Not Simple, but Necessary: Why NOT Isolation?

I'm pretty sure I know what you're thinking: OK, you've explained the logic of isolation. Why do you think it such a bad thing? Indeed, at first glance, the isolation-only policy seems to work, at least in the short-term. It's quick, easy, and ostensibly doesn't require any hard choices or risks. Anything and everything that is perceived to be "dangerous" is banned or cut off. Halachic decisions are always "lechol hade'ot" (lehumra, of course), thus presumably removing doubt. It would seem this is the "magic cure".

The problem is that this "cure" is an illusion, and a very dangerous one. Short of going to live in the desert as hermits (the Qumran option) or running away to a deserted island, the world outside, both the good and the bad, will get in. All the charamot and pashkvilim in the world cannot stop the Internet, for instance, from infiltrating the overwhelming majority of religious households. These influences are going to increase the more people need to go to work and feed their families. The walls are crumbling, and the result will not be pretty.

I remember reading about a Charedi Jew who complained to a Zionist acquaintance that the latter made the very existence of the Jewish people contingent on the existence of the State of Israel, a very dangerous gamble. Yet people on the RW commit the exact same error, by making the further existence of religious Jewry contingent on the single, brittle line of defense of isolation. Once that line is breached, and it will be breached, tens of thousands of Jews will find themselves without meaningful religious and psychological defenses. I dread to think of the consequences.

Yet the damage can be seen already now, before the deluge. As with every movement that uses only a single method to deal with everything; whenever a problem arises, they just use more of the same. Like a doctor who only prescribes more and more of the same medicine despite the lack of results, the Charedi leadership (re: the Askani middlemen) simply do more charamot and more issurim. The result is an ever-increasing intolerance for anyone who hasn't met that standard.

Two types of populations lose out: those who leave and those who stay. Those who leave will often do so because of the claustrophobic environment and complete lack of freedom. Worse, many if not most will completely leave Judaism, as they have been taught that there are only two options: charedi (or RW) or secular – there is no middle ground. Those who stay will suffer because of the ever-increasing social policing, which creates a situation where many stay not because of fear of God, but fear of the kono'im.

Isolation is one of the tools to deal with modernity, but using it as the only tool is destructive and self-defeating. Effective in the short-term, it causes long-term problems which isolators are not equipped to handle.

So what other options are there? On that and more in the coming posts.

aiwac