
Opposite of modern - tintinnabula
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/hasidism-shalom-auslander/
======
ciconia
Thanks so much for putting this on here. I have read Auslander's "Foreskin's
Lament" and could deeply identify with his critique and eventual rejection of
so-called "modern Judaism" (indeed - an oxymoron).

I come from a non-religious Jewish family, but I too was circumcised without
being asked at 8 days old (which today makes me resent my parents), I too
recited the Torah in a synagogue on my Bar-Mitsva, though I was not really
forced to, it was just something everybody did.

Today I live far away from this God-forsaken place called Israel with its
ridiculous religious laws, its racism, its recursively fractured society (the
more devout you are, the smaller your "community"), its cancerous infiltration
of institutional religion into government, its sick obsession with death and
martyrdom, its stupid veneration of men-with-yarmulkas, and its infantile
particularism.

Today I reject Judaism as an ethnic identity and as a philosophy. For me being
Jewish is a biographical detail. It does not define me as a person, it is not
who am. I enjoy Jewish humour as much as anyone and embrace my father's
painful experiences during WWII, but it cannot mean that I'm better or more
important than someone who's not a jew.

I am grateful for having escaped this Jewish reality distortion field. I'm
grateful for being able to live and raise my kids in an egalitarian society
that transcends ethnic and or religious origins and instead embraces
solidarity and rationality, indeed _modernity_.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

~~~
bpizzi
If infantile religious endoctrinement was avoided, then it would only take one
generation for religions to disappear almost entirely.

~~~
meri_dian
Maybe the religions that we are familiar with today, but new religions will
take their place.

Why?

Well, explain where the universe came from. Explain consciousness. Explain
what happens after we die. Can you?

I didn't think you could. There are no human accessible answers to these
questions. Humanity will forever be confused when we ponder them.

I love the scientific method but it in principle cannot answer these
questions.

~~~
bpizzi
I fully agree on what you said. But the question is, as always, about
proportions and statistics: how many people adhere to a religion today because
their parent told them they would go to hell otherwise, versus how many
choosed actively by seeking a spiritual answers in questions not answered by
science?

------
cdoxsey
Not going to defend Hasidism, but this article was pure contempt.

As CS Lewis would call it, chronological snobbery:

> Barfield never made me an Anthroposophist, but his counterattacks destroyed
> forever two elements in my own thought. In the first place he made short
> work of what I have called my “chronological snobbery,” the uncritical
> acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the
> assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account
> discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and
> if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as
> fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or
> falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age
> is also “a period,” and certainly has, like all periods, its own
> characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread
> assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or
> feels it necessary to defend them.

~~~
lmm
Contempt is sometimes warranted. If the descriptions in the article are
accurate (from the spitting to the running over with a car), contempt is
absolutely the appropriate response and the kind of temporal relativism that
denies that is wrong.

~~~
codingdave
It may be warranted, but it is not productive. If you really want change, you
need to understand the reasons behind people's culture and actions, and have
an open dialogue about those reasons.

~~~
annabellish
You can, and often must, understand the reasons behind people's actions while
still condemning them - but you should condemn the actions, not the people.

~~~
AllegedAlec
Why? If people make condemnable actions, they become condemnable themselves.

~~~
simonh
Which is preferable to you. That those people be punished appropriately for
their actions but continue to believe that they were justified; or that those
people are genuinely persuaded they were wrong, repudiate their former beliefs
and actions and work to undo the damage.

Personally I believe in both, where criminality is concerned. Appropriate
sanctions and rehabilitation are the ideal. For non-criminal prejudice and
discrimination, I think the latter is perfectly acceptable.

------
humanrebar
> “An end to all apologetics!” cried the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and for once, I
> agree with him. There was no reason, in his opinion, to harmonize faith and
> science.

On the contrary, I think we _must_ rediscover the relationship between
metaphysical philosophy and observation-based reasoning. For whatever reason
the current culture pulls communities apart and forces hate and conflict
where, in my opinion, fighting over the tension between "science" and
"religion" is unneeded and unhealthy.

