Hi-
I always try to stay neutral, and stick up for the weaker side, or at least give perspective to those who don’t see it from the other side.
But I am quite fed up.
I am not modern orthodox. But I can proudly say that I genuinely love modern orthodox people. I became right wing after growing up modern orthodox, and at a point I would have considered myself chareidi. I used to stand in my MO shul and hiss at the “taf” instead of “saf”. I used to look at the people around me who didn’t follow halacha up to standard, whether they know its right or not (that is irrelevant and not for me to judge).
But I tapped into this part of me that tried to love them, but still secretly hated them. And I unlike of most of you (unless you come from the same background as me) have the right to hate it, because I came from it and left it. I realized that my whole reason of becoming more machmir, more aware of Halacha was to be a better Jew, but in the route of doing that I realized there was just this notion going around my “new crowd” that MO people weren’t frum. And it started to get to me. Because they ARE frum.
And so I started to deviate a little bit away from the chareidim, and now I stand here without a title. Why? So I can love everyone, because that is Hashem’s greatest Midda. And not to overgeneralize, because I respect and admire everyone here, but many of you, while trying to be impartial and say “I’m not saying the MO people who follow Halacha”, or “The ones who just learned blindly in their institutions” or “Zionism is pasul.”
It is irrelevent.
What they do, no offence, is irrelevent to you. You say it’s relevant because you care that they aren’t following the Torah. Maybe not to your standards, but to their standards they are. Until you go into an MO institution with unbiased eyes and tell me their shuls don’t have the same good (learning, daf yomi, minyanim, shiurim) and bad things (talking) as yours do, you should not be saying anything. If you TRUELY cared that they weren’t following Torah to your standard, you wouldn’t be typing it here and telling your children how false they are. You would embrace them, do “kiruv” the same way you would to someone who TRUEly isn’t frum. Maybe you all do that too, and shkoyach to those who do. But it seems as though you look down on MO community, which is totally wrong. You can say it’s not sinas chinam, but when you think about it, you are putting your serving Hashem as better than someone elses. That is most definitly not what we should be doing, even if we are 100% right.
And trust me I know a lot of people in the MO community who don’t love you guys too, who think you are too closed minded to appreciate that they are frum too. But the reason I voice myself to you is because I hold you guys to a higher standard. I would hope to see pure love. But I don’t. I see you all making loop holes why you can’t accept them. Acceptance doesn’t mean become them. Hopefully your strong enough to be yourself no matter what situation your placed in (if you aren’t, that’s fine, but you don’t have a right to put them down).
I hope mods let this through, I genuinly hope whoever reads this can think about what they are actually saying. I turned away from your true hashkafa only because of this exact one point: you* aren’t accepting and loving.
*you doesn’t mean everyone, I would just rather not point fingers. I know it isn’t everyone, and I even have respect for those that do talk like that- because they love Hashem so much they are willing to sacrafice everything for Hashem. I just think others feelings must be taken into account.