There are wonderful Christians who have truly befriended members of the Jewish community. Christians sheltered Jewish families during the Holocaust, befriend Jews on a personal level, they have supported the state of Israel, and have helped orthodox Jews observe their Sabbath and holidays in the workplace. My first job as a Sabbath-observant Jew was made possible by a devout Catholic.
I am sure that true Christians would object to anyone dressing up as an orthodox Jew in order to mislead Jewish people and make inroads into the Jewish community. It has happened, and as much as many Jewish people across the spectrum of observance appreciate the friendship and support that Christians have shown to us, we object to this form of dishonest missionary activity.
But there is another more insidious form of making inroads into the Jewish community and trying to influence via a deeper form of dishonesty, and unfortunately this reflects an inherent challenge in Judaism itself. That inherent challenge is the problem of Jewish tribalism. Are we more tribal than ethical? Is being Jewish an excuse to behave however we feel and say, "but I like being Jewish, I feel Jewish".
Is everything a Jew does is Jewish?
Activists who are presumably Jewish are floating hoaxes that are targeting codes of modest dress and behavior. These hoaxes are poking fun at fake clothing accessories. These accessories do not exist. Then these activists poke fun at the underlying detail of our codes of modesty that would lead to this fake accessory. Examples include fake toes and fake collarbones. Then they mock the concept of regular footwear that covers toes, and shirts that cover the collarbone. They are essentially mocking the ultra-orthodox (Haredi) and those members of modern orthodoxy who follow these mores.
The activists are claiming to be "frum", which is Yiddish for religious, and they are hiding their identity.
There are sub communities, many of whom are Haredim, and some who are in the modern orthodox camp, within the orthodox Jewish world in which both men and women cover their toes, either via closed shoes or by wearing socks with open-toe sandals. There, both men and women chose clothing that covers the collarbone.
Those who floated the fake toe hoax, and their supporters, claim that only women are told to cover their toes. That is untrue. In the sub communities in which toes are covered, both men and women cover their toes. In sub communities in which collarbones are covered, both men and women cover their collarbones.
So the misleading also involves lying about those communities, with the false accusation that mores of modesty are only directed at women. This is untrue, men also are bound by mores of modesty.
The Haredim limit their access to the internet. They are thus not present to respond to these hoaxes and lies that are told about them. They are also not trained on a grand scale to respond to lies and hoaxes.
Liberal-leftists are groomed to provoke, so when an activist drawing from leftist ideology floats scams and false accusations, others are too taken aback and unprepared to respond.
That also makes the Haredim nicer people.
Thus, it appears that we have leftists who are dressing as religious Jews. In this way they make inroads, or appear to,
into the Haredi world. They do this by claiming to love being Jewish, yet floating hoaxes, putting a stumbling block before the blind, mocking and lying about other sub communities, and even mocking modesty itself.
This is a tip off that Jewish tribalism can serve as a cover for unethical behavior by Jews, as well as a tip off for the call to
Marxist activism by fomenting discord and creating social unrest.
In one article related to the fake-toe hoax, a blogger quotes the unnamed forgerers as saying they
had "hit a nerve", so they persisted in their activity.
They claim that the "nerve" they hit shows how modesty has gone "too far" without considering that people may find lying and misleading offensive, that is, a universal truth was betrayed.
Hitting a nerve is seen as an accomplishment in Marxist-inspired activist circles, and in order to foment social chaos, the activist keeps prodding that so called
"nerve".
But this "nerve" is the universal ethic of not bearing false witness, of lying.
This "nerve" that the anonymous scammers have hit is one shared by all decent human beings
- that lying is wrong.
In other
contexts they claim to "love" Judaism and their people. (It should be noted that men who are
abusive in their marriages also insist that they love their wives.)
How can apparently orthodox Jews engage in such a web of lies?
Here we come to the challenge, and sometimes tragedy, of Jewish tribalism.
Pretending to be an
observant Jew is very easy. Observant Judaism does not call for say
meditative practices or martial arts in which a surly disposition would
be a give-away that one is not following the Eastern disciplines correctly, and thus get expelled from the ashram.
Orthodox Jews are not
celibate, they have no priests who, caught with a girlfriend, would be
defrocked.
