The Taivos Canard Installment 3: The Taivos Canard in Practice

 

If to be frum is be normal and healthy, and conversely to go OTD is to be broken, then it follows that leaving frumkeit is not a reasoned, reasonable decision. People don't leave because they conclude that Judaism isn't true, because they don't find frum life fulfilling, or because of problems in the frum community. People leave because they are delinquents, weak-willed hedonistic cretins who wickedly throw off the ol haTorah so that they can wallow in their taivos, in all of the material pleasures the world outside the frum community has to offer.

Perhaps the most strident example of the Taivos Canard in an authoritative source is R' Elchonon Wasserman in Kovetz Maamarim. He says that anyone who isn't an idiot can see that God must have created the world, and so the only way one would come to deny God is if he is blinded by his desires.[1] In a comment thread on Yeshiva World News, a popular frum news site, community members echo this view of those who go OTD. One commenter writes:

 

It is NEVER an "informed" position to go "OFF THE DERECH" … they know in their hearts it IS THE BEST, it is just a reminder … Any reasoning person would not think leaving Torah and mitzvos to be in any way justifiable - therefore the one who does has not thought “reasoned” but has taken an emotional step.[2]

 

Another commenter tries to be understanding, but expresses the same conviction that something must have blinded those who go OTD to the truth and beauty of Orthodoxy. He also imagines that those who leave know they are wrong, and are rebelling. He cannot seem to wrap his head around the idea that someone might have come to the conclusion that being frum was not for them.

 

While I can't imagine the pain and suffering you must have gone through, and which must have helped drive you to make the decision you did, …I still do not understand how you can be "at peace" where you are if that involves any sort of intentional neglect of halacha.

How does one who was religious and understands laws of this system, even if deprived of its beauty, consider one's self to legitimately be "not religious any more" as if such a thing were possible?

I understand if a teen or even an adult rebels out of pain, CH"V, and I do sympathize even if I believe there has to be a better way than dropping one's faith practices. But even in this case they still understand that their abandonment of mitzvos is simply their rebellion, not an alternate valid path…[3]

 

The sentiment the second commenter expresses is the kinder version of the Canard. Rather than attributing leaving frumkeit to uncontrolled desire, he attributes it to trauma, to some pain which has blinded the person who has left to the truth and beauty of Orthodox Judaism. As we’ve seen, this is the dominant form of the Canard today.

In an unsolicited email sent to someone who had gone OTD, a want-to-be kiruv activist also assumes that the person left because of some trauma.

 

I heard your story, and I am intrigued. It seems that "something" happened to you that was so powerful, that it made you decide (or someone convinced you) that it is no longer possible for you to live your life as before. Now you need to change your lifestyle 180 degrees. I don't know everything, but there is a 90+percent chance that it is not as life altering as you think. The world is full of billions of people. Among them are many that experienced whatever you did, and for many the experience was much worse, but they continued living their lives, and prayed to G-d for forgiveness, or closure. I'm not saying it wasn't traumatic, but I am saying that from here it looks like you are being way too hard on yourself. I wonder why you passed judgment on yourself, and why you and decided to walk away from 3000 years of Judaism.[4]

 

Is the Canard true? Is it true that the only reason that people go OTD is because they are broken delinquents? We will briefly review the arguments here, and then explore each in detail in its own article.

The meaner version, the accusation that people convince themselves that Judaism isn't true so that they can wallow in their taivos, is at odds with reality. People don't leave frumkeit because they are enticed by the outside world. They leave because they find being frum intolerable.[5] 

For many people, especially teens, staying frum is easier than going OTD.[7] Would someone really give up the love of their family, their friends, their community, and in some cases, even their children in order to eat cheeseburgers and drive on Shabbos? For teens, going OTD can destroy their relationship with their parents, the people they are dependent upon for everything. In the worst cases, it can mean being thrown out of their home. If anything, the ulterior motives that might blind people to the truth are on the side of staying frum.  

Perhaps the assumption is that those who go OTD are just terrible people who don't care about any of that. My experience interacting with people who have left Orthodoxy has not shown this to be the case. People agonize over the costs of leaving frumkeit. Losing relationships with family and friends is traumatic, and OTD parents who are denied a relationship with their children are devastated.

