"... the couple having sex with the wife wearing a bra in the complete dark.... If people were allowed to think, they would not be religious... Thinking analytically when it comes to basic life decisions is something new to me and something I still struggle with, 5 years after leaving."
Wrote Faigy Mayer, 30, the formerly Hasidic woman who killed herself by jumping from the 230 Fifth Rooftop Bar on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
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७९ टिप्पण्या:
Well, at least it is a change from attacking Christians.
Why are we reading about the confused philosophy of life of this poor sick woman? Did she die because of her upbringing, or because of severe bipolar depression?
Why are we reading about the confused philosophy of life of this poor sick woman?
Because it is a chance to attack religion and traditional gender roles at the same time...a two-fer.
There certainly is no joy in her letter. Her depression has taken over.
She left the Hasidim 5 years earlier to start a new life for herself which is totally fine.
But did her new life get better or worse?
A religion without joy and suffocated with silly legalism is bad news. She needed to hear the good news.
"If people were allowed to think, they would not be religious" But part of her discussion was about how her own parents had made a choice to become religious and join that group.
I know several Hasidic families, husbands and wives. Those families at least seem fully functional to me, happy and fulfilled, caring and intelligent. Those families at least didn't have arranged marriages, they had arranged dates, where the parents worked extremely hard to find someone that they thought their son/daughter would like. Then the son or daughter met the other and they decided if they wanted to get married. Frequently it took a few tries with other others.
It's absurd to say that people can't be happy without access to the internet when some of us grew up without it.
"Why are we reading about the confused philosophy of life of this poor sick woman? Did she die because of her upbringing, or because of severe bipolar depression?"
What is "confused" about her philosophy of life? Rather, it seems she rejected what she saw as the joyless, regimented life of her family's faith. There's no way to know exactly why she took her life--"because of her upbringing, or because of severe bipolar disorder"--but it's not necessarily either/or. She had reportedly been cast out by her own family when she left their faith, and we can assume the entire social network of extended family and friends that she knew growing up in their faith also scorned her. Being ostracized from one's own community is seriously traumatic. It's possible her mental troubles derived from--or were exacerbated by--her having been banished by her family and community.
I can't understand any parents who will banish their children because they disagree with the life choices their children make.
"A religion without joy and suffocated with silly legalism is bad news." The families I knew at least had plenty of joy, and didn't feel that what they were doing is silly. I'm sorry for this poor girl, but she's not the best judge.
Robert Cook, you made all that up. She ostracized them.
"Why are we reading about the confused philosophy of life of this poor sick woman?"
She chose a very public and dramatic setting for her exit — a glamorous, crowded rooftop bar. She fell onto the ground in front of pedestrians (fortunately, not on any), forcing many other human beings to see something horrible.
She also publicly and severely criticized the people who brought her up and presented their lifestyle as terrible.
I don't see how her privacy interest prevails here. She is dead. Witnesses are traumatized and her people are smeared.
I feel sorry for her that she lost her life and did not find a positive way through her tribulations, but there are issues here worth considering, and I don't accept the impulse to put a "depressed" label on every suicide, to say "depression is terrible," and to close the door and move on, which is what I see time and again whenever there is a suicide in the news.
Religious fundamentalism, of any form, is always problematic - with the inevitable hypocrisy, cheating, shunning and shaming that it entails. It may work tolerably well for many people within the faith, at least for part of their lives, but a failure to recognize and accept the pluralism of human thought and emotions is stultifying. Very little long term good has come from religious fundamentalism.
"and I don't accept the impulse to put a "depressed" label on every suicide"
Well, unless the person in question is at Masada, a kamikaze pilot, or a Muzzie, it's a pretty safe impulse.
If people were allowed to think, they would not be religious
Well, I think probably you could think and find a religion where you fit in, were happy and thrived. So many do.
I thought very little about religion for most of my life. The more I've thought about it, read about, learned about it, the more religious I've become. A lot of very smart, actively thinking people, are religious.
"... it's a pretty safe impulse."
Right. Why not be safe? Protect yourself.
