From the Wicked son to the Clueless Father

This is a stream-of-consciousness line-by-line response to a “letter” that appeared here and has been floating around the frum/ex-frum internet for the last day or two.

The letter is in italics.

Credit for the post title goes to someone on facebook (whose name I’m not including because it was in the private OTD group.)

 

An Open Letter to the Wicked Son

Dear Son,

 

Your mother and I are so glad that you’ll be with us for Seder again. I know that you don’t believe the same as we do and I know you don’t typically observe the way that we do, but every year you come home for Seder. I want you to know that Mommy and I notice that, and so do your brothers, and we’re all very grateful. We know that it takes a lot for you to be here, and that this whole service isn’t really your thing, but here you are every year and we appreciate it so much.

 

I don’t know if I ever told you this, son, but your voice is really a critical one at the Seder. Without you, our Pesach night would be incomplete! I can’t even imagine if your voice were missing from our conversation. I know that your questions sometimes come off a little sharp, but If I’m going to be honest, sometimes my responses are a little sharp too. But you manage to see the love I have for you, even within my critical retorts. And you deserve no less. I know that beneath your biting comments is love. (And if it’s not yet a love for Hashem or Torah or Jewish practice, it is at least love for your family.)

 

1.       Yet? Because of course eventually we’ll see the that frumkeit is the truth after all? This is in the same vein (and probably lifted from) the kiruv shtick of calling the 90% of Jews who aren’t Orthodox “not yet frum.” As though that’s inevitable. Or as if that’s the value of people who aren’t frum: that they might become frum. Worst of all, it’s a way of humanizing non-Orthodox people. They’re not like “us” – yet. They’re not frei, that’s not their identity, they’re “not yet frum.” With just a little work, they can be just like “us.” The corollary is that if someone is not like “us,” and isn’t potentially going to become like us, then they’re not really a person. (Sorry for the tangent.)

2.       “At least?!" Because love for your family isn’t really important compared to love for Hashem? I’m going to give the author the benefit of the doubt, and assume that this is an artifact of awkward wording. That he meant to say something like, “It would make me happy if you loved Hashem and the Torah and, and it makes me happy that [at least] you love our family.” But I can’t be sure that’s what he meant, and the article says what it says.

 

In the past you have come to Seder always ready to jump on the same question, “What is this work for you?” You know, in different years your questions have echoed different accusations. Sometimes I assumed that you meant that you found no meaning in our most cherished and holy traditions because you called it all just “work.”

This is wonderfully pedantic.

I don’t think even the frummest person would argue that Pesach isn’t work. They might enjoy the work, they might find profound meaning in it, but cleaning and cooking are still work.

Sometimes, I figured that you meant that you didn’t feel yourself part of our faith community at all because you said, “for you,” and that means you were excluding yourself from your heritage.

There is something to this. In the mishnah, the rasha says “you” and the chacham says “we,” though their questions are otherwise similar. The implication is that the rasha is a rasha because he’s othering the rest of the Jewish people, and removing himself from the group. The response, though excessively violent, is to tell him, essentially, “You don’t want to be part of us? Fine. Had you been there during yetzias Mitzrayim, and separated yourself from our ancestors, from the group that left Mitzrayim, you wouldn’t have been part of the group that left Mitzrayim.” This is a tautology.

In the Hagadah, though, the chacham and rasha both say “you,” so focusing on it here in the context of the arbeh banim of the Hagadah is less meaningful.

 

I’ve spent a lot of years and a lot of discussions with my rabbinic colleagues trying to understand what your problem is.

 

Why assume there’s a problem? Because everyone who  leaves frumkeit is broken? That’s the frum narrative, but it’s not true. Lots of people leave because it’s not for them: they don’t find it meaningful, or it doesn’t work for them, or they conclude that the costs are not worth the benefits, or that the underlying structure of frumkeit isn’t true. I suppose one could read “problem” here as “reason you left,” as in, “my problem with frumkeit is that its tenets are not true.” But I don’t think that’s what it means here. The implication, and the wider context of frum beliefs about those who go OTD, makes it more likely it means “trying to understand what’s wrong with you that caused you to leave what is obviously the most true and best way to live.”