What about the softer version of the Canard? Perhaps the fleshpots of the outside world are not enough to offset the painful costs of going OTD, but might some trauma poison a person's perception of frumkeit? There is some truth to this. A traumatic experience can push someone to reevaluate whether being frum works for them. But trauma alone cannot account for people going OTD. There are many people who experience trauma, yet stay frum. Conversely, the number of people who go OTD is too large to be reasonably accounted for by traumatic experiences. Thirty-three percent of children who attend Orthodox schools are not Orthodox as adults.[8] Can a third of all Orthodox children be experiencing trauma severe enough to make them reject the only world they've known? This seems unlikely. And if it were true, what would that say about the frum world?

Even more unlikely is that the non-Orthodoxy of those Jews who were never frum can be explained by taivos or trauma. Ninety percent of all Jews aren't Orthodox.[9] While someone who was not raised Orthodox might be considered a tinok shenishba, and their non-Orthodoxy dismissed as them not knowing any better, all of today's non-Orthodox Jews are descended from people who were religious. It might be argued that the pervasive discrimination against Jews created traumatic associations with Judaism, but most Jews retained their identity as Jews, and a large portion retained Judaism as their religion. It was Orthodoxy that they rejected. Did ninety percent of our great-great-grandparents have traumatic experiences associated with Orthodoxy?  

Another, more dismissive variation of the Taivos Canard is the accusation that people leave frumkeit for solely emotional reasons. While this version doesn't accuse the person going OTD of being a weak-willed hedonist or suggest that trauma has pushed them to leave, it similarly tries to assert that people don't leave because they have a good reason, but because of some ulterior motive. But it is unreasonable to dismiss someone's intellectual reasons for not believing in Orthodoxy because he has emotions, because he is human and not an emotionless computer. It also misunderstands the relevance of emotion to the arguments of the disbeliever. While negative emotions towards Orthodox Judaism might motivate one person to find and examine its flaws, and positive emotions towards Orthodoxy might motivate another person to defend it, the respective motivations of either side have nothing to do with who is correct. The truth is impartial.

There is also the implication that only purely intellectual reasons are a good justification for leaving Orthodoxy. The corollary would be that only purely intellectual reasons are a good justification for becoming or staying frum. Yet people are religious for a host of emotional as well as intellectual reasons. Kiruv workers introduce potential baalei teshuva to Orthodoxy through Shabbos meals precisely because of their emotional impact. People stay frum as much because of the emotional attachment they have to Orthodoxy and to the Orthodox community as because of intellectual arguments. Religious experiences are themselves profoundly emotional. If positive emotional reasons can justifiably motivate people to become and to stay frum, then negative emotional reasons, or the lack of positive ones, can justifiably motivate people to leave.[10]

The Taivos Canard, and its softer siblings, are what allow people like the rav in the story that opened the first article in this series to dismiss questions as "excuses." They deflect arguments against religion not by addressing the arguments, but by attacking the character of the questioner: People who go OTD are swayed by their desires or "rebel" against religion for emotional reasons, and all of their intellectual arguments are just excuses. Their biases blind them to the truth. If they were honest and committed to intellectually exploring religion, as frum people are, they would come to the obvious conclusion that Yiddishkeit is true and being frum is the only proper way to live. It’s the person who left that’s broken and not, chas v’shalom, frumkeit.

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[1] Wasserman, E. An Essay on Faith. In Kovetz Maamarim. Yeshivat Ohr Elchanan.

[2] http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/otd-phenomenom Ellipsis in original.

[3] http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/otd-phenomenom To be fair, there were commenters on the same thread who disputed those points, but it does show that this attitude is present in the frum world.

[4] Posted to Facebook by the recipient of the email, November 30, 2016. Used with the recipient's permission. The recipient assured me that he had never experienced any trauma, and had gone OTD for intellectual reasons. He suspected, due to the generic nature of the email and some portions that looked as though they had been sloppily edited, that this was a standard email that the sender sent to anyone he thought was a kiruv prospect.

[5] Margolese, F. (2005). Off the Derech. Jerusalem, Israel: Devora Publishing Company. P. 37.

[6] Ibid. P. 36.

[7] Ibid. P. 62.

[8] Ibid. P. 23.

[9] Ibid. P. 23.

[10] Ibid. P. 151.

