Did strictness win?

Chickensoupprof

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 12:36 pm

Someone sent me this and I translated into English.

Quote:

According to Wallet, Orthodox Judaism is now stricter than before. "Until the war, religion was transmitted in a mimetic way: through customs. Your father was a ritual slaughterer and so you learned it, by imitating what you saw. After the Holocaust, Eastern European communities and their local traditions were uprooted. That is why a lot has been put in writing. A textualization of the Jewish tradition took place. What you previously learned by copying, now had to be done exactly according to the rules. The result? The strictest variant wins. which provided a worldwide standard. "

This is written by a professor and I've heard this also from people who went less frum because ''aah everything is getting more orthodox by the day aaaahh''.

zaq

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:02 pm

So what is your question?

I think the shift from learning-by-seeing to learning-from-books is true in large part, but I'm not so sure that the slide to the right is due entirely or even mostly to this shift in learning modalities. When you learn-by-seeing, you accept as halacha many things that are not halacha. This is why some people believe that the halacha is that you must clean behind and under your stove and fridge and take up your floor tiles before Pesach. Their grandmother did this, ergo it's halacha. Their mother had conniptions when someone put a fleishik dish on a milchik table, therefore they do, too.

There has been a slide to the right for other reasons. Some, possibly most, of it is pushback in response to the growing liberality of secular society. Groups that feel their way of life is being threatened tend to cling more tightly to their traditions. Another factor is the growth of the kiruv movement.

I totally "get" people who are turned off from frumkeit because of all the restrictions. It does seem as if every day there's a new prohibition. Some people thrive on this sort of thing, because it gives them a sense of control, security, superiority, righteousness or closeness to G-d. Others, not so much, especially if they were already observant and now they're being told that whatever they were doing isn't good enough.

Last edited by zaq on Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:11 pm; edited 1 time in total

amother

Lilac

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:09 pm

Well my mother was raised Reform/Conservative. I consider myself MO.

I think the biggest factor is that reform people barely have children. Maybe one child. At most two children. Often no kids. Or they adopt non-Jewish children who don't convert. Even when they have children, they don't insist on synagogue attendance, dating only other Jews, etc, so if you go into a Reform/Concervative shul today it is a big beautiful building that is 1/10th full and the average age of attendee is 80.

Ema of 5

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:15 pm

zaq wrote:

Exactly. I’ve been listening to a podcast about Jewish history, and one of the things that I learned is the reason why head shaving for women became a thing amongst chassidim. Shaving was never a thing before pogroms and such things. The men used to do horrible things to the women they found, before murdering them, if they were lucky. In order to make these poor women less desirable, shaving became a thing. Fast forward to now, and one who does not shave is often considered “modern” and a shame to their family....

leah233

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:25 pm

Chickensoupprof wrote:

Someone sent me this and I translated into English.

Quote:

According to Wallet, Orthodox Judaism is now stricter than before."Until the war, religion was transmitted in a mimetic way: through customs. Your father was a ritual slaughterer and so you learned it, by imitating what you saw. After the Holocaust, Eastern European communities and their local traditions were uprooted. That is why a lot has been put in writing. A textualization of the Jewish tradition took place. What you previously learned by copying, now had to be done exactly according to the rules. The result? The strictest variant wins. which provided a worldwide standard. "

This is written by a professor and I've heard this also from people who went less frum because ''aah everything is getting more orthodox by the day aaaahh''.

The bolded is what you call rewriting history to fit your narrative . You couldn't become an accepted schochet pre WWII by just watching what your father did.

Mesachtas Chullin which discusses shechita has been around for thousands of years. And no the stricter opinion does not always win. How many Askenazim are makpid on Beis Yosef Glatt even though it is the standard given in Shulchan Aruch?

Last edited by leah233 on Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:35 pm; edited 3 times in total

Genius

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:29 pm

Ema of 4 wrote:

where do you take the shaving tale from?

zaq

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 1:39 pm

Ema of 4 wrote:

Nobody really knows how that custom got started. the version I heard in my "The Jewish Woman" class in 1970-something was that in the Middle Ages, the local landowners claimed "droit du seigneur" (to deflower local women on their wedding nights), and women shaved their heads to make themselves so repulsive that the landowner would back off. That theory doesn't quite hold water. If that had been the case, why didn't Christian women do the same? And why do the women who shave wait till the day after the wedding? Wouldn't it make more sense to shave before the wedding night?And why do they continue to shave their heads for the rest of their lives, when the seigneur would have presumably been a factor only on the wedding night?

