.%E2%80%9D
I don’t think Rubashkin’s story is really comparable. Of course he attempted (and failed) to convert a secular Jewish journalist, attempted conversion is precisely the kind of behavior that governs ingroup-outgroup relations (like politics in countries without extreme ethnic divisions). It’s the far group that you never even intend to convert, and that describes most relations between the ultra-orthodox and gentiles. Even in this case Rubashkin is a non-central example; the vast majority of Chareidim have few interactions, commercial, personal or otherwise, with gentiles, and do not regularly think of them except in some cases as they relate to their way of life.
True, Chareidim (to varying extents, it must be said) believe in a form of evangelical mission toward secular Jewry, which they consider debased and degenerate. But the implication that this means they consider secular Jewry the in-group is highly misplaced. In America and Russia, the masses of them are sheep corrupted by secular society, the rich ones sometimes paypigs at best and evil influences on their children at worst. In Israel, the Chareidim are happy for secular Jews to die for them in large numbers while their young men stay safely ensconced in kollels and yeshivas.
Rubashkin’s case is sad, but the exploitation of cheap illegal immigrant labor is hardly a particularly Jewish phenomenon in the United States. As for the situation with the Colombian Christians converting to Orthodoxy, I think you misunderstand. Chareidim are usually moderately tolerant of converts. But Colombian Ashkenazim are, even if nominally orthodox, closer to secular Anglo-American Jews than to Chareidim. They are not, with few exceptions, a highly observant population. Their hostility is to peasant evangelical Christians bored of Catholicism invading their social club and marrying their children. You may disagree with that impulse, but it is again not particularly Jewish in character.
The truth is, and I cannot stress this enough, that the ultra-orthodox are unconcerned by antisemitism. The Jews who are - neurotic, secular Jews, whether of the left of right - spend their time building huge fortunes to support Israel, or write and produce movies like Ben Hur, or establish great publishing and media empires, or plough fortunes into creating ‘museums of tolerance’ to teach children about the Holocaust.
The ultra-Orthodox do little to none of this. They are unconcerned by antisemitism, unconcerned by a defensible racial or ethnic homeland for their people, whom they do not even see in wholly ethnic terms anyway (in some cases even considering 100% halachic Jews who have converted to another faith gentiles). This is in fact why so many - almost all of them - died in the Holocaust, because unlike secular middle-European Jewry (a substantial proportion of which had fled by 1941), they didn’t leave. To the Chareidim, antisemitism is a force of nature, a fact of the universe, like gravity. They do not think about it, they do not challenge it. Secular Jewry is the outgroup, not the in-group.
By the description you’ve given- I think I’ve always had this instinct, but your description really made it click- it’s not only that ultra-orthodox are unconcerned about anti-semitism, they almost want it back? Ghetto laws and explicit discrimination would push more Jews towards stricter modes of observance.
IME very hardcore Jews(understand that there are not true Hasidim in DFW, but there are very strict modern orthodox who are probably similar) and Copts are the friendliest of the ethnic-exclusivist groups. That would track with what you’re saying as well.
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Rubashkin and his underlings actively hated the gentiles. When Rubashkin was jailed for the largest illegal immigration bust in history, only brought to light because of their extreme torture of animals which didn’t even follow kosher regulation, the entire Hasidic world rallied around him in support and actually succeeded in getting him a presidential pardon. Dershowitz and other secular Jews were involved in that pardon. Their hatred of the gentile Christians stands in stark contrast to their acceptance of the Jewish secular journalist, who they wanted on their side. Let me give you an example from the book, Rubashkin’s right hand man Lazar talking to the secular Jew, already accepting him as the ingroup:
I don’t really know how much more outgroup the gentiles can be for the Hasids.
What I sent you were gentiles intent on converting to Orthodox Judaism, and indeed following every rule and officially converting, but they are purposefully kept apart from the orthodox community, and are not considered Jews.
I mean, I have an award winning book in my hand abundant with quotations showing this is not true. It is written by a Jew and features quotes from the head of a Hasidic sect. Antisemitism defines their religion!
Secular Jews created the modern (sympathetic) reaction to antisemitism and the Chareidim in this example are exploiting it to find loopholes in planning or employment regulation. That’s exactly my point, they created nothing. What have the Chareidim ever done to combat antisemitism among gentiles? This indicates a true, underlying lack of concern.
That they exploit some sympathies for Holocaust victims in an attempt to avoid dealing with the law doesn’t mean they care about antisemitism, no more so than putting one’s contracting company in one’s wife’s name for supplier diversity reasons indicates progressive political sympathies. If they cared about threats to the Jewish nation, they would fight for it. If they were concerned by antisemitism, they would do what secular Hollywood and ADL Jews do and at least try - cackhandedly and embarrassingly, of course - to mitigate or stop it by ‘educating’ people on how they were actually very nice and kind. They do none of this because they don’t care.