The Taivos Canard, Installment Two: Questioning Orthodoxy

              It is often said that Judaism encourages questions. The Talmud, the foundational text of Rabbinic Judaism, is composed of questions and answers. The commentaries are structured the same way. When learning Rashi, the medieval commentator on Tanach and the Talmud, children are taught to ask, "What's bothering Rashi?" In other words, "What is Rashi's question?" Questioning is such a fundamental part of Judaism that it's a stereotype that Jewish people answer questions with another question.[1]

            It's true that it's a Jewish trait to ask questions, but the Talmud only asks certain types of questions. Concepts are refined through a series of questions and answers, but the questions serve only to clarify the point under discussion. The questions never examine the assumptions that underlay the discussion. Jacob Neusner writes in The Talmud, "In Talmudic dialogues, people registered dissent in accord with the rules governing the iron consensus of the whole."[2] The same is true in the frum world today. Questions are encouraged, but, just like in the gemara, questions are only encouraged within certain parameters, with the understanding that everyone accepts without question the framework within which the discussion is taking place. One may only ask questions within the system, questions that don't challenge the fundamentals of frumkeit. Woe to he or she who asks questions about the system, who questions the framework.

            It's okay to ask for clarification. To ask for instructions on how to properly perform a mitzvah. Or to ask how what it says in the pasuk over here can be reconciled with what it says in the pasuk over there. Or to ask how to understand something in the Torah that "seems" to contradict what we know to be true about the world. It's never okay to question the underlying assumptions that it is worthwhile to perform mitzvos or that everything can be reconciled.

            It's okay to ask an isolated question, like, "How could the plants have been created before the sun, when plants need sunlight to live?" as long as you ask it of someone, like a kiruv worker, who is trained to answer such questions, and as long as you accept the answer without too much resistance. (As a Facebook friend once said, "Judaism loves questions. It hates follow-up questions.") It is not okay to systematically question everything you're taught, to look for counterarguments against which to measure the arguments for Yiddishkeit. It's not okay to scrutinize the answers you get from the approved sources, and to try to see if they have any holes. Asking for clarification is okay, even praiseworthy. Examining the underlying assumptions, and worse, risking not coming to the approved conclusions, is forbidden.

            In an online conversation I once had on this subject, one person declared, "Questions are allowed. Answers that are considered apikorsis are not." In his mind, one may ask any question he wants. It's only the answers that are circumscribed. But as soon as you declare an answer apikorsis, you are not allowing real questions. You're only allowing rhetorical questions that act as props to the accepted dogmas.

            There was a philosophy professor named H. D. Lewis who told a story about a woman who asked him what philosophy is. He answered her, and she said, "Oh, I see, theology." She was right that philosophy and theology often address the same subjects, but unlike the theological "questions" acceptable in the frum world, in philosophy one is supposed to come to whichever conclusion the arguments lead him to find most likely.[3]

In yeshiva, boys quickly learn that one isn't allowed to say, "this doesn't make sense," only, "I don't understand."[4] It's unlikely that when a kid says a mishna or gemara doesn't make sense that he's challenging its validity. He's more likely expressing his frustration with it. Yet even this is not allowed. One must always phrase his questions so that it's obvious that the proper obsequiousness in being paid to the Talmud. Nothing else in the world is treated this way. If a kid expresses a similar sentiment about, say, his math class, the teacher might show him why it's a foolish statement, or (more likely) might tell him that now isn’t the time to prove everything from the bottom up, but he wouldn't demand a priori acceptance of the material.

            Yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs are not places where one may examine the underpinnings of frumkeit. There are no classes on theology in yeshiva. Hashkafa classes, which claim to occupy that slot, are shallow talking points and inspirational stories, not any kind of rigorous philosophical exploration of the tenets of Judaism. Even those who do study classical works of Jewish philosophy are not likely to really understand them. The average yeshiva bochur or Bais Yaakov girl who might have a seder in a sefer like Chovos Halevavos doesn’t have the background to recognize – and aren’t taught about – the neoplatonic model that is the basis for the book’s entire approach to Judaism. They may or may not know who Plato was, and almost certainly have never heard of Plotinus, the man who invented the ideas on which Chovos Halevavos is premised.

            Those students who might be interested in theology have nowhere to turn. If they take their questions to their teachers, at best, they get shallow answers which they are expected to accept. At worst, they get labeled as troublemakers. Rabbeim are concerned with teaching the minutia of the sugya, not with exploring why they should bother learning gemara in the first place. If a student does have questions, and persists in asking them, they might be sent to talk to a kiruv professional.  Questions about frumkeit have no place within the frum community. They are outsourced to those who deal with people outside the community.

