Tel-Chai Nation

There's a promising sign that more people are leaving the Haredi lifestyle, yet do remain religiously observant:

When Yehuda Moses was 25, his worldview began to shift.

A member of the Belz Hasidic community, Moses found himself placed under excommunication by the group’s grand rabbi after he criticized an initiative to raise funds among community members with limited resources to fund the construction of a new synagogue.

“I began to wonder how people considered righteous could do such harmful things,” Moses, now 52, told The Times of Israel in a phone interview.

That moment marked the start of Moses’s departure from the Haredi world, a life-altering choice being made by a growing number of ultra-Orthodox Israelis, according to a comprehensive study published earlier this year by Out for Change, which provides help to those leaving the ultra-Orthodox community.

The study found that rather than marking a complete break, a stereotype enforced by pop culture portrayals, leaving the ultra-Orthodox world is a complicated process that can preserve some aspects of the former lives of ex-Haredim, from faith to their relationships with their parents.

At the time of his shunning, Moses was already married with five children, all of whom left the ultra-Orthodox world with him. Yet while he now describes himself as completely secular, getting there took over two decades, while his wife and three daughters still maintain some level of religiosity.

“Only recently I started to travel on Shabbat,” he said.

Based on publicly available Central Bureau of Statistics data, Out for Change found that many former members of the Haredi community maintain some level of religious observance, albeit a less stringent one.

Fewer than one in five former Haredim describe themselves as completely secular, according to the study, which was published in February.

“Past qualitative research on the topic has shown that the choice to leave Haredi society behind often is not an issue of faith, but rather of seeking a different lifestyle or quality of life,” said Adar Anisman, head of research at Out for Change and one of the authors of the report.

An important point I can offer is that somebody I knew once said that a serious rabbi doesn't impose dress codes. And that's something everybody, whether they're ultra-Orthodox who wish to leave the lifestyle, should know.

The former Belz member has a point that people with low income can't be expected to strain their budgets in order to build synagogues, since what if they have children who need food on the table, and need to be able to afford it? While financing independently can be worthwhile, that's no excuse for using the kind of socialist influence some Haredi gurus happen to employ to get their subjects to bankroll any kind of religious institute; the gurus should be able to find the funding themselves. All that aside, it's good there's more who're exiting the lifestyle, and looking for how they can give religion a better name with a simpler lifestyle that doesn't stifle self-determination and such.

Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, Judaism, misogyny, Moonbattery