THREAD: who am I? I've received a lot of new followers lately. Let me present myself:
1/ I grew up in the Satmar, chassidic community in Stamford Hill London to a rabbinic and moderately elite family. I lost my faith in its worldview at the age of 20 and left/was cast out.
2/ I made it to university to study Physics and Philosophy and graduated with a master's in these subjects this past summer. I've been studying Yiddish and chassidic culture for some years now. I have written a lot on my blog: journeyerblog.wordpress.com/category/judai…
3/ For personal reasons I went through a period of low output. I'm now back and am experimenting with the best ways to use my voice to share my knowledge about a very unique culture and way of life. For now I'm using Twitter for my micro-blogging and threads.
5/ I very much still see myself as chassidish, even if culturally so rather than strictly religious. I am not fighting to change the community, but I watch with excitement as change inevitably happens.
6/ I've written and talked a lot about my story in the last 6 years. For example here: .
But I have been on a continuous journey and have since changed the way I see things and my own narrative around my experiences.
7/ I don't have the answers to exactly what's going on and my journey often just seems surreal without the ability of fully making sense of it. But I am working on becoming comfortable with all aspects of my life in an integrated way: my western lifestyle & chassidish upbringing.
8/ During my time at university I was increasingly frustrated by the narrowing scope of acceptable thought and expression. In response I founded @BrisFreeSpeech. I wrote more about my views on free speech and how it is influenced by my journey here:
9/ My views on free thinking and free expression influence all my work. I see engaging in respectful dialogue as resistance to the increasing dogmatisation of the academic and intellectual world. I judge my interlocutors charitably, unless I have strong evidence of bad faith.
10/ I am involved in several research projects on the Yiddish language and chassidic culture. I write and give talks about these topics and I am constantly thinking how best to share my knowledge with the world, from my very unique position of university educated, chassidic-bred.
11/ I also use my experiences and stellar classical Jewish education in a consulting capacity, as well as to translate and interpret between Yiddish/rabbinic-Hebrew/rabbinic-Aramaic and English. I am currently working on a paper on the unique language of rabbinic law @HasidicU.
12/ There is a serious dearth of information in academia and wider society about the very unique chassidic community. Alongside other brilliant individuals, I contribute towards the narrowing of this gap. I feel enormously privileged that I have the ability to do so.
I say it all the time, there are genuinely many really beautiful things about the chassidic community. But it also lacks self-awareness of its religious hypocrisy and about how much of its social structure has nothing to do with Torah or Judaism.
No community is perfect, but chassidim view their way of life as the authentic, unadulterated form of "True Torah Judaism", when in fact its society revolves around social pressure, stigma and groupthink, as well as authentic religious devotion.
This isn't a community with a developed practice of social critique, social self-reflection, or free public discourse. Independent press is non-existent, there's very little cultural and historical literacy even of its own past.
When I talk about benefit fraud, I'm talking about the systemic, institutionalised nature of it. The fact that it's not individuals who choose to do it (which happens in all communities), but that people are coerced into it and set up for it.
When I was a teenager I asked my mentors why I will support my family as an adult, given no career-path preparation and no secular education. The answer was "benefits".
But in today's UK system you can't live off benefits longterm as an able person unless you lie about your income and your work. And that is what everyone I know has to do.
Comparing public critique and journalism in a democratic society, to explicit calls to annihilate you by Der Sturmer shows a gross ignorance of what the holocaust was actually all about. The NYT writing about chassidim is not 1930s Germany.
I believe in the rule of law, in democracy, in transparency of public administration. Those are foundational values of Western democracies - arguably the most successful societies. No one is special. If you abuse the system then others will too and it'll work for no one.
The way to make the system work for you, is to fight for your rights within it, not by abusing the system. Cynicism only leads to nihilism. There is no alternative other than the "system". There are no "system-less" societies.
So instead of trying to tear down the system or abusing it, follow your civic duty and work to make the system work better for all. We all co-inhabit a country. We have different needs & communities, but we're co-citizens. We share one land and resources and need to live together
I really appreciate all the helpful comments I got and those who messaged me privately. It made me think a lot about the theory of social critique and change and how that applies to different communities.
In wider Western societies there is a certain mechanism of social critique and evolution. This is roughly how it works: 1. A concern/critique is voiced by a critical mass of the populus. 2. It is theorised by cultural critics/public intellectuals/experts.
3. Picked up by media/journalists. 4. Shifting public attitudes. Social stigma. 5. Pressure on politicians 6. Changing law 7. Changing social behaviour.
This is not a linear process, but each of these points interacts with and reinforces each other.
I've been fascinated to my TV screen the last few days watching the transition of monarchy and power. It has been history in the making in our country. A real eye-opener to the uniqueness of our constitutional monarchy.
It's been 7 decades since we've seen these rituals, and for the first time so publicly. I can imagine many people interested in politics would be quite surprised by how seriously we take the monarchs' power and legal supremacy.
I find this all fascinating. So, Britain is a constitutional monarchy. Power and law derive from the monarch and nothing can become law without their approval. Technically the monarch can disapprove of any law passed in parliament. It's just convention that they don't.