            Teachers attack questions and questioners for challenging Orthodoxy's truth. There is an assumption that good frum kids from frum homes shouldn't be asking such questions. This is not just my experience, but the experience of the majority of people who have gone through the frum education system and had the audacity to question the party line.[5] It’s not one or two rabbeim in over their heads. It’s endemic to the system. Rabbeim and Roshei Yeshiva are Talmudists, not theologians, and beyond some basic hashkafa sound bites, most have no idea what to tell a kid that questions their world’s assumptions.

Faranak Margolese, the author of Off the Derech, writes that while in seminary she had decided to participate in the advanced class, but found to her dismay that her philosophical questions were not welcomed there as they had been in the beginners' class. Like my high school principal had done, the head of the program took her aside and told her that she had to stop asking such questions in class. Another woman reported that when she asked about-the-system questions in class, her teachers told her, "You're such a nice girl, such a sweet girl. Why are you going crazy asking all these questions?"[6] The message is clear. Such questions could be tolerated from new baalei teshuva who don't know any better. Someone who is Frum From Birth or an established baal teshuva is not supposed to ask such things.

             This is partly the logical consequence of the beliefs that the Torah is perfect and Judaism is obviously true. A parable is told of a man who stood with a crowd of people before a painting. The other people marveled at how beautiful the painting was, but the man insisted that it was covered with ugly splotches. Then he realized that his glasses were dirty. When he had cleaned them, he too saw that the painting was beautiful. The nimshal, the moral, is that just as the painting was beautiful, and it was a problem with the observer that kept him from seeing its beauty, so too, the Torah is beautiful and contains matchless wisdom and truths. If one can't see that, the problem is with the person, not with the Torah.[7]

            I've experienced this attitude firsthand, when relatives or teachers expressed surprise and dismay that a boy who had been brought up frum would ask the unacceptable sort of questions. "Why would you ask that?" they wondered. People who question the foundational beliefs of frumkeit are not seen in the frum world as intellectual searchers. They're seen as broken. There's something wrong with a person who would ask such questions. Doubts, even sincere doubt from someone who is committed to being frum and is looking for solutions to his dilemmas, is perceived in the frum community as rebellious,[8] and teenagers who are questioners are lumped in with delinquents under the label, "Kids At Risk."

            Awareness in the frum community of the phenomenon of what would come to called "Kids At Risk" began with the November 1999 issue of the Jewish Observer, the monthly magazine formerly published by Agudas Yisroel of America. Titled "Children on the Fringe… and Beyond," the entire November issue focused on troubled teens. These were kids who were on drugs or engaged in other illegal and communally unacceptable activities and who were going "Off the derech (OTD)," leaving the frum community in which they had grown up. The issue sold out, and there was a second printing, as well as another issue on the same subject. By focusing on teenagers with delinquent behaviors, the magazine ignored adults and kids who left for other reasons, including intellectual reasons. It perpetuated the stereotype that going OTD is one more maladaptive behavior among the many exhibited by the delinquent teens. Experts quoted in the magazine claimed that by becoming frum again, the teens could overcome their drug use and other problem behaviors. The impression left on readers was that to be frum was to be normal and healthy, while to go OTD was to be delinquent, to be broken.[9]

 

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[1] Winston-Macauley, M. (2011, March 5). Jews Love Questions. Retrieved from http://www.aish.com/j/fs/Jews_Love_Questions.html

[2] Nuesner, J. (2006). The Talmud. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. page 124-125

[3] Robinson, R. Religion and Reason; in Angeles, P. (1976). Critiques of God. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books. P. 118

[4] Margolese, F. (2005). Off the Derech. Jerusalem, Israel: Devora Publishing Company. p. 236

[5] Of the respondents to the web survey conducted as research for Off the Derech, 51% felt they couldn't ask questions in class, and 64% felt that when they did ask questions, the answers were not satisfactory. Margolese, F.(2005). Off the Derech. Jerusalem, Israel: Devora Publishing Company. p. 234

[6] Davidman, L.  and Greil, A.L. (2007) Characters in Search of a Script: The Exit Narratives of Formerly Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46(2), 201-216.