Yet some prefer to look at things that are disturbing and think more deeply. It's less safe, but some of us are risk takers, intellectually.
Enjoy your safe existence. Have a nice day.
OK, that was weird. I could see Althouse's 9:26 comment while typing mine, then I published mine, and was ahead of her. A miracle? A sign?
Tank said...
A lot of very smart, actively thinking people, are religious.
But their religion generally bears very little relationship to the fundamentalism that dominated the western world for 15 centuries and continues to dominate the middle east.
It is a weak religion, in the sense that it admits and accepts the validity of other points of view.
"Religious fundamentalism, of any form, is always problematic - with the inevitable hypocrisy, cheating, shunning and shaming that it entails. It may work tolerably well for many people within the faith, at least for part of their lives, but a failure to recognize and accept the pluralism of human thought and emotions is stultifying. Very little long term good has come from religious fundamentalism." You seem like a fundamentalist on this point. Your religion is the only right one.
If people were allowed to think, they would not be religious
Curiously, there's a relatively well-known religious response to the kinds of issues she was feeling:
A religious guy once said: “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them."
MikeR said...
You seem like a fundamentalist on this point.
It is an observation, not a belief. Feel free to point to religious fundamentalists who escape these problems.
"Religious fundamentalism, of any form, is always problematic - with the inevitable hypocrisy, cheating, shunning and shaming that it entails. It may work tolerably well for many people within the faith, at least for part of their lives, but a failure to recognize and accept the pluralism of human thought and emotions is stultifying."
Limiting this to religion exemplifies the rest of the statement. That's why I think the term "religion" isn't as helpful in our era. All orienting philosophies have this problem. Politics, environmentalism, etc. Pick a cause, pick a lifestyle. Humans will be human, they to find their identity in something, but tend to be awkward and inconsistent when they do so.
"OK, that was weird. I could see Althouse's 9:26 comment while typing mine, then I published mine, and was ahead of her. A miracle? A sign?"
I changed a couple things, republished, and deleted. I do that a lot. I try to do it quickly before another post goes up. Sorry to weird you out.
A lot of very smart, actively thinking people in the western world were "fundamentalist".
It was interesting for instance, that the basic developments in precision machining came out of communities of " dissenters" of different sorts. Without precision machining there is no modern science and technology. At all.
Some modern prejudices are just that.
"Feel free to point to religious fundamentalists who escape these problems."
Roger Williams is a good example. John Wesley. There's a long list. But they don't make the news because they're just contributing to society in its various forms.
I'd like to think I escape these problems too.
I thought very little about religion for most of my life. The more I've thought about it, read about, learned about it, the more religious I've become.
That seems to be happening to a lot of people these days. And a lot of them seem to be named Mohammad.
@Smilin'
LOL, no danger of that!
Paddy O said...
Limiting this to religion
I didn't and don't limit this to religion. But, we were, after all, on the topic of fundamentalist religions. Any restrictive all-encompassing philosophy will have similar problems. This has been obvious since the time of the Greeks, who set men free and created the abyss.
Paddy O said...
Roger Williams is a good example. John Wesley.
But these are individuals who had a lot of power in shaping their society and were temperamentally a good fit. We are talking about the inevitable misfits and discontents that must exist within a restrictive religious philosophy. Obviously it must work for someone or no one will be an adherent, as the Shakers discovered to their dismay.
One could argue after reading the article that she also suffered from something else that led to her becoming suicidal.
Look at her picture, she's not being held captive by religion. She left her family. This is four years later. Maybe she couldn't deal with not being involved with them, but she made the choice to remove herself from the situation.
The Greeks are overrated.
As far as technology went they were largely borrowers.
Real progress in raising civilization is made by the unassuming workman, figuring out how to do things better bit by bit, not by flashy philosophers who get to educate the toffs.
The unassuming workmen, like most such through all history, were usually very conservative.
Ann Althouse said...forcing many other human beings to see something horrible.
She also publicly and severely criticized the people who brought her up and presented their lifestyle as terrible.