 

But it’s possible I never took a chance to ask you directly. What do you mean? What’s bothering you?

 

Why is treating his child like a person an epiphany? Talking to his son about what’s “bothering” him should have been the first step, not the last.  

 

The reason that I ask is because I realize now that none of my responses seem to have hit the mark.

 

 Or, you know, you could have been a good parent to begin with and had a conversation with your son about his feelings and beliefs instead of lecturing the kid with responses meant to “hit the mark” and convince him.

 

I admit that in the first years, I was really worried what impression your question would leave on your brothers. (Especially little Tom.) I was worried that your skepticism would infect them too.

 

“Infect,” like it’s a disease.

In my first ever post, I wrote about how when I was in high school, the principal told me to stop asking questions in class because he was worried the other boys would be bothered by my questions, and why should they be bothered by questions they would never think of themselves? The implication is that questions are bad. Better to have emunah peshutah, to suppress any curiosity about the underpinnings of the frum system. Just shut up and do as you’re told.

I was in high school in the late ‘90s. Twenty-five years, and nothing’s changed.

 

That’s why I felt the need to take the teeth out of your argument. I realize that I never really addressed your issues.

 

Because the system is more important than the person – or more precisely, keeping other people from questioning the system is more important than any pain you might cause a curious teenager.

 

Rather, I sidestepped them because I wanted to make sure that everyone else realized that the Jewish People as a Faith Community or as a Family or as an Existential Reality were all taken out and saved from Egypt, but that doesn’t mean that each of Jacob’s descendants were. Redemption meant connection to our Peoplehood, and those disconnected weren’t saved. And son, to be honest, I worry about that now too. Perhaps only Jewish people who feel connected to the rest of Jewish people in brotherhood will be saved on that Great and Awesome Day. That’s not the whole reason, or even the main reason, I’m glad you’ve stayed connected all these years. But it is a reason!

 

Huh? “Saved?” “Great and Awesome Day?” What are we, Evangelicals waiting for the Rapture? I know the frum community has been identifying more and more with Evangelicals in the last couple of years, but describing what I assume is the yemai hamoshiach in such blatantly Christian terms is odd.

 

Son, what’s really bothering you? I want to know.

 

Have you never listened before? Or is the “really” meant to imply that his son’s questions aren’t real questions, they’re teirutzim – and he wants to know the underlying reason for the questions. In other words, does he want to discuss theology and sociology, or does he want to know which of the usual culprits is “really” at the bottom of the questions: abuse, mental illness, or unbridled taivos?

 

I’m not asking because I want you to believe what I believe or practice the way the way that I do. (I wouldn’t mind obviously, but that’s not the reason.) I just want to know you better and I want to know what’s on your mind. If you feel comfortable talking about it with everyone, we certainly can discuss it at the Seder.

 

Because it’s been so many years that you have been asking the same question, and because I have so long worried that your question demonstrated a lack of faith, I feel like I have something I need to tell you. I would never talk about this with your brothers.

 

Didn’t you just say we could talk about it at the seder? And didn’t you say earlier “I want you to know that Mommy and I notice that [you come to the Seder], and so do your brothers, and we’re all very grateful.” Maybe expecting internal coherence in an article like this is too much. I get that this is a print version of a vort. But it would be nice.

 

I feel like they wouldn’t understand (but maybe for opposite reasons.) I also struggle with faith from time to time. I don’t know if that comes as a surprise or not. I know that I’m The Dad and I’m supposed to be the one with all the answers, but that’s not the way life is. Not really. Sometimes I have questions too.

 

Great! Let’s talk about those questions – and not take for granted that your beliefs are correct no matter how many questions one might have.

Unfortunately, given the following lines, when he says “questions,” I think he means things more along the lines of “Why would Hashem allow bad things to happen to good people like our friends,” and not, “how can we believe in a tri-omni God when such a Being is logically impossible given the evil we see in the world,” and certainly not, “how should we understand the story of yetzias Mitzrayim given all the evidence that it didn’t happen?”