[7] Katz, M. (2000). Understanding Judaism: A Basic Guide to Jewish Faith, History, and Practice. Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications. p. 70-71

[8] Margolese, F. (2005). Off the Derech. Jerusalem, Israel: Devora Publishing Company. p. 136

[9] Finkelman, Y. (2011). Strictly Kosher Reading. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press. P. 173-174

Bais Yaakov “Chessed” Programs

I first encountered Bais Yaakovs’ “chessed” requirements about 20 years ago, when my sister started high school. I remember being angry about it. Their “chessed” assignments were typically helping out women in the community by babysitting or cleaning their homes. This might technically be “chessed,” I protested, but it seemed much like a scheme to provide the community with a free housekeeping service than a way to teach the girls kindness and compassion. Wouldn’t it be better to have the girls come up with their own projects? A group of them could volunteer at a hospital, or a homeless shelter, or for one of the community’s many  tzedaka organizations. These were places of real chessed, which might awaken in them compassion for and kindness towards others.

Later, my wife would tell me how she was required to do “chessed” in seminary in Israel. She told me how she and her friend went to a kollel family’s apartment and tackled a towering pile of smelly laundry. Another woman once told me how in her seminary the “chessed” program was her and her friends cleaning the faculty’s homes.

 I was sorting through some notes today and came across one of these accounts that I had written down. And I had an epiphany - one that seems obvious now. The “chessed” programs In Bais Yaakovs and seminaries weren't really about teaching chessed, about teaching the girls compassion and kindness that would motivate them to help out people in need. The “chessed” programs consisted of caring for children and performing household chores because in the frum community, implicitly, that’s what women are *for.* That’s what it was really teaching them.

 ====

The context of this epiphany was that this morning I was reading a book that was discussing the traditional halachik view of marriage. It went through a bunch of sources that see women's purpose in marriage was/is to serve her husband.

The Taivos Canard, Installment One: The Infuriating Canard

 

This post was originally written as an article for my magazine, Apikorsus! (now on indefinite hiatus), and is longer than my typical posts. It was meant to be the first installment of a series about the Taivos Canard. I'm posting it here because I think it's an important topic, and I intend to continue the series. I hope to post weekly until I've finished the series, but we'll see what life allows for.

I've discussed aspects of the Canard here before, and the first third or so of this article is a lightly-edited version of a post from a few years back.

 ********

This article is the first in a series exploring and deconstructing the Taivos Canard: the accusation that we all went OTD because we’re broken.

 

Moshe sat in the waiting room, a little nervous, a little hopeful. In many ways, he was a typical yeshiva bochur. He dressed the same as the other bochurim in his yeshiva, listened to the same frum music that they did, went to the same events, and kept all of the mitzvos. Yet, in one important way, Moshe was different. He was plagued by questions of emunah. He wanted to know the reasons for mitzvos; to understand how many things accepted by his community, like segulos, worked; and to square statements Tanach and the gemara made about the world with what he knew about reality.

When Moshe had been a teenager, the principal of his high school had called Moshe into his office one day and told him that, while Yiddishkeit allowed one to ask questions, even encouraged it, he should stop asking his questions in class. These questions didn't occur to the other bochurim, the principal said, and why should their emunah chas v'sholom be weakened by Moshe's kashas?

Moshe was a good kid, and he did as the principal asked. But keeping quiet about the questions didn't make them go away. If anything, the more he learned about the world, the stronger they became. Moshe sought out and read kiruv books that promised to answer questions of emunah and prove that Yiddishkeit was correct, but they were disappointing. Every now and then Moshe would come across something that seemed convincing, that seemed like it could be the idea on which he could rebuild his emunah. Inevitably, as he thought about the exciting new concept, he would sadly realize it was full of holes. It relied on logical errors, or it didn't match up with real-world experiences, or it contradicted other things Moshe had learned in yeshiva.

 Moshe's interest in his religion blossomed into an interest in the history of Judaism, in comparative religion, in philosophy and mythology and academic biblical scholarship. The more he learned, the less tenable Yiddishkeit seemed, until one day Moshe realized that he couldn't avoid the obvious conclusion. Judaism wasn't true, and there probably wasn't a God. The realization upset him, and he felt a deep sense of loss, but there it was. Still, he thought to himself, maybe this is all just the yetzer hara, trying to convince me not to keep the mitzvos. He continued to meticulously keep the mitzvos, just in case.