I don't see how her privacy interest prevails here. She is dead. Witnesses are traumatized and her people are smeared.
I mean, I agree, but couldn't the same rationale be used to argue that something like ISIS terror killing propaganda should be getting much larger play in the western Media? They do horrible things and make glossy videos of same to make religious and political arguments. Our Media's response is mostly to say "oh those are extremists who shouldn't be given attention of any kind," then to close the door and move on. The US press barely covers most of the atrocities groups like ISIS commit (while, of course, giving round-the-clock coverage to incidents at Abu Ghraib, etc).
Yet some prefer to look at things that are disturbing and think more deeply. It's less safe, but some of us are risk takers, intellectually.
Is it worth asking, then, why some disturbing things get play in the Media and some don't? Some challenging stories get play, some don't. I'm not sure how credit we should give ourselves for taking on intellectual risks the Media sees fit to pose--their target list seems a bit constrained.
buwaya puti said...
The Greeks are overrated.
No society that produced a man, Eratosthenes, who determined the circumference of the earth with surprising accuracy can be dismissed as a bunch of toffs. And, all those toilers and machinists wouldn't get very far without Euclidian geometry.
I own both a table saw and and a knee mill.
I thought the idea that Jews couldn't have erotic pleasure during sex other than coitus was an antisemitic myth.
Holes and blankets have been mentioned, but not bras and dark.
I exited religious fundamentalism many years ago. Many do, with outcomes far different from this woman. I am ambivalent about Christian fundamentalism. I have no problem with it, but want no part of it. I understand the source of every belief, yet disagree with most. No one seems to treat me, the apostate, any differently. No one seems to want to slice my head off either.
"It is an observation, not a belief. Feel free to point to religious fundamentalists who escape these problems." Meh - point to them? I see them all around me. Most people I see in fundamentalist communities, and I have lived smack in the middle of one of them, are doing absolutely fine. Not "tolerably well" ... for "part of their lives" - your weasel-word attempts to refuse to really admit anything good about them, but just fine for their whole lives, raising their children and grandchildren. On the average, they seem to have less of many of the issues that plague our modern society. Their kids - the ones who fit in, who are clearly a majority - don't take drugs, don't get in trouble before marriage, grow up with a good work ethic. They spent hefty chunks of their time helping others, not just voting for someone to get someone else to do it and pay for it. They take their religion seriously and seem to like it.
Perhaps your observation is selective, based on preconceptions about modern secularism, and on news stories that focus on problems rather than strengths.
I don't know why we give killers so much attention. She killed someone. By all accounts, someone innocent. She has nothing to say worth listening to.
MikeR said...
Not "tolerably well" ... for "part of their lives"
You imply and the post above yours directly states that they left one of these communities. This would seem to validate my point.
The use of the term "fundamentalism" obscures more than it reveals.
The root meaning of the term applies only to Christians who take the Bible literally, & only literally. Groups like the Hasidim are anything but "fundamentalist", as they study rabbinic exegesis that, far from being literal, strikes the modern reader as so far from the plain meaning of the text that the common reaction for an outsider is "Are they kidding me?".
A better word for the religious phenomenon at hand among Jews & Muslims is "totalizing", because, as religions of the law, they structure & control every aspect of one's day to day life in a way that both Christian & post-Christian societies simply cannot fathom.
For some people, that structuring of their lives gives them a sense of order & of purpose, as they work the Will of God in every little thing they do. But, for those who cannot fit the mold, life becomes a living Hell from which there is no escape, not even in the secret recesses of conscience.
It takes a brave person to make these sort of breaks cleanly & build a life afterwards. If someone is psychologically damaged, as clearly this woman was by depression & bi-polarism, I can imagine that fatal despair would be a constant threat. Too bad she couldn't (or didn't) find a more "lax" Jewish community for support.
This woman had it good compared to the women I met in Afghanistan.
"structuring of their lives gives them a sense of order & of purpose, as they work the Will of God in every little thing they do."