Directives to act with grace exist within Judaism, but are not as exoteric as in the Christian and Muslim communities, a graceless Christian or Muslim can be considered not a true Christian or Muslim. In contrast, a graceless Jew is still a Jew.
If you are born to a Jewish women, or convert according to Jewish law, you can never be expelled from being Jewish.
But does the fact that a Jew's citizenship can never be undone, translate to mean that everything that a Jew does is Jewish? Or are we called to a high code of conduct and ethics? Tragically, all throughout our history, there have been Jews who say how much they love being Jewish, love the holidays, love the Hebrew language, and yet act in direct opposition not only to commandments that are particular to Judaism, not only in direct opposition to traditions that interpret the commandments that are particular to Judaism, but to all basic common decency.
Observant Judaism is fun, with lots of holidays, family
gatherings, good food (albeit monotonous), community, so dressing and
acting like one is no comparison to the the challenge of other religions and other frameworks, like Eastern practices, Catholic
celibacy, Muslim fasts, or even Western rugged individualism.
Jews who do cleave to the commandments, to tradition, and who are raised to be refined and sensitive are not trained to be on the defensive and quick to respond to false accusations and hoaxes, and they also do not wish to confront in the hopes
that the Leftist Jews will mend their ways. This explains why the view you see in the media will be so one-sided in favor of the Left.
I am an exception, as I was raised liberal-Left. Thus I blog, but most Haredim do not.
The unnamed hoaxsters of the fake toe scam declare their caring for their
communities, faith and the future of their children - they are
tribe-oriented and not ethics oriented. They do not say that they care
about the Torah. They do not even say that they care about Judaism, but
"their faith".
It is the tragedy of
The Torah contains commandments not
to lie, not to put a stumbling block before the blind.
It is the tragedy of
This is Marxism,
not Torah Judaism. Their costume matters little, and as they brag about
their funding, fomenting confusion and continuing to prod that
confusion, that nerve, that social discord that is Marxism, while
flaunting core Torah ethics of not putting a stumbling block before the
blind and staying away from lies, the rest of us can recall what is
really driving them.
Perhaps those who support this fraud at times wonder at their own lying
as a sin against God and humanity. Conscience tends to prick. Perhaps
they support each other through those times of doubt, when the facade
cracks and conscience breaks through, declaring: “lying is wrong” , “a
hoax is unethical”. You then shake off those shackles of propriety, get
back to your activism by assuming that you will never be scammed, lied
about, or provoked. Just keep switching politically correct horses so
you will be above it all, you will be the influencer, the provocateur,
the hoaxster who can get away with it.
But there will come
a day where you will stumble upon something inviolate - perhaps a swath
of nature reserve, or an area that holds a precious childhood memory,
perhaps you will draw the line at say aborting girls solely on the basis
of their gender, or transgender surgery on minors - something will
click and you will want sympathy and protection for that sacred space.
But because you have participated in the modern individualist project
of desensitization, sneered, hoaxed, provoked, you will seek comfort and comfort will not come, you
will come to that point in which you will gasp and cry, “what have I
done?”
Regarding their claims to care about women, how can we be sure that these activists are untainted by the attitudes they claims the Haredim have? As apparently observant Jewish women, they may not necessarily be free of them. Thus, they may not be the saviors in waiting.
If anyone ought to save Haredi women, (if they really need saving, I mean, if they are screaming I cannot hear them) then we need to search this planet for an absolutely egalitarian culture and wrest a savior from there, someone who will research the activists' claims objectively, reviewing concepts of freedom to chose one's lifestyle and dress, freedom of speech, a free press, with a comparison to other cultures.
Such a scholar may take umbrage at the activists' inflammatory tone.
Such an objective scholar would probably end up learning more about various concepts of Jewish self-hatred and who-is-the-good-Jew dynamic.
Maybe this scholar could turn his or her attention to the disruptions at the Kotel as well.
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The lies told in the above referenced articles:
1 - that there are fake toes for sale for the sake of modesty. This is a lie.
2 - that in orthodox Jewish communities, only women are told to cover their toes. This is a lie. In those communities in which women cover their toes and collarbones, so do men.
3 - that this post went viral by mistake. It actually takes effort for posts to go viral.
4 - those behind this hoax are hiding their identity. That means no one can confront them and know who they really are.
You can see the hoaxes to which I refer by googling "fake toes" and "toe-gate" on the Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel.