 

Look, you’re our son. You grew up in this house and you’re not an idiot, so you knew when things were rough, when money was super tight. You knew when terrible tragedy struck our friends. You were always the most sensitive soul in our care, and maybe you were affected the most by those hard times.

 

Ah, there’s the “real” “problem!” You poor sensitive thing, you were traumatized by bad things that happened during your childhood. You don’t really have questions, you’re just overly emotional!

 

When you’re in the middle of all of that it’s not easy to say, “it’s all for the good,” and even if you can say it, it’s hard to feel it, really. In those moments, I didn’t understand what the Creator wanted from us.

 

See, I was right. These are safe, within-the-system questions: “How is this terrible thing I’m experiencing really be for the good?” and  “What does Hashem want of us?” Not about-the-system questions. I wonder if the writer gets that there’s a difference, and that his son has likely moved past questions that assume the system is true, and are just asking for clarification to questions about how the system itself is incoherent.

 

It felt like the sun would never shine on us again. Like we would never be able to take a full breath of air without the weight of stress and sadness making it hard to inhale. In those moments I felt really disconnected. I worry that maybe my actions at those times have impacted your thinking today. Maybe we’ll never really know that.

 

Again, blaming his son going OTD on trauma. Even including a mea culpa – maybe I inadvertently did or said something during a tough period that hurt you. Which is noble and all, but still missing the point. It really is possible for your son to really, truly and reasonably disagree with you. It’s possible that your wrong. It’s not true that people who go OTD are all broken. Which makes the mea culpa less noble. It’s less taking responsibility for a mistake than it is a defense against the possibility that his belief system is mistaken.

 

Son, it’s so clear from your question that you don’t find joy in our traditions. I agree with your essential observation – if something feels like a giant burden, why bother doing it? I agree! There are plenty of things at work that I “just have to do” and I hate them and push them off to the last minute. They bring me no joy and no job satisfaction. I just do them because I have a boss and I like being employed. If you were experiencing joy and satisfaction in mitzvot then you never would have asked that question.

 

That’s not necessarily true. I genuinely enjoy a lot of Jewish traditions. I enjoy the seder. And I love learning the real reasons why we do things – which are rarely “because God commanded it,” as the chacham’s question assumes. It’s usually more prosaic, pragmatic, and interesting than a belief that God ordered it ex nihilo from the sky.

A lot of the stuff we do is objectively weird (and not just the Jewish stuff). Asking why in the world we do it is a natural question, and the answer often involves an exploration of our history.

 

You’re an adult so this is really your responsibility now, but like any parent, I wonder if we could have or should have done something different. Was our Shabbos table fun enough? Did Shabbos feel like something we do or did it feel like a list of things we don’t do? Was school a good fit? Did it feel like a place you enjoyed being with people who understood you? We can’t go back, obviously, but I want you to know we tried our best. We always loved you. We still do. Our greatest nachas is having all four of our boys at the Seder.

 

Probably in a few years, son, you’ll be married and raising a family of your own. Your mom and I talk about this a lot. I don’t think this is the time or place to have the whole conversation, but let me just say, I hope that you and your special someone and your family will always feel welcome at our Seder. But realize you have a role in that too.

 

And that role is…?

I don’t know what the author intended, but too often, the answer is that the OTD person should “compromise” by behaving as the frum person thinks he should, while the frum person “compromises” by not kvetching too much when the OTD person does something the frum person thinks he shouldn’t.

 

Son, I want to end how I began. Mommy and I are so grateful that you will be at Seder. I just want to make sure you know that you are welcome home all the time. Come sit in our succah! Come for Shabbos dinner. (You always loved Mommy’s challah!) Come for a barbecue on Sunday. Whenever you want to come, we want to have you.

