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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.
Is an Evangelical flyover state Republican who desperately wants to convert blue tribe Americans, preaches to them, sees them as brothers going down a lost path, and does everything in his power to bring them to the church part of the same ‘in group’ as them? This is what you’re implying in this case. Wanting to convert someone you hope or dream will be sympathetic to your tribe doesn’t make that person part of the ingroup.
The only difference is that because of the Jewish prohibition on proselytization, the pool of ‘potential converts’ who can be openly evangelized to is limited to secular Jews.
The evangelical does not define his membership by genealogy. He does not make daily prayers to a people and a tribe and a nation. A better example would be an evangelical trying to save a different evangelical who is living in sin. In this case, yes, they are the same ingroup. The Orthodox are compelled by their belief system to consider lapsed Jewry to be their ingroup due to their qualitatively distinct divine spark as described in the Tanya and spoken about by Schneerson, their quasi-messiah. This is a very fitting parallel — per Forward,
Schneerson identifies with secular Jews to an extreme degree:
Is an SSPX hardcore ultra-tradcath who believes the only just form of government is Catholic monarchy under the Pope (but not the current one) the same in-group as a (sex-having) gay liberal Catholic who believes women should be ordained as priests, that Jews don’t have to convert to go to heaven, and that abortion isn’t a sin? This seems like a semantic difference in our positions more than anything.
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