During the Chol Hamoed period of Passover, the in-between days that lie sandwiched by the Yom Tovim or real holy days of the eight days of Passover, when things like work or commenting on social media are permitted, there was an interesting discussion on the X platform. To roughly summarise this conversation, it was reacting to videos of young, secular background American Jews trying to mark Passover in their own way. It was not in any way a method that would be acceptable to those who are Orthodox Jews. These young Jews were eschewing the bread and other leavened products that are forbidden at Passover and were eating Matzah instead, but with non-kosher meat and with meat mixed with dairy products, something that caused conniptions among the more observant Orthodox Jews who viewed it.
Now these young Jews could be from one of the non-Orthodox paths within Judaism where the individual has the task of deciding what parts of Judaism is meaningful to them and working out how each Mitzvot speaks to them as an individual and that includes the commandments regarding Kashrut. This sort of Judaism whilst still Judaism because of its belief in one deity, is markedly different from Orthodox Judaism in its practises. There will always be disagreements between those on the Orthodox Jewish path and those on the non-Orthodox path. That’s just how it is and might be a subject for a future article.
On the other hand they could be Jews who have just had very poor teaching about Jewish thought and practises or who are hundreds of miles away from a Jewish community or shops. No matter what of these scenarios is correct, the degree of opprobrium directed at them was a little more divisive than it should have been.
These young Jews, who might have been trying to reconnect with Judaism from a very low knowledge point were relentlessly criticised by those who were more observant than them but others, including one of my favourite Jews on the X platform, The Jewish Meme Queen, took a more tolerant and I believe a better attitude to these young Jews.
She said:
I am a huge supporter of being respectful to all Jews, especially ones that are less observant than myself. Folks, they are watching us. They see the mean comments. Be kinder. Being orthodox doesn’t equal hating on other Jews.*
Spot on there Jewish Meme Queen. I agree with her on this one. The reasons I agree are two-fold.
The first is based on Jewish Meme Queen’s comments in that it is unkind of highly observant Jews to mock and criticise those who for various reasons are less observant of the many rules of Judaism than they are. She’s correct in saying that the young Jews in the videos and those like them are watching the behaviour of their Orthodox critics and seeing their mean comments and making a decision about how they see Orthodox Judaism based on the negative behaviour of their Orthodox Jewish critics. The conduct of these Orthodox Jews and the nature of their criticism might not have given a good impression of Orthodox Judaism to these young Jews.
This sort of behaviour from Orthodox Jews is a baseless hatred of one Jew for another and that to me is not on. I have vehement disagreements with other Jews over issues of politics for example, but I would rarely if ever cut them off totally over these issues. I might criticise them or call them out over some aspect of political idiocy but I would not completely cut them off as there’s always the chance that continued contact with them might create in them the desire for repentance/Teshuvah. For example: The idiot Jew who bangs the drum for some foolish political current might one day in other circumstances and with the acquisition of more knowledge, choose to disassociate themselves from their former political idiocy. There’s got to be a way back into the broader Jewish community for such people and it’s unlikely that ostracism will achieve that aim. You’ve got to leave room for people to learn, to grow up, to examine themselves and what they believed and to follow a path of Teshuvah.
The second reason why I am in agreement with Jewish Meme Queen is because although these young secular-Jews are doing the completely wrong thing, they are doing it for the right reasons which is to connect or reconnect with their heritage. They are trying to reconnect to the Passover story even though they are doing so from a very low knowledge base and doing the wrong thing because of that. Those Orthodox Jews who criticise these secular Jews acknowledging Passover don’t seem to consider that these Jews doing what they see as the wrong thing, might be coming to the festival for the very first time, having been brought up in highly secular families and away from any Jewish community.
These secular Jews who get the strict religious rules of Passover wrong are not people who I will condemn. They are trying to mark this momentous festival in the way that they choose or are able to or with the limited knowledge and access to the wider Jewish community that they have.
We as Jewish communities must make paths for people to come back to Judaism and especially make room for those of Jewish heritage who, since the 7/10 Pogrom, have started to acknowledge their heritage and wish to return to Judaism or become engaged with Judaism for the very first time in their lives. For many Jews 7/10 wasn’t something that made some secular Jews want to hide their Jewish heritage deeper than they already did, but instead became something that made them acknowledge that they were Jews and therefore subject to the same threats as other Jews. The hatred exhibited on 7/10 backfired on those who carried it out, instead of driving diaspora Jews into hiding, it made them far more Jewish than they’d ever been before and has also created more Jews associating with the Jewish community (7/10 also sparked an uptick in non-Jews choosing Judaism but that’s a different story for later). These Jews reached out to Judaism as a religious concept for support and wished to mark the Passover festival in the best way they could and they did so even though their knowledge was but random shards of information. These secular Jews who may have been coming to the Passover story for the very first time in their lives, should not be condemned but instead welcomed and gently guided into more knowledge.
I have no right to stick my beak into other men’s souls or berate them about not following the Mitzvot/Commandments the correct way. I’m not perfect and am in no position to lecture others, for example in the depths of winter I top up my coal fire on a Friday night with more coal and poke the fire even though the rules say I shouldn’t stoke the fire on Shabbat. My thinking that this is a lesser sin than relighting the fire in the morning myself or have to bother our lovely Shabbas Goy firelighter to relight it. Just as I’m not perfect neither are those Orthodox Jews who have criticised these secular Jews in this instance, we’ve all got failings, we all fall short, we all backslide, we all sin and we don’t always get things right. I went to a very liberal community Seder this year and the spectrum of observance was amazing, it was so varied that it was like a microcosm of all the world’s Jews. You had people like my wife and I who do our utmost to avoid Chametez/leaven during Passover and do the full changeover of plates thing. However there were also Jews who at the Seder who popped out to the bar and came back with pints of Guinness and sat back down at the table, even though beer is considered as Chametz and therefore forbidden.
I did not think badly of such people. Sure they were living their lives and doing what they did in a manner which is different from what I do, but the key point for me is that they turned up. They could have stayed away and considered the Seder as ‘not for them’ but instead they turned up. They turned up to hear the story of how Hashem rescued the Jewish people from Egyptian servitude and think for themselves how they would have acted if they were there in the place of the ancient Israelites. On that day of Passover, these non-observant Jews turned up and stood with the Jewish people even though they were not what Orthodox Jews would class as observant, I could not condemn them for their lack of observance because these Jews turned up and were counted.
The online discussion regarding these possibly secular Jews and their interpretation of Passover and my experience of a very liberal Seder brings up for me a big question and it’s this. Who is the better Jew the person who fulfils all that they can of the ritual commandments but who ignores all the ethical ones or the Jew who ignores the ritual commandments but who fulfils all the ethical commandments? Ideally both would be present in the same person but not everyone is a Tzadik or a Rabbi or even religiously knowledgable, most are ordinary people struggling through life and they might be able to keep some of the ritual and some of the ethical commandment as best they can. If they can keep both the majority of the ritual and ethical commandments then great, that’s admirable but there are a lot of Jews out there who try to do all the right moral things but are quite happy to chow down on a bacon sandwich. I’m certainly not going to dunk on these people as they are as Am Yisrael as anyone else but just do things a little differently and quite possibly not to my taste.
Don’t slag off the secular Jews when they get things wrong, talk to them with kindness and impart to them knowledge in a manner that doesn’t shame either the one who imparts knowledge nor the person who is receiving knowledge. We can do better than that. We have enough enemies in the world already without creating more enemies by being divided by pointless and destructive internal baseless hatreds.