One of the features of being a Charedi Jew in the 21st century is reading exposés of your community in the wider press. In the best case, these magnify a negative aspect of Charedi life without any sense of proportion, but all too often they fall short even of this unfair standard and relate details about my world that are completely removed from reality.
A few months ago, I decided to challenge some of these slurs and describe the reality of a community in which children and adolescents are kept innocent as far as possible of any knowledge about sex and in which the topic of homosexuality has no particular cultural resonance whether for good or bad.
In a recent article, a writer in the JC under the pen name of Ahuva Yaldi has taken me to task for my "disingenuous" portrayal, describing the "utterly terrifying experience" of growing up gay in the Charedi community and blaming it both for her son’s mental health issues and his alienation from Judaism.
I have nothing but sympathy for what both the author and her son have been through, but the simple fact is that whatever community she describes is quite different to the one to which I belong.
Judaism exists on a spectrum and where exactly to draw the line between different communities depends on one’s perspective. From certain vantage points, anyone who wears a black kippah and pronounces a kamatz as an ‘o’ is Charedi. However, when I wrote in the JC that homophobia is not a feature of Charedi culture, a reasonable reading of my article made it clear that I was talking about a clearly defined entity.
Specifically, my description pertains to the families who send their children to schools where there is an absolute prohibition on any discussion of sex. While the anonymous author describes herself as Charedi, she is using the term in a sense that is at least unconventional, if not outright inaccurate
This becomes clear in the opening paragraphs where she talks about a "frum university student" who had been "through the Orthodox school and yeshivah system" and was her son’s madrich. This is apparently a reference to his membership in a youth group such as Ezra or B’nei Akiva. Suffice to say that Charedim do not attend these youth groups, do not typically have madrichim and do not go to university. The behaviour attributed to this madrich is on the face of it quite appalling, but if it is representative of the flaws in anyone’s community, it is certainly not mine.
Apparently, in the author’s shul “homophobic quips are bandied about as freely as the herring and whisky” at kiddush; if this is indeed the case, I suggest she looks for a new shul as a matter of urgent priority, but to put this forward as a description of Charedi shuls is completely surreal.
Some readers may think I am playing a game of ‘no true Scotsman’, but understanding the difference between various parts of orthodoxy is absolutely central to the debate about the non-compliance of Charedi schools with the Equalities Act 2010. There are many Modern and Centrist Orthodox schools which, like their Muslim and Christian counterparts, teach that homosexuality is condemned in their religious texts, while at the same time complying with the law by teaching tolerance and respect for the LGBT community. Many of these schools really do struggle with a culture of homophobia among the student body, but have no trouble passing OFSTED inspections.
The reason why Charedi schools have been unable to do the same is because they refuse to either praise or condemn homosexuality as part of a blanket policy of not talking about sex at all in any capacity. The fact that homophobic bullying doesn’t exist in these schools is sometimes acknowledged by the DfE and OFSTED, but is considered irrelevant.
The anonymous author of this article, by contrast, disputes this reality and seeks to fabricate a culture of homophobia in Charedi schools based on what she knows from other Orthodox communities. All of her claims on what Charedi children know about sex are fundamentally irrelevant because, even if true and valid, they would only prove that the Charedi policy of zero sexualisation is a failure, not that it doesn’t exist or that it isn’t the demand of almost every parent who sends their child to a Charedi school.
In fact, however, they are not valid. It is certainly true, for example, that on mincha of Yom Kippur, the Torah portion listing forbidden relations is read, as it is in all Orthodox, and many non-Orthodox synagogues, but the reality of leyning in a Charedi shul is not what she seems to imagine.
The ritualised chanting of the Torah in a Charedi shul is not accompanied by a vernacular translation, orally or in print, and unless you have studied the passage beforehand, which Charedi boys have never done, there is no risk that your eyes would be opened to a world of forbidden pleasure during the five minutes in which these verses are recited.
The way the Charedi community approaches the difficult issue of censoring our fundamental texts is extremely complex and delicate, but, for better or worse, the danger of precocious children thoroughly versed in the grammar of ancient Hebrew paying too much attention during leyning is not one or our bigger challenges.
This astonishing article claims that ‘as Eli Spitzer well knows, those with a stake in Charedi education in this country are falling over themselves trying to gain high level access to OFSTED and the DfE to ensure that children will never need to learn that some families have two mummies and some have two daddies.’ I have no idea what she is talking about, nor who is feeding her this information. In all my communication with officials from OFSTED and the DfE I have never tried to ‘ensure’ that children will not learn anything; I have only tried to describe a social reality.
This reality is that Charedi schools are not homophobic; while we have policies to address homophobic bullying, in practice it never comes up. What we cannot do is discuss any forms of alternative sexual relationships because we cannot discuss any form of sexual relationship. Doing so would be a betrayal of the mandate given to me as a headteacher by parents, and, if I were to break it, I would have a school with no pupils. It is hard enough explaining this reality to people from completely alien cultural backgrounds without having activists in the Jewish community publicly denouncing me as a liar.
Imagine if you were to read a polemic attack on the halachic standards of the Conservative movement and then back this up with anecdotes about Progressive and Reform synagogues. No-one would stand for this kind of lazy smear-mongering and nor should they. As I have said before, if you want to argue against the Charedi way of bringing up children, then please do. What has to stop, however, is outsiders telling us what our community is ‘really’ about and accusing us of lying when we dispute their preposterous defamation based on the invocation of anonymous and implausible (in the context of Charedi culture) anecdotes.
You don’t have to take it from me, even those who have left the Charedi culture and are sharply critical will confirm that homophobic bullying is not a feature either of Charedi schools or society and that all Charedi parents expect their schools to avoid all discussion of sexuality.
Finally, I’d like to extend a warm invitation to the author’s husband to a kiddush in Stamford Hill next Shabbos. There will be plenty of herring and maybe even some whiskey; he might find some things to cringe about, but he will be relieved to discover that "homophobic quips" won’t be one of them.
Eli Spitzer is headmaster at Tiferes Shlomo Boys' School, an independent school in Golders Green for boys aged three to 15