This was the way everyone in traditional societies lived. Certainly the case in Catholic societies. The hours were ordered by the church bell, the calendar was punctuated with saints days, the language was filled with invocations, etc. Its hard for someone in US secular society to understand this.
My general rule of thumb is to disregard the philosophical thoughts of people who commit suicide. Unhappy people generally do not have much to provide in that regard. When someone wants to check out of this world, why would I want his or her advice on how to live my life?
That's not to say I ignore all suicides as some are committed for reasons other than depression. This particular one is not an exception.
The austere lifestyle my people face of arranged marriages, strict segregation of the genders, the wife shaving her head, the couple having sex with the wife wearing a bra in the complete dark (hole in the sheet, anyone?) but still producing 13 children generally throughout her lifetime,
How does she know? Really? She heard it from someone else who left the faith? I'm guessing these things are rarely discussed. I've heard people talk about the sex lives of people in my faith with complete inaccuracy as well. The experience of One becomes the experience of all. The people who do best when leaving a strong faith community, like those of the Hasidic Jews, do best when they come to realize that not everything bad that ever happened to them was because of their Faith. There are those who become activists against their former Faith; those people are usually the most angry and unbalanced.
The more Hasidim I meet, the more I like illegal aliens from south of the border.
Orthodox Welfare Queens
"You imply and the post above yours directly states that they left one of these communities. This would seem to validate my point."
Only if you're not reading very carefully. Your claim was that those communities only work for "some people", only "tolerably well", and only "some of their lives". My counterclaim, which I hold by direct observation of a lot of people in a community that was around me, was that it works very well, for most people in the community, for all of their lives.
Your claim can be disproven by finding one person for whom it works well his or her whole life.
My very strong claim cannot be disproven (much less "validating your point") by finding one person for whom it didn't work well. [I was myself never a member, just lived amongst the Hasidim.] You'll need a survey.
"If people were allowed to think, they would not be religious"
... I'm sure Lewis and Chesterton agree, right?
(I'm with Heglian and Ping, above, as well.)
The people who do best when leaving a strong faith community, like those of the Hasidic Jews, do best when they come to realize that not everything bad that ever happened to them was because of their Faith.
Heck, some of us left even without experiencing unusual amounts of bad behavior. By the way, "shunning" akin to the (possibly inaccurate - I don't know) stereotypes of the Amish really doesn't happen - one typically encounters overly formal distancing, not outright ostracism.
Hasidic Jews have a particularly strong religious culture, and the societal restraint can be stifling to people who, say, prefer Echo and the Bunnymen to Abish Brodt, but (speaking only for myself here) I see generally the same distribution of happiness there as I do in general American society.
What is the suicide rate among the people of Mayer's sect?
The cause of almost all suicides is depression, not repression.
Very little long term good has come from religious fundamentalism.
Except Western Civilization.
Gahrie said...
Except Western Civilization.
'Western Civilization' has many fathers but western civilization as we know it is influenced primarily by the Greeks and the enlightenment, with a small shout out to the Romans. It was a defeat of the Church and the monarchy.
No church, no enlightenment, ARM. Sorry.
No church, no enlightenment
Hee...yeah, I guess that's one way to look at it.
EMD said...7/23/15, 10:02 AM
One could argue after reading the article that she also suffered from something else that led to her becoming suicidal.
She was living with roommates, had a disagreement with them, and was being evicted.
You don't need to sudy the Kelo case to know how this can have an impact on some people, and having no higher values, she...
She also wrote that she was not accepted by her peers, because her parents had been converts to Belz Hassidim, so they didn't identify with her, and she didn't have any friends until she left.
Some Hassidic groups are characterized by a constant fear that someone will leave the (practice of the) religion, as many Jews did in the first half of the 20th century, and try to limit the associations they have, and especially their children have, with others.
That also probably accounts for her parents limited contact with her (but I didn't read the letter) because that could impact on the marriage prospects of her siblings, since the parents of the prospective marriage partners wouldn't want to have such a close relative who was actively non-religious, if not for themselves because that could have an impact on the marriage prospects for their other children, and azoi veiter. (and so further)
This also accounts for schools expelling children and no other school wanting to take them.