The version that makes the most sense to me is that they are so fearful of a single hair either not being fully immersed or being tangled or knotted that they shave off everything.

I have also seen elsewhere--but haven't gone to the source to verify--that this is an outgrowth of a statement in the Zohar that the mikvah should not see a woman's hair.

Also, the practice of raping women during war and raids didn't begin in the 16th Century or even during the Crusades. Invaders raped local women almost from the beginning of time. What do you think "nashim beTziyon inu, vetullot b'arei Yehuda" (Eichah) means? Hint: it doesn't mean they made them wear last year's fashions.

Last edited by zaq on Mon, Apr 26 2021, 2:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

Frumme

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 2:19 pm

I don't think it's necessarily "stricter" all around but rather it's easier to write books on halacha in ways that make it well... Fool proof?

Think of post WWII when you had a bunch of women wanting to get married but no kallah teacher to teach them. So a chassidic Rav (klausenburg? Anyone know?) wrote a whole book on it for the displaced women to learn about taharas hamishpacha.

Or think about tznius. Women a hundred years ago didn't take a ruler to their skirts and shirts.

Or today with kashrus and finding raw chicken/beef livers at kosher markets.

But by "dumbing it down" so to speak (while convenient), it allows for chumra to slide into halacha or for things to become forgotten.

avrahamama

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 2:32 pm

leah233 wrote:

Yeah that example really disturbed me. Shechita, safrut, mohel are things that required an actual kabala. Not just oh I do whatever my daddy did. There was learning and practice and observation all involved.

I could see how maybe things like checking for bugs with a thrip cloth and light box aren't exactly what our grandmothers did. But shechita not having any basis in written halacha until postwar Europe?

Chickensoupprof

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 2:45 pm

leah233 wrote:

It's really blunt thing to write this as a historian. This narrative was based in the Netherlands and I know one rov who is de son, grandson, great grandson etc etc from a sochet. And I do think they learned it from father and son. But I also think they knew the halacha of schohet and that some sons didn't become ones because they didn't qualify
I think it is also especially pre WWII Europe of which area you speak. No one hears a nice mystical miracle rebbe story from Den Bosch Netherlands it's always in eastern Europe.

meiravit

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 2:58 pm

I think for the most part, society and lifestyles swing like a pendulum. So perhaps the so-called "shift to the right" is a response to (originally) haskala, reform, etc, and nowadays, a response to the liberal atmosphere around us.

It works this way in non-Jewish culture as well, l'havdil. The religious revival in the 70s was likely a response to the loose morality of the 60s.

But when you're on the "wrong" side of the pendulum at a particular time and place, you see the "other" as crazy. So more modern people think everything is moving to the right, while the right-wing people always see everything as spinning out of control leftward!

meiravit

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 3:07 pm

Also, re: shaving. I know it's off-topic, but I'm pretty sure the concept didn't originate from the jus primae noctis gezeiros. In speaking to people who are knowledgeable about this, it seems it has origins in kaballah (the idea that hair is sort of a waste product of the brain - I'm oversimplifying, I know. That's why chassidish men keep their hair short too, except for payos which are a mitzva) and in halacha (as a poster above mentioned, to ensure hair is properly enveloped by the mikva water).

In general, I've learned (and let's face it, I'm still learning) that most minhagim have deep roots and they're not only about "cutting the corners of the fish because Bubbe only had a small fishpot," to quote the well-known story (fable?)

Many minhagim seem bizarre, difficult, or even distasteful to me, but that's MY problem to come to terms with, not the problem of those practicing or promulgating those minhagim, especially if they're not asking ME to do it!

Frumme

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 3:12 pm

zaq wrote:

How do you know?

It's been discussed here before... Beis Yaakov of Boro Park's first graduated class had dresses with sleeves above the elbow, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneerson with the slightly V-necked wedding dress, etc etc. Those things weren't considered untznius at the time. As a whole today people have become obsessed with exact measurements and the like, especially due to strict tznius halacha books (re: recent neck tznius thread).

Ema of 5

Mon, Apr 26 2021, 3:14 pm

Frumme wrote:

I’m pretty sure she was being facetious....