 

Love always,

Tatty

 

Dear Reader,

I want to make it clear that this is not about any of MY sons. Yes, I have 4 sons. But none of them are the Wicked Son of the Haggadah. My Chief Advisor and Most Trusted Editor thought I should clarify that. Because, the internet.

Chag Kasher V’Sameach.

R’M.S.

 

Ah. I understand. You wouldn’t want us to think that chas v’shalom one of your kids is an awful OTDer. Which kind of undermines the whole accepting tone you were going for.

Our Experience of Matzah

The following is an excerpt from my current work-in-progress, a book that examines the claims that Orthodoxy makes about itself. This is a section from a chapter about Orthodoxy’s claim to be essentially synonymous with the way that pious Jews have practiced in all times and places. I was proofreading it today, and decided to post it because it’s topical.

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The crisp matzah that Ashkenazim eat on Pesach is another example of a change to how we experience one of the shalosh regalim. Our ancestors from most times and places would not recognize as “matzah” the cracker-like food which we associate with that word. To them, matzah was a type of bread that was visibly indistinguishable from other types of bread. It wasn’t a cracker.

Thin crisp matzah is one of those things that more moderate frum people might acknowledge is different from the past, but will say is not a significant change. While the exact form that matzah takes has changed, the rules according to which it is prepared, the halacha which is its essence, is the same. They're right that from a halachic perspective this is an aesthetic rather than an essential change, but it is a change that illustrates two important points. The first is that those who take the more extreme position are incorrect, and it is not true that all pious Jews from all generations would recognize each other's practices. The second is that while our matzah may be halachically the same as the matzah our ancestors ate, our experience of eating matzah is very different. Just like with Shavuos, we would not recognize our ancestors' experience and they would not recognize ours.

The thin, crisp, cracker-like matzah that we know, with its perforations, its crunch, its often burnt edges, and its shelf-stability is a nineteenth-century invention.1 We ritualistically call this matzah “bread,” but it isn't really. If you didn't know what matzah was and someone handed you a piece, you would call it a cracker.

Typical bread that we think of as such, whether loaves like white or rye bread or flatbreads like pita and tortilla have a softer part inside, called the crumb, and a relatively harder crust on the outside. The matzah our ancestors knew was also like this. It really was bread.

If one were to mix flour and water, roll the dough into sheets, and pop it in the oven, all in less than eighteen minutes, the result is not the dry crackers that we call matzah. It's a soft bread similar to other flatbreads.2 This is the stuff our ancestors ate, right up until when matzah baking was industrialized a few generations ago.

The products of modern matzah factories are made by mixing flour with the least amount of water that will still make a dough, a recipe that is the result of historical trends that we will discuss momentarily. This creates a very dry dough that is then baked at very high temperatures. Where bread is typically baked between 350^oF and 475^oF,3 depending on type, matzah is baked between 600^oF and 800^oF.4 This dries out the matzah all the way through and produces a cracker-like product. The same historical trends that led to using very dry dough occurred among both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, and even the soft matzos that Sephardim use today are dryer than the matzos our ancestors ate.

References to matzah throughout traditional rabbinic sources support the contention that the matzah most Jews throughout history would recognize was indistinguishable from other breads:5

·         The gemara6 discusses a case where someone finds a moldy loaf in a bread bin and isn't sure if it’s chometz or matzah. Hard matzos both do not become moldy and would not be confused with chometz breads. We can infer that the matzos the amoraim were familiar with were indistinguishable from regular bread.

·         Historically, hagaddos have been the most commonly illustrated Jewish books. Some of the surviving hagaados are as much as seven hundred year old, and many of their illustrations realistically depict various Pesach activities. Hagaados from the 15th century show matzos that vary in thickness from a finger to a hand's breadth, much too thick to be the cracker-like matzo we know now, and too thick to chew were they hard. A soft matzah a hand's breadth thick would be indistinguishable from other types of bread, and completely unlike the matzos we are familiar with. Other illustrated hagaados from over the centuries show similar matzos.

