Posted on 05/21/2013 2:36:55 PM PDT by NYer
Footsteps is a Jewish organization that helps Hasidic Jews wishing to leave their ultra-orthodox community become integrated members of secular society and work through the profound difficulties of leaving behind their past and, in most cases, being disowned by their families.
PBS and A Journey Through NYC Religions report the varying responses of current members of the Hasidic community and individuals who have chosen a new way of life.
Sol Feuerwerker is glad he left.
I think that’s what surprises most people, you know, most outsiders, is that how can something this insular be happening right here in the middle of New York City. You know, as I’ve moved farther away from it, it kind of shocks me too actually.
There’s this whole, like belief or narrative in the community that if you, if you try to break away or change you will fail and you won’t be happy and you’ll just end up on drugs.
“Their structured lifestyle,” says Lucky Severson of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, “seems to work for the majority. But, for some, the lack of choices is too rigid . . . Hasidic groups remain some of the most insular religious sects in the U.S.”
Of course, many outsiders view the Catholic and Protestant churches, and even not-so-orthodox religious communities as “insular.” Any group that asks certain loyalties of its members and sets itself apart from the rest of the world is in some way “insular.” By this definition every sovereign country is “insular.” And the idea that a member who leaves “will fail” and “won’t be happy” holds much truth. The kind of suffering caused by such a break is no small matter.
As Samuel Heilman, a Jewish scholar at Queens College, notes,
They have everything that makes up a culture: social norms, language, a career pattern in life. Even the ones who leave say that there are aspects of their lives that they left behind that they miss. To go to a Hasidic gathering and to sing the songs and to dance in the circle and to be enfolded into the community, and to hear your voice in a chorus of other voices. This is a tremendously exciting experience . . .
The organization was founded “not to proselytize but to provide counsel and support to those who want to explore life outside the confines of the world in which they were raised.” One need not think ill of hasidic Judaism to see the value of such a service for those who find it necessary to leave.
Footsteps says that it has assisted “over 700 altogether so far, a majority are young men.” Yet compare this trickle with a 60 percent increase in Hasidic membership overall in the U.S. and Canada and it begins to seem that the majority are quite content in their confines.
An idiot who has committed the grave sin of idolatry.
How is it that some Jews can be completely secularized and other Jews have no problem with them calling themselves Jewish, yet when some Jews accept Christ as the Messiah their Jewishness is called into question?
Because belief in JC is totally, utterly, 100% incompatible with Jewish beliefs.
He was not rejected by all, that much is a certainty. There were more than a few "Jews" as it were (as they were?) who did accept him, even among the Sanhedrin.
Then there were the Pharisees who truly did hate him, and all his followers with the hottest of hatreds.
One of them, a young Pharisee of Pharisees named Saul, most likely would have "kept up the good work" of eradicating the followers (killing them, actually) had he not had a supernatural encounter on the road to Damascus.
What is the Torah (and here may I assume you mean Tanakh ---or do you intend books of the law only?) but record of the law which was given (along with some setting, some lead-up from Adam to Abram, and from there to the deliverance of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt), additional accounting of these chosen one's interaction with God, with Him speaking through prophets to them, along with a few other inspired writings such as Psalms & Proverbs?
I can tell you what it isn't. It is not the additional commentaries which developed alongside Torah.
Interesting how the man that many called rabbi who often quoted the Tanuch is “100% incompatible with Jewish beliefs” yet many Jews who support sodomy don’t seem to bring down that kind of thunder.
Doesn’t matter. A non-Jew could get hold of a copy of the TANACH and read it. Still not a Jew. I could get hold of a copy of a medical book and hold forth on heart surgery. Doesn’t make me a doctor. A genuine Jew, born of a Jewish mother, who does not observe Jewish law is nevertheless regarded as fully Jewish and we pray for the day that they come to the conclusion that they SHOULD be observing the laws.
A genuine Jew, born of a Jewish mother? Why is it in the Torah that lineage is traced through the paternal side but modern Jews trace it through the maternal side?
My friend, you are sorely confused. According to Jewish law—from the get-go—the “Jewishness” of a child was determined by the mother being Jewish. There were such things as rape by non-Jews of Jewish women. The only way to be sure of the authentic Jewish lineage was to determine it through the mother.
In Genesis chapter 10 for example the lineage of Noah’s sons and their sons after them; all male.
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