Are computers not allowed (or not common) among Hasidim?
The internet is frequently raged against by the leadership, implying that a lot of people use it on the sly, but officially it’s not allowed except at work, if it’s absolutely necessary for one’s livelihood.
Back in the day (ie ten years ago) one would hear lots of stories of Hasidic families with a TV in a closet, smuggled into the house in an appliance box. Nowadays, it’s more a matter of figuring out how to get in the guy who hooks you up to the network without your neighbors noticing, and I’d bet DSL lines are popular because you get those from the phone company.
In Israel, there are ‘kosher phones’ (stupid term IMHO) that don’t offer texting or internet connections. These have different exchanges from regular phones, so you know when someone gives you his/her phone number whether they have an ultra-Orthodox-rabbinically-approved phone, and these are required in some communities.
Definitely the first option. I could always stand to learn a new language, don’t really have a problem with the clothes or beard, and could easily stand a 24 hour break per week. In fact, the only downside is having to move to a city.
I couldn’t make it a day without electronic devices of some sort.
And no fair adding rules that weren’t in the OP. The OP says I can use all electronics as a Hasidic.
I’ve certainly gotten the impression that Amish women are treated more fairly…
However, the two biggest “must haves” in my life are electricity and quality food. I can move all of one mile and live within walking distance of a number of very good kosher restaurants (that I already frequent). Plus, you know, one miles away has electricity.
So I vote Hasidic.
Okay, now that I’ve read the thread: I’ve noticed a couple of people making the choice based on being Christians. What’s the problem there? If Hasidim aren’t required to believe in God, then surely there’s no way they could make me not believe in Jesus. And the actual commandments are completely compatible with Christianity. I don’t see why religion is a problem.
And, as the OP says, we only have to adhere to the commonly known practices, and the Internet thing wasn’t commonly known, so I can at least do it in secret.
I’m pretty sure that you have to believe in Jesus (or at least lie and say you do) to be Amish. Remember that only adults may be church members and that they encourage children to consider the outside world (through rumspringa) and make an informed decision.
Ima hijack here and ask - is there a genuine fear that a believer’s faith is so tenuous that TV or internet would break it and tear the believer away? If so, how great could the faith have been in the first place, or for that matter how great could the ideology subscribed to be in the first place? Sounds like the rabbinic leaders don’t have faith in their follower’s steadfastness, or worse, in their own ideology.
BigT, who said that Hasidim aren’t required to believe in God? I’m sure there are some members of both the Amish and the Hasidic communities who don’t, and stay for other reasons, but the fervent profession of faith is important in both places, I’d think.
Firstly, to clarify, one of the ways in which Lubavitch/Chabad differs from other Hasidic groups is that they’re really pro-Internet, although still anti-television or most movies. They’ve got an enormous website for the organization as a whole, plus every little branch will have its own.
That said, look, I agree with you, very strongly, or I wouldn’t have been hanging out with all you lovely folks for the last decade-plus. I also highly value secular education (I graduated from an elite secular college and grad school), and general involvement with the world outside my immediate sphere. I absolutely scorn the idea that to be a good Jew, I must blindly obey a single dynastic figure and not speak with anybody outside my tiny group, or anybody male at all, unless absolutely necessary. I think that if your beliefs are so fragile that exposure to any outside challenges and different ways of being will terribly damage them, they are too weak to be worth much. This makes it hard for me to try to present the issue neutrally, which is what I’ve attempted to do in my other explanatory comments upthread.
The uncharitable answer that I might give you, is that it’s much easier to maintain social control when you control the information available to your followers, be they members of a religious sect or citizens of a country. This is certainly true, but only a small part of the real answer. My attempt to explain more fully is long, sorry - this is complicated!
That said, think back to the environment in which Hasidism formed, eighteenth and nineteenth-century Eastern Europe. Initially, the surrounding folk hated them, as they did all other Jewish communities, frequently raping/killing/pillaging. The government was actively anti-Semitic, stealing away little boys to be drafted into the army, heavily applying extra taxation to perfidious Jews, and generally treating the Jewish population very poorly. Little good came of interaction with the outside world. Next, during the haskala, the enlightenment of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the same parties who pushed secular education also promoted leaving all religion behind, linking the two in the minds of many religious Jews, Hasidic groups included. Lastly, the Hasidim didn’t really leave Europe before WWII, meaning that those of today are all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, a group that has reason to be suspicious of nominally educated and advanced Gentiles. (Please don’t call Godwin on me for bringing up Nazis!) If one is also intensely traditional, looking back to sources written hundreds of years ago, during all the above hard times, to guide one’s behavior today, all of the above leads to a major atmosphere of genuine fear of outsiders, the sense that anyone not from your own community wants to do you harm. The government is still thought of as something inherently anti-Semitic, the way it was back in the Pale of Settlement, which is why you hear howls of protest from ultra-Orthodox groups when one of their own community is arrested. (As a side point, this means that they attempt to deal with problems within the group, rather than by reporting offenders to law enforcement, which of course has led to decades of sexual predation of children going unpunished. It’s slowly, painfully being brought to light now, the way it has in other religious communities over the last decade or so. For a good novelization of this, written by an anonymous Hasidic woman, see the young adult book Hush.) In many ways, Hasidic communities are mentally still in nineteenth-century Ukraine.