 A year went by. Keeping the mitzvos while not believing in Judaism in order to make sure it wasn't the yetzer hara planting thoughts in his head was starting to feel faintly ridiculous. It would soon be time for Moshe to start dating, but how could he in good conscience go out with Bais Yaakov girls when he didn't believe? In a last-ditch effort to regain his emunah, he had a friend put him in touch with a kiruv guy. The rabbi came highly recommended, and Moshe met with him a few times to discuss his issues with Yiddishkeit. The rabbi was friendly and seemed genuinely concerned about Moshe, but like the kiruv books, his answers were disappointing. A week ago the rabbi had called Moshe with exciting news. He had gotten Moshe an appointment with a big rav, a real talmid chacham who would be able to answer Moshe's questions and help him to see that Torah and Yiddishkeit were the emes.

At last Moshe was ushered into the rav's presence. The rav asked Moshe why he had come. Moshe explained that he had questions of emunah that bothered him, and gave a few examples. The rav listened, and then gave Moshe a bracha that his emunah shelaima should return.

"I was hoping that the rav could answer some of my questions." Moshe said.

The rav quoted the Brisker Rav and said "I answer questions, not excuses." He explained, "You have decided to be porek ol, since you did not control your yetzer haras, and you found an excuse that you had 'questions,' and I don't answer excuses!"

The rav gave Moshe another bracha that he would merit teshuva shelaima, and Moshe was ushered back to the waiting room.

 

The above is a composite story, combining my experiences and those I have read or been told by others who have had the misfortune to be frum and skeptical. Elements of it would be recognized by anyone who has been in yeshiva or Bais Yaakov and questioned ikkarei emunah. I thought about theology (though I didn’t yet know the word) a lot in high school, while none of my fellow students did. I was told by my high school principal to stop asking questions in class. I wanted to understand how Judaism works and how religious ideas square with the world I experience. And I found that the more I learned about the world, about history, theology, philosophy, and science, the less tenable Yiddishkeit seemed. I have read accounts by people who continued to keep the mitzvos for years after losing their faith because they were worried that their questions might be the yetzer hara trying to fool them into giving up the mitzvos.[1] Many people have related the sadness and sense of loss they felt when they realized that Judaism wasn't true and there probably wasn't a God. And many people have talked about how maddening it was after years of searching for answers to have their sincere questions dismissed as excuses to be porek ol. The conversation between Moshe and the rav is lifted nearly verbatim from an account of an encounter between three questioning bochurim and Rav Chaim Kanievsky.[2]

Many frum people believe that Judaism is obviously correct. After all, the midrash[3] tells us that Avraham Avinu figured out that Hashem was the Master of the Universe when he was only three years old! It's obvious even to a child that Hashem is the Borei Olam! Yet if it's so obvious, how could anyone go off the derech? How could anyone disbelieve when the truth is staring him in the face? Chazal answer, "lo uvdo avodas kochavim ela l'hatir lahem arayos,"[4] "[People] don't worship idols except to permit to themselves sexual licentiousness." The person wants to do aveiros, the reasoning goes, but he can't because he knows Hashem will punish him. So he comes up with "questions" that allow him to convince himself that Hashem won't punish him after all, and he can do whatever he wants.

This is what I’ve taken to calling the Taivos Canard: the accusation that those who question the fundamental truths of frumkeit and/or go OTD are hedonistic cretins who look for kashas that are really teirutzim, excuses to allow themselves to throw off the ol hatorah and wallow in their taivos. It’s infuriating. It substitutes insults for answers. But then, it’s not meant for the person who is questioning. It’s meant for the person who is still a devout believer, and who might be swayed by the questioner. It’s an excuse not to have to even consider the questions. And, as we’ll explore in this series of articles, it’s wrong, in every way it’s possible to be wrong.

While the accusation has been around at for at least 1500 years, since the time of the gemara, it has changed significantly in the last two decades. It has evolved softer versions in response to what the frum world calls the “OTD Crisis.” As a community, frum people can't accept that someone might legitimately disagree with Orthodoxy. That would threaten their belief that frumkeit is obviously and objectively The Truth. But they also can’t simply label everyone who leaves as an evil, disgusting baal taiva. Not when the current advice of rabbonim and psychologists is to maintain contact with people who have left. You can’t maintain a relationship with an evil person. So a solution developed.