The hole in a sheet is a story that is (mostly at least) not true (I don't know if there was or is a group that practiced or advised this, but she is saying that what actually happens is close to that. Her real complaint is about arranged marriages.
When parents need to pre-approve, you can get all sorts of extraneous considerations added on with all kinds of bad effects. Of course, this is really done because they are afraid someone will marry someone who will leave the religion..
The Greeks predate the Church. No Church no Dark Ages is how I would look at it.
People have a tendency to view the Middle Age as a time of darkness, disease, filth, and poverty, and the Classical age as being somehow sunnier and more intellectual.
Yet the Classical age (Romans and Greeks in togas) was built on slavery and warfare. There was no concept of equality between all men. Women were looked at as subhuman creatures, useful only for satisfying lust or breeding children. The natural philosophy of the Medievals was rooted in Aristotle, not some Christian church father. And then there is the undeniable truth that only the Christian West produced an enlightenment.
The only reason you know about the Greeks is because their writings were preserved by Christian and Muslim scholars, ARM. Try again.
The Greeks predate the Church. No Church no Dark Ages is how I would look at it.
The rest of us rational people blame the Dark Ages on the fall of the Roman Empire, and realize that fundamental Christianity restored civilization to Europe.
Gahrie said...
The rest of us rational peopleS
Somehow, the Church and the Age of Reason do not seem to be natural allies.
Somehow, the Church and the Age of Reason do not seem to be natural allies.
So what? the Age of Reason had very little impact on Western Civilization, besides laying the groundwork for the Leftist ideology that you and your friends use to attempt to destroy Western Civilization.
During the time of the New Testament the Roman Empire is both just starting, having replaced the dysfunction republic roughly 60 years earlier, and is essentially already at its peak if you disregard Britain, which would be conquered soon and would prove more trouble than it was worth, and the Trajan conquests, which were abandoned except for Dacia which eventually proved more trouble than it was worth. Rome was essentially already in decline. The fact that the Empire was huge and wealthy managed to solve a lot of sins and the decline was very slow, but for the most part it had stopped expanding and was just sitting there awaiting something big to topple it. There simply was nothing big to do so. There were incursions by barbarian tribes, the Persian Empire would menace to the east, and various local revolts and civil wars came and went, but there was never the big one. The Roman Empire was simply worn down until it fell apart.
I don't see how Christianity is the driving factor in that.
Now if the Roman Empire had held on for a another century or so the Muslims could have been a driving factor. I'm not sure a last legs Roman Empire would have stopped the Arab invasion in Gaul. The Eastern Empire could essentially do nothing to stop the losses in Egypt and the Levant and had to beg for Crusades to buy them time in the centuries to come.
"Somehow, the Church and the Age of Reason do not seem to be natural allies."
Reason (the western classical flavor) had no other allies.
The only reason we care about reason, is because the church thought it was important for their purposes. St. Augustine was a huge fan.
Reason returned to Europe through the church, not through the educated laity. Intense disputation using dialectic was their favorite occupation. Logic was part of the trivium.
The Muslims certainly didn't. They had their dabblers and their antiquarians for a few centuries, then it was totally forgotten.
"Somehow, the Church and the Age of Reason do not seem to be natural allies.'
And thus ARM exposes his ignorance for all the world to see.
Shame on you!
When he talks about the Age of Reason, he's not talking about "reason". He's talking about the intellectual movement personified by Thomas Payne and his pamphlet of the same name. These thinkers were mostly atheists and what we would today call radicals. Their ideas laid the foundation for the French Revolution, and all of it's bloody excesses.
Depressed woman unable to get along with family, coworkers or roommates, friendless, kills self -- blames abstract external cause for difficulties.
Film at 11!
This is a largely pointless argument. If you are religious you obviously value the contribution of the Church to western civilization very highly. Conversely, rationalists will view those contributions more skeptically. It should be noted that the collapse of the Church/Monarchy was a necessary step for this pluralism to be possible.