And what I replied was a description of the reality of the Colombian Jewish community, as per the WJC:
That couldn’t be further from the reality of the Chareidim, for whom Jewish ritual and practice is, whatever you think of it, a deeply central part of daily life.
This quote is literally the reason they don’t fight for Israel and didn’t flee the Second World War. As with Islamists, their material reality is not strictly important, and despite their fecundity, their concern with whether or not they get pogrom’d is actually substantially less than that of most other populations. I’m glad you posted this quote because it really illustrates my point about the deep ideological gulf between secular (including even moderately religious Zionist) Jewry and Chareidim perfectly.
The Haredi in this case are explicitly anti-goy, and they consider the Jews to be historically mistreated by gentiles, and they are very concerned about the Jewish people and Israel. This is evidenced by the quote I cited, which was said confidentially to a secular Jew. I can provide more quotes although it’s a bit annoying because I can’t ctrl-f (the book isn’t online). Your argument that the Haredi haven’t done anything to combat antisemitism and therefore they don’t care about antisemitism is speculative and non-central. It is speculative because we don’t know the extent of Haredi donations to holocaust propaganda or Combat Antisemitism or anything else. It is non-central because they are interested in increasing their size and political power, thereby increasing Semitic power, thereby decreasing the threat of antisemitism.
In 140 years they will have a high enough population in NYC and NJ to rule over it politically. They already abused their political power to misuse one billion in educational funds in NYC or extract money via Cars 4 Kids. One of my favorite scams the Hasids did is when they attempted to blackmail financier Steve Cohen. The influential Balkany called Cohen, complimented his Kohanem status, told him he silenced a fellow Jew planning to report him to the SEC, and then requested millions of dollars for his Jewish school. In this case, Cohen ratted him out, but this wasn’t a one time scam. Balkany, by the way, was Rubashkin’s lawyer when he was charged with the largest illegal immigration employment violation in US history.
I think you are confused about the details of what I sent you. I provided you a link about an ultra orthodox community converting gentiles into an ultra orthodox lifestyle, with every law binding, while preventing them from intermingling with the real ultra orthodox or ever making Aliyah to Israel. In other words, a group of Colombians went to an orthodox Jewish rabbi, said they think they have a Jewish soul, the rabbi “converts” them, but they are kept segregated from the real Orthodox Jews. The existence of Ashkenazi in Colombia does not factor into this at all, as they are not parties to the aforementioned interaction. This is an example of how deeply the Haredi care about Jews as racial people, rather than Jews as ritual-practitioners. Were an Ashkenazi to wish to convert to ultra orthodoxy they would be welcomed with open teffilin.
So again, your stories are littered with countless examples of secular Jews ratting out Chareidim to secular and substantially gentile authorities and this proves…that the Chareidim consider them their in-group rather than an out-group they’d like to convert?
I don’t think that a rapidly growing ultra-orthodox population gaining more political power reduces the threat of antisemitism at all (if anything the opposite), but perhaps you disagree. In their brazen conduct, the Chareidim increase antisemitism, and the few who engage regularly with the outside world are almost certainly intelligent enough to realise it. They do it anyway.
We know that the Chareidim (whose perspective you can easily see on their forums, yeshivaworld etc) almost universally despise these secular Jewish organizations for their social liberalism out of the sincere belief that they are trying to corrupt their children in the same way that all similar religious conservatives do for secular progressive advocacy groups.
It would be survivorship bias to conclude that these are rare scenarios. In the first case, it’s one of the most important Hasidic figures showing us his outgroup. In the second case, it’s one of the most important Hasidic figures showing us his ingroup. How the secular Jew responds to fraternizing by the ultra orthodox is obviously a separate discussion topic, as it doesn’t tell us the median belief of Orthodox Jews to born-Jews. We know about these cases because we have been told about these cases, and we would not know about these cases if the secular Jew did not “rat out” the Orthodox. It would be a mistake to quantify the membership of the Italian mob based on how many Italians rat them out, right?
It’s a question of when the gentiles realize the consequences of the population shift. Right now I would put my money on team ultra orthodox. The average American’s intuition is shifting toward Semite-skepticism but the average knowledge about the ultra orthodox among those who aren’t their neighbors is merely that they build funny tunnels. Their best bet is to increase their numbers. Increasing numbers increases political power when you block vote.
The Hasidim don’t care about bad words on the internet, which do not affect them. They care about political pressure against them, and increasing their numbers and influence increase their political advocacy.
That is motivated by their fear of assimilation with the goy. The secular Jew is still Jewish and they want him to be like them.
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I’m not confident but I think liver is explicitly not kosher. @2rafa?
I’m about as far as you can get from religious, my grandmother’s favorite food to cook was (pork) meatloaf, but liver is certainly kosher. I think it just has to be cut up, soaked in water, salted and broiled to remove all the visible blood first though, hence the relatively mediocre taste of chopped liver (which has to be mixed with a bunch of stuff to make it edible) versus more delicious pan fried liver or other liver dishes.
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I agree with your overall point, but
is a bold claim. What’s your evidence for this assertion?
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