Add to all this a general sense that there is little good that comes from the outside world, only sin. Yes, they appreciate the technological advances of others, but there’s the perception that they are doing vital work by intensely studying Torah and Jewish law, work that supports the world for all its denizens, and any time spent away from Torah or activities that support it is wasted. Time spent with literature, movies, etc., even ones that don’t directly promote sinful thoughts or behavior, is bittul zman, literally wasting time, but that’s too weak - it’s the sinful waste of time, time that might have been otherwise devoted to Torah learning or the doing of good deeds. Of course, in Hasidic eyes, most secular media does promote sin, because it’s full of inappropriate ideas about God or science or social matters, and of course inappropriately clothed women (who would inspire improper thoughts in male viewers). The Internet is even worse - the secular media tends not to pay too much attention to what’s going on within every small minority, but the Web is full of active critics of Judaism in general and Hasidism in particular, plus there’s way too much mixing of men and women socially, and no good is perceived to come of that. Yes, one can also spend all of one’s time learning Torah online, or hanging out in online communities of other religious people, but the bad is perceived to vastly outweigh the good.
Now combine this with an approach towards religion that attempts to turn out people who are as alike as possible in the manner of their observance. There is an ideal way to be, and any deviation from that way is sinful. Lip service is paid to the ancient idea that the Torah has seventy faces, and many legitimate ways to be observant within the parameters of the Law, but as the years go on, ultra-Orthodox groups have reacted to the increased liberalism (small-l, non-political liberalism, the idea that there is no one truth) of the world around them with increased rigidity, a sense that their children will be contaminated by the idea that not being religious is also OK, and therefore any flexibility or deviation is a sign that someone is about to leave the fold entirely. (I am going back and forth about saying that this is perceived to be worse than death, because when one is alive, there’s the idea that one can always repent, and I don’t want to be melodramatic, but becoming non-religious is a very serious bad thing.) Why expose your children to thoughts that will take them away from God and the one true way to be? Why tempt yourself, and waste your truly precious time on Earth on such nonsense?
Amish, then go on permanent rumspringa.
If they are only Am-ish, what are those who are totally Am like?
As I understand it, you have it backwards. As we evolved from more "obust species to more gracile, we evolved jaws that work best with fewer teeth than we have. Hence, most Americans have their wisdom teeth yanked. I’m one of the few people I know who never had braces and would have straight teeth if my wisdom teeth were yanked as a teenager instead of as an adult.
As to that other discussion, I don’t believe the Amish, in general, have anything against an education, for men or women. Traditionally, of course, they were farmers. How many people interested in a Ph. D. in physics, also want to be farmers? They are required to have educations up through 8th grade, they do not forbid an education past it. (I also don’t think racism is institutionalized. I know that in the 80s, at least, the Amish in PA would take in inner city kids to give them a taste of rural, really rural, life. It might be more prevalent than in a city, though, but I really don’t know.)
Now speaking as a PhD physicist, I pick Amish. My wife is Pennsylvania Dutch, so I appear to have a thing for the ethnic group.
You may think its a silly question, but the Amish are so called because they are followers of a man named Jakob Ammann.
Similarly, Mennonites are named for their original leader, Menno Simons, and the Hutterites, Jakob Hutter.
I have a Mennonite mother, too, and it doesn’t surprise me that there are levels of Amish just like there are levels of Mennonites. You wouldn’t know upon meeting my mom that she was anything but an older Canadian lady.
Not too surprisingly, I voted Amish, too - the only thing that really concerns me about it is the gender inequalities, and you certainly get them in Orthodox Jewishness, too.
I spent a day at a Mennonite Heritage Village last week and took in quite a bit of information about Mennonite traditions; as you say, they weren’t against education - quite the opposite. They were very much in favour of everyone becoming literate; the difference was in what they thought people should learn. The Mennonite tradition was that kids should learn biblical things, not worldly things. It was part of the Mennonite agreement with the government of Canada upon settling here that they would be allowed to teach their children themselves (an agreement which the Canadian government subsequently broke).
ETA: You’re a bunch of people who would probably appreciate this - we saw a Bible from the 1600’s at the Heritage Village! A Wittenberg Bible!
It says you have to be fully into the religion. If you’re going to be disobeying the decisions of your Rebbe and going to impure internet sites, how is that being fully into the religion? What did the Vishnitz Rebbe call the internet? An “instrument of impurity”?