Home › Forums › Decaffeinated Coffee › Question to Toi on Modern Orthodoxy › Reply To: Question to Toi on Modern Orthodoxy
Greatest, the fact is the Rav zt”l was right. Chareidiut as a doctrine is a failure. It cannot and has never thrived in this country without engaging in serious morally/ethically compromised actions. Vehameivin yavin (besides I doubt the moderators would allow me to get into specifics). Moreover, on the intellectual side of things, Chareidi isolationism, obscurantism and anti rationalism has compelled it to adopt a series of doctrines that render it entirely irrelevant and anachronistic to the critical mass of world Jewry. People will not leave their rationalism at the door as the price of entre` into Chareidi portals. And those who do so, often don’t stay, or fail to make any significant contribution to Orthodoxy (30 some odd years into the kiruv enterprise, how many roshei yeshiva are b’alei teshuva, the sine qua non of success in the chareidi world?) because they cannot reconcile their rationalist past with Chareidi anti-rationalism. Chareidiut succeeds only by dint of its birthrate and nothing else. But that factor requires ever increasing financial resources and those two are inversly proportional. The longer Chareidiut remains isolationist and obscurantist, the fewer possibilities for economic growth are available. As the money dries up, the system will either implode with catastrophic consequences or redefine itself of necessity. And when it does redefine itself, will it then claim to the be standard bearer of Torah Judaism immemorial?