Modern psychology – the clinical/therapeutic field – has penetrated deeply into the frum world.[5] This has created both the need for a new interpretation of the Taivos Canard, and the interpretation itself. Psychology takes a more nuanced view of human behavior than “good” and “evil.” This has led to a change in the perception of someone who leaves frumkeit; from seeing them as an evil person who should be avoided to seeing them as someone acting out who can be brought back to the “right path” by loving family and friends. This creates a problem: if they aren’t evil, if they aren’t being mislead by their taivos, if in fact they are good people who have gone astray and with whom one should maintain a good relationship, then why did they leave frumkeit? The solution is that they’re teenagers acting out and rebelling, something that’s normal for teenagers; or they were abused, associate frumkeit with the abuse, and are understandably trying to distance themselves from what they perceive as the source of their pain; or they are mentally or emotionally unstable, are suffering from a psychiatric disorder, and so deserve help and pity, not condemnation.

Somehow, this new version of the Canard is both better and worse than the traditional one. On the one hand, at least it doesn’t accuse those of us who have left frumekeit of being evil degenerates. On the other, it reduces our worldviews and choices to rebellion, a reaction to victimization, or a symptom of a psychiatric disorder. Most importantly, it is still insulting, still a deflection from the real issues we bring up, and still a way to avoid addressing those issues by attacking the character of the person who brings them up. It still denigrates the questioner as a way to protect the believer from having to examine their beliefs.

While popular in the frum world, the Taivos Canard is not limited to it. Other religions often use the same “reasoning.” The Canard is so widespread and so entrenched that the names of atheistic groups from antiquity that were dedicated to living a good life through moderation are used today as synonyms for wanton hedonism. The Epicureans of Ancient Greece and the followers of Carvakas, an Indian philosopher who lived 3,500 years ago, believed in wisdom, justice, and human dignity. The best life was to be achieved by avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, but this didn’t mean wallowing in food and drink and sex. Overindulging has painful consequences, and avoiding pain was part of the equation. The goal was to balance pleasure and pain and so achieve a pleasant life.

Today their names are adjectives, used for things like epicurious.com – a recipe site. Their nuanced philosophies have been reduced to their atheism and their nuanced hedonism misunderstood as unbridled lusting after pleasure. The message is clear. The only reason someone disbelieves in religion is to justify spending their days filling their bellies with rich foods.[6] The only reason anyone leaves frumkeit is because they can’t control their taivos.

Of course, the religion that Epicureans were accused of leaving because of their taivos was Greek paganism. They can’t be accused, to paraphrase the gemara, of worshipping idols to justify following their taivos. Worshipping idols was an integral part of the religion they were rejecting! In fact, the same culture that accused the Epicureans of rejecting the gods because of their taivos would likely have leveled the same accusation at Jewish people who rejected those same gods. So who is right? Are the Greeks right that people who reject Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Demeter, and all the rest only do so because they want to wallow in their taivos? Or is the gemara right that people who worship such gods, who leave traditional Jewish practice, only do so because they want to wallow in their taivos? They can’t both be right.

This gets to one of the main problems with the use of the Taivos Canard: its myopia. Those who use it fail to recognize that they too can be accused of being blinded by their desires and biases. Are people frum because of existential dread? Does believing that the universe doesn't care about them and that their lives have no cosmic significance too depressing, and so they convince themselves that frumkeit is the truth? Is their fear of insignificance blinding them to the obvious flaws in their worldview? Is the nice lifestyle that being frum can facilitate biasing them so that they can't see the truth? No doubt a frum person would be indignant - and rightfuly so! - if they were accused of being frum for such reasons, yet they fail to recognize that those who are OTD or otherwise non-Orthodox feel the same way about having their experiences and philosophies dismissed as merely an excuse to throw off the ol haTorah because it’s convenient to their lifestyle.

The Canard is used all the time against people who go OTD. Ayala Fader’s recent book Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age provides many examples:

·         A woman whose doubts were attributed by the male authority figures in her life to, “emotional problems, dissatisfactions, or sexual promiscuity,” an experience shared by many women who have expressed religious doubt.[7]

·         A woman whose husband, upon discovering she no longer believed in frumkeit, expressed surprise because she seemed “normal” – i.e., not mentally or emotionally disturbed, not a drug addict, etc,[8] and a frum man who blamed his wife’s doubt on a personality disorder – though she had never been diagnosed with one.[9]

·         A letter to the Hamodia in which a young man says that he has questions – and assumes there must be a psychological reason. A frum psychiatrist responds that people have questions because of their yetzer hara or because of a mental disorder, and suggests that the young man is suffering from OCD.

·         A conference for frum mental health professionals is described as having “many panels and posters on "kids at risk" and the "OTD crisis," as though going OTD were a mental disorder.

