Threat Level 9! Orthoprax Chareidi Impostors Among Us!

Ami Magazine has an article about Orthoprax impostors, it has been posted online here. Mostly the article seems to be talking about Chareidi Orthopraxers, even the one example they use of someone who grew up Modern Orthodox was someone who became Chareidi first before going Orthoprax. The article is also remarkable for acknowledging the fact that even kollel yungerleit and poskim from the upper echelons of Chareidi society are Orthoprax, and that intellectual heresy is an issue, and it's not all about taavos. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Had I seen this article on VIN I would have argued it's actually quite subversive.

The article is full of choice quotes, many of which are unintentionally (or possibly intentionally) quite revealing / hilarious. Here's a few:

"The Internet has become a breeding ground for an ominous rebellion against the eternal truths of the Torah. Infected with the thought processes of secular philosophies, these heretics are among us as yeshiva bochurim and baalei batim, even in the higher ranks of our community."

Rabbi Deutsch [a kiruv klown] is open about his success rate with the Orthoprax: he has had no success at all. “I sent them to the biggest scientists, who understand science far better than anything they read on the web and are fully Orthodox Jews. Nothing helped.”

Unlike many of the formerly-frum, these Orthoprax men are not bitter toward Judaism, says Rabbi Deutsch. They don’t claim to have been abused, and their family lives tend to have been stable. None of the typical precursors to religious rebellion were present in the Orthoprax. They simply left their emunah behind, following instead a nonsensical thought process into the thicket of apikorsus. Had they any true understanding of Judaism, they would have never felt threatened by secular thought. The problem is their superficial grasp of both topics.

He describes them almost as mentally ill. “To me, [the disbelief] is a sickness,” he says.

So here we have the opinion that (Chareidi) Orthopraxers are almost mentally ill. After all, what other explanation could there possibly be?

Rabbi Yerachmiel Milstein, a senior lecturer for the Discovery Program, puts it even clearer:

... he has found that emotional problems are behind almost all kefira. “In addition to many other things, to stop believing is inconvenient.” Immersed in a religious world, they are suddenly cut off from their entire milieu. “Why would they do it if they didn’t have some emotional issues?”

This is actually an awesome quote. Why would anyone want to give up belief? It's so damn inconvenient (very true in most cases). So the only possible reason is emotional issues. What Millstein is acknowledging here, possibly without realizing it, is that the pull to stay a believer is so strong that only the mentally ill or people with "emotional issues" could possibly want to break free. Is there any stronger argument for the bias of religious believers? Amazing!

[Yes, I know what Millstein would respond. The truth of Torah is so obvious that only a mental person would reject it! And the RWMO intelleifundie would respond, only Chareidim are biased, we are not. Or possibly we are biased too, but then so is everyone else.].

I of course live in LWMO land, where about 50% of us are Orthoprax to varying degrees and are not very veiled at all. So I don't feel the article was being written about me or my crowd, and I wasn't particularly bothered by it. But I do know quite a few Chareidi or RWMO Orthopraxers. They wear black hats, are in kollel or who have kids in kollel, or are part of the RW MO world, but are total apikorsim, at least by currently accepted definitions of "Orthodoxy". I guess those kind of closet Orthopraxers would feel more threatened by the article.