ARM wrote:
If you are religious you obviously value the contribution of the Church to western civilization very highly. Conversely, rationalists will view those contributions more skeptically.
You are steeped in ignorance, ARM, if you believe that rationalism is somehow opposed to religion. The Catholic church has always considered Catholicism to be rational. To religious people, Saying "that's rational" is not anathema. It is high praise.
What do you think that "rational" means, anyhow?
The Catholic church has always considered Catholicism to be rational.
And to emphasize this, burned anyone who considered otherwise at the stake.
When he talks about the Age of Reason, he's not talking about "reason". He's talking about the intellectual movement personified by Thomas Payne and his pamphlet of the same name. These thinkers were mostly atheists and what we would today call radicals. Their ideas laid the foundation for the French Revolution, and all of it's bloody excesses.
Actually, there was another guy, named Newton, who wasn't an atheist, and whose ideas laid the foundation for...well, everything. Also, try to remember that only one pronoun forms its possessive with an apostrophe.
Actually, there was another guy, named Newton, who wasn't an atheist, and whose ideas laid the foundation for...well, everything.
I don't understand your point. Newton wasn't a part of the Age of Reason, and was instead an inspiration to the Enlightenment.
Newton was indeed a Christian, but refused to become a priest in the Church of England. Most people say this is because he did not believe in the Trinity, which today is a pretty mainstream Christian idea among non-Catholics.
Fundamentalist Christians are all around you, ARM. If you can recall any sect visiting your door that was probably an offshoot of fundamentalist Christians: Pentecostals, Baptists, Mormons, and every other non-denominational evangelical organization. There's anywhere from 20 to 80 million of them Cookie -- depending how you count "engaged" -- holding down jobs, raising kids and serving their local communities, as well as overseas missions.
Fundamentalism isn't the problem. The big difference is among those who preach God's love and those who kill in the name of another god. Love-based outreach is all around you. If you don't see it then you don't know the right people in your town, your county or your state.
ARM thinks that Catholics are fundamentalists.
In the 20th century two ideologies that eschewed religion, Nazism and Communism, murdered tens of millions of people. But ARM and Kookie are jim-dandy with that.
It should be noted that the collapse of the Church/Monarchy was a necessary step for this pluralism to be possible.
The Enlightenment was created in a country with a king and a state church. I will grant you that their ideas were best implemented in a nation with neither.
Gary Rosen said...
But ARM and Kookie are jim-dandy with that.
The Nazis and the German Churches were tight. Being Christian is no inoculation against being evil.
"Religious fundamentalism, of any form, is always problematic - with the inevitable hypocrisy, cheating, shunning and shaming that it entails."
Is it? Or is it just a choice, as valid as any other? After all, one may be born into a Hasidic family and there will be personal costs if one leaves, yet no one is forced to stay. Surely adults in the USA have more choice in these matters than do people just about anywhere else.
Nor can one say all fundamentalisms are equivalent. Orthodox Judaism will probably seem legalistic to a Christian, as the emphasis is much more on observance and much less on faith. Jews don't even proselytize (let alone attempt swordpoint conversions). No doubt there's sometimes social pressure to conform, but isn't that true about practically everything?
Ultimately there are many who live within self-imposed limits and who may well have more satisfying lives for having done so. So long as it's a choice that's not imposed by force, why would anyone condemn it?
Peter said...
Ultimately there are many who live within self-imposed limits and who may well have more satisfying lives for having done so. So long as it's a choice that's not imposed by force, why would anyone condemn it?
I have spent time in a monastery. It is not condemning something to note that it is not for everyone. Monastic life is definitely not for everyone.
The Nazis and the German Churches were tight. Being Christian is no inoculation against being evil.
The NAZIs attempted to use Christianity to control the German people because prior to the rise of the NAZI party 99% of Germans were Christian. The NAZIS weren't Christian, and indeed persecuted Christians. Most hated Christianity, and saw it as an infection from southern Europe almost as bad as the Jews. The NAZIs wanted to replace Christianity with northern European "Nordic" mythology as religion.
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