The fact of the matter is that each religion is based on a certain set of
metaphysical axioms. Scientific reasoning is based on a particular subset of
those axioms. To hate, confuse, and fight over the implications of that is
such a waste.

~~~
andyjohnson0
> The fact of the matter is that each religion is based on a certain set of
> metaphysical axioms. Scientific reasoning is based on a particular subset of
> those axioms.

I'm genuinely struggling with this. In what way are the axioms of science (by
which I think you mean rationality) a subset of the axioms of (all?) religion?

~~~
humanrebar
"We can learn truths about the universe through observation of matter and
reason."

I'm sure some collaboration and editing are due on that particular phrasing,
but that's the general premise behind science. And, perhaps with fringe
exceptions, religious people are fine with that axiom. Exhibit A is all the
religious scientists throughout history and up to right now.

~~~
igorkraw
Which directly contradicts some of the basic tenets of most religions which
state that god is the sole source of truth and HE is unfathomable...

~~~
humanrebar
I dispute that the basic tenets of most religions include rejecting
information about heritability gained from cultivating plants in a garden.

~~~
simonh
Semantics. Religions largely don't reject all that much, people in them do and
the fact is an awful lot of religious people reject evolution and the
principle of natural selection on the grounds of their religion.

[http://news.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-
inte...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-
design.aspx)

~~~
humanrebar
Well, yeah, the conflict is poor understanding of semantics.

I think most of the contention is people talking past each other, and I think
we're at risk of that happening here, too. I'll try to be careful.

How old the universe is and whether there is a creator are theological and
metaphysical questions. Whether species change over time in response to
changes in their environments is an empirical question. You can't disprove a
theological axiom with empirical observation. The universe could have been
created in the middle of my typing this post up. There's no scientific way to
prove that an omnipotent being didn't set it up that way.

So the fundamentalists need to accept that a creator could have created a
universe with evolution in it. And anti-fundamentalists need to acknowledge
that they can only prove that the universe _looks_ really old when we
extrapolate backwards from existing evidence.

One metaphysical question is "Could an omnipotent creator create a universe
with evolution?" I think the answer is clearly "yes". The people who object at
this point usually object to the "Why would a creator do that?" That's an
entirely different _theological_ question, one that doesn't affect science a
single bit.

~~~
simonh
This is a similar issue to that posed by Descartes’ Demon, which continuously
creates the illusion of a universe around you. How do you know whether you
live in a real world or an illusion?

The best solution I know is that you must proceed on he basis that what you
perceive is accurate, otherwise you might as well give up as the alternative
is that nothing is knowable or has any value. There is a congruent theological
principle that a good god would not so deceive it’s creation.

------
userbinator
A bit of a clickbait title ("Opposite of modern" as of this post.) Was
expecting something more computer-ish and related to Transport Layer Security.

Then again, "A personal response to the history of Hasidism" (actual title)
would not have received as much attention.

~~~
jiojfekjl
I thought clickbait was "you'll never believe what happens next" and "one
weird trick." A far cry from this submission.

~~~
humanrebar
Yeah, I thought the title was actually understated compared to the body of the
article.

------
lordleft
Modernity != progress. This is not to say that the Hasidic mode of life is
right (or wrong), just that the term modern is being misunderstood here. When
people use the word modern in a context like this, they usually mean to say
that a movement could not have existed in a previous era in time, that it is
as much an artifact of the 18th-21st centuries as the Enlightenment.

I do think that arguing that Hasidic Judaism is modern and thus good is a
dubious argument, I just think the author of this piece is conflating several
terms.

------
verbify
I have not read the book he read, but I did grow up in a similar environment
(and lived in the same Meah Shaarim neighbourhood for a few years), I think
part of the issue is semantics.

He conflates modernity and progressiveness, while the book sees both
progressives and reactionaries as modern. Hassidim are both modern and
reactionary.

~~~
Angostura
He argues that the book conflates 'modern' and 'contemporary'