·         The Maharshal, who lived in the 16th century, is quoted7 as saying that one should keep the afikoman under one’s pillow. If one did this with hard matzos, there would be nothing left but crumbs. With dense, unrisen, soft matzos, the matzah would be fine.

·         The Chayei Adam, written in the early nineteenth century, recommends8 that matzos be made thin, but notes that in some places the custom is to make thick matzos.

·         As recently as 1884, the Chofetz Chaim wrote that matzah should be “soft as a sponge.” This implies that the matzah that he knew was bread, not a cracker.9

The thin hard matzos that Ashkenazim use today developed over several centuries among people seeking to be more chumor. There are references to some people making very thin matzos as early as the 16th century,10 but as the above sources show, this was not typical. It is likely that cracker-like matzah became standard when industrialized production in the 19th century created the need among producers for shelf-stable matzos. This way of making matzah originated as a chumrah with people who wanted to bake all of the matzah they would need for the entire yom tov before Pesach started. They were concerned that during baking there might be some bits of unbaked flour that could later become chometz. They wanted to be sure that this would happen before yom tov, when chometz would be batul. If the matzah was baked during Pesach, when chometz is not batul, they would run the risk of eating chometz on Pesach, of which even a tiny bit is prohibited. The regular thick, soft matzos people were accustomed to making would, as bread does, go bad after a couple of days. To make the matzah shelf-stable, those who were baking all of it before Pesach would make their matzos thin and dry. These thin matzos existed alongside the soft, thick, bread-like matzah still being made daily by the majority of people who kept Pesach. As is often the case with chumros, as time passed the chumrah to bake all of one’s matzah before Pesach became more severe, mandating ever thinner and dryer matzos. With the advent in the 19th century of industrialized production and of machines that could mix very dry batter, cracker-like matzos reached the final stage in their evolution and became the matzos we're familiar with today.

Once the thin matzah was widely available, rabbonim moved to make it mandatory. We see here again the beginnings of the change from the mimetic tradition, passed on through experience from one generation to the next, to the textually based tradition that would become dominant by the mid-twentieth century. The Chasam Sofer, who was responsible for so much of the roots of that change, wrote that most Ashkenazi communities had banned thick matzos - but those bans were often ignored. In the mid-19th century, the mimetic tradition still ruled. A hundred years later, the textual tradition, and cracker-like matzos, became ascendant.

To us, the relatively new thin, hard version IS matzah, and most people are only dimly aware that matzah used to be recognizably bread. Our experience of matzah is very different than that of thousands of year’s worth of pious Jews, from the time Jewish people started eating matzah on Pesach right up until two centuries ago. The matzah that Ashkenazim eat on Pesach and which is widely available for sale in kosher stores has been the standard for only about 5% of the time Judaism has existed.

As we said, moderates might argue that technically matzah hasn’t changed: it is and always has been bread that has not been allowed to rise. And so, they can argue, Judaism hasn't changed. But this argument is itself something that only makes sense in the new textually-dominated Orthodoxy. To our ancestors, devotees of the mimetic tradition, the experience of Judaism was as or more important than the technicalities of halacha. How comfortable would they have been eating our matzah? Would someone from a thousand years ago have even recognized it as matzah? To them, matzah was bread, not a cracker that we ritualistically refer to as bread. Their experience was completely different than ours. It’s not true that what we do is the same as what our ancestors did, and it's not true that any pious Jew from any time would find Orthodoxy familiar and be comfortable in any frum community. The technicalities of what makes something hlachically “matzah” matter much less than what it is like to sit at a seder and eat matzos.

More than just a difference in experience in that the texture of our matzah is different, the significant difference is that for our ancestors, Pesach was less at odds with the rest of their lives than our experience of it is today. Once upon a time, Hillel was eating what amounted to a wrap made with dryish pita, roasted lamb, and salad. We've gone from what was once a perfectly normal meal to, on the other end of the spectrum, those who chew up two kzaysim of matzah, (according to the biggest shiur, of course,) hold it in their cheek, and swallow it as quickly as possible in order to make sure that they eat it “kdei achilas pras.” Imagine the difference in experience between someone who does that and the experience of our ancestors in antiquity.