·         A man who was forced to go to a therapist for his religious doubts, on pain of his kids being expelled from their school, because his community believes that doubting frumkeit is a sign of a mental disorder.[10] The medicalizing of doubt and attributing it to a clinical psychiatric disorder is something that is common today in frum communities, and is done with the full participation of frum psychotherapists.[11] Sadly, this means that someone who is still in the frum community and seeks  help to deal with the social and emotional fallout of losing their faith has a high chance of their frum therapist seeing their doubts as a symptom of a psychiatric disorder.

It goes on and on, one story after another of people being subjected to various forms of the Taivos Canard. Perhaps the worst case of the Canard described by Fader is a woman who was diagnosed as bipolar because of her doubts. The frum therapist she saw interpreted the depression caused by the issues her doubts were causing as the depressive end of bipolar, and her friendships with men at work – because, he told her, “when men and women are friends, they're having sex” – as the sexual promiscuity often associated with mania. This is the taivos Canard taken to its logical, absurd, and dangerous extreme: people are being given psychotropic drugs because they expressed doubts about the truth of frumkeit![12] This can’t help but make one think of drapetomania, the “mental disorder” that doctors in the antebellum South theorized caused enslaved black people to want to escape from their masters. As though questioning the system you were born into is itself pathological.

There are many, many other examples of the Canard, found informally throughout the frum world and formally in its publications. One particularly upsetting example comes from a panel at the 2016 Agudah Convention titled Diving Off The Derech - The Emerging Adult At Risk Phenomenon. A speaker told a story about a yungerman who slowly lost his belief in frumekeit. He emphasized that the man was a good husband and father. The yungerman’s wife went to his Rosh Yeshiva, who told her it was just a phase, and she should ride it out. Then one Yom Kippur she got the kids ready for shul and came downstairs to find her husband eating breakfast. Motzei yom tov she took the kids and left. The speaker characterized this as the guy "walking out on his family." She left him, but apparently failure to conform to frum norms is tantamount to going out for cigarettes and never coming home. In the frum world, doubts are never legitimate. They’re always subject to the Canard, always a sign that the person who has doubts is broken, an idiot, a menuval, mentally ill, the type of person who leaves his family so he can wallow in his taivos – and never mind if he’s a good person, or if it’s his frum wife who left him. It’s his fault for being a rasha.

In a 2011 article in Ami Magazine, The imposters Among Us, people who disbelieve in frumkeit are described as having, “a sickness;” justifying their taivos; and of having a “superficial grasp” of Judaism and of the theological issues which lead to their doubt. The article cites a senior figure at Discovery who said that he has found that, “emotional problems are behind almost all kefira. ‘In addition to many other things, to stop believing is inconvenient.’ Immersed in a religious world, they are suddenly cut off from their entire milieu. ‘Why would they do it if they didn’t have some emotional issues?’”

That someone might conclude frumkeit isn’t true isn’t even considered. Which, of course, is the point of the Canard. It tells those within the frum world, and those who are questioning, that there are no real questions, nothing at all that might lead one to reasonably conclude that the tenets of Yiddishkeit aren’t true. The Taivos Canard is a trick to keep people from having to examine their beliefs and to make those who do examine their beliefs literally question their own sanity. It’s pervasive, pernicious, and dangerous. It’s condescending and infuriating, and it needs to be challenged, deconstructed, and debunked. In this series of articles, we’ll do just that.

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[1] An account of one such person’s experiences appeared in the July 2020 issue of Apikorsus! magazine under the title, “Orthoprax at Home.”

[2] Bruer, P. (2010, October 21). Al teirutzim ani lo onah teshuvos. HaShavua Retrieved from: http://shiltonhasechel.blogspot.com/2010/11/excuses-not-questions.html

[3] Sefer Ha-Yashar 9:13-19 This is a polemic against idolatry rather than an argument for God's existence or the truth of Judaism.

[4] Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 63b. This textual source for the Taivos Canard will be discussed in detail in a later article in this series.

[5] Finkelman, Y. (2011) Strictly Kosher Reading. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press. P. 45-53

[6] Epstein, G. (2009). Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. William Morrow. P. 45

[7] Fader, A. (2020). Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age. Princeton Univer-sity Press . P. 13-14

[8] Ibid. P. 106

[9] Ibid. P. 113

[10] Ibid. P. 4

[11] Ibid. P. 6-7

[12] Ibid. P. 138