 When the tannaim and amoraim had their seder meal, they were experiencing a perfectly normal thing. Eating a wrap is dinner, not a ritual. Today, the mitzvah of achilas matzah is divorced from everyday experience. It has become strange and ritualized, an obligation to eat a prescribed amount of a food that is different from what we normally eat and to eat it within a prescribed amount of time. This isn't a dinner, it's a ritual.

In the comments under one of the articles I used as a source for this section someone pointed out that korech as Hillel ate it was essentially shawarma on pita with salad. Another commenter protested that this was “trivializ[ing] the holy and sacred.” This is a perfect illustration of what we've been talking about here. It shows the profundity of the changes to Judaism, the difference between the version of Judaism that is current Orthodoxy and versions of Judaism that have existed in the past. To many frum people to point out that Hillel ate a normal sandwich is to trivialize it, whereas the korech of the seder, with its patina of ritual, is holy and sacred.

The way our ancestors experienced eating matzah is analogous to the way that Americans experience eating turkey on Thanksgiving. Eating turkey is mundane, but eating it on Thanksgiving in the way that has become traditional in the United States imbues that mundane dinner with cultural meaning. Eating shawarma on pita with salad is mundane, but eating it on the seder night in fulfillment of the mitzvah as is traditional among Jews imbues that mundane dinner with cultural and religious meaning. Now that is no longer enough. Now frum people expect their experience of eating matzah to be mysterious and ritualized, and to point out that it was once experienced as a mundane thing, albeit used for a special purpose, is to trivialize it.

The change in what matzah is, from a bread to a cracker, is a change in Judaism, albeit a minor one. The change in the experience of eating matzah is significant. We do not experience Judaism the way our ancestors did. In fact it seems some people would dismiss our ancestors' experience of Judaism as trivial because it is not removed enough from everyday experience to seem mystical and sacred. Our experience is fundamentally different from that of our ancestors, and our ancestors would think that the way we fulfill the mitzvah of matzah, and more broadly, the way we relate to our Judaism, is strange. They would not be comfortable in our communities, nor would we be comfortable in theirs. The differences are too great, for all that we may share the technical halachic definition of “matzah.”

 

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1 Most of the discussion in this section draws on Zamkanei, S. (2013, March 18). Why Your Ancestors Never Ate Matzos. The Times of Israel. Retrieved from http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-your-ancestors-never-ate-matzos/; and Otofsky, A.Z. & Greenspan, A. (2014). The Thick and Thin of the History of Matzah. Ḥakirah 17. Retrieved from https://hakirah.org/Vol17Zivotofsky.pdf

2 Rainbow Tallit Baby. (March 28, 2014.). Matzah And How Authoritarianism Is Crumby [Blog post]. Retireved from https://rainbowtallitbaby.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/matzah-and-how-authoritarianism-is-crumby

3 Amit. What is the Ideal Oven Temperature for Baking Bread? [Blog post]. The Bread Guide. Retrieved from https://thebreadguide.com/what-is-the-ideal-oven-temperature-for-baking-bread

4 Siegel, R., Matzah Baking, an 18-Minute Project. Myjewishlearning.com. Retrieved from https://www.myjewishlearning.com/recipe/matzah-baking-an-18-minute-project

5 An often cited proof is that the word “korech” memes “to wrap,” something that is impossible to do with cracker-like matzos. I do not cite it here because the word can be understood as “surround.” While it seems more likely that it meant “wrap” in the context of the seder, the possibility of an interpretation that would work with hard matzos means that this line of argument is not useful to use with the traditionalists who might insist that the way things are now are the way they have always been.

6 Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 7a

7 Be’ir Haitev (OḤ473:19)

8 Chayei Adam (128:25)

9 Mishna Berura, Orach Haim 486

10 Rema, Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim, 460:4. “there are those who make the Matzot wafer-thin and not a thick loaf like other breads, for wafers do not leaven as quickly.” Translation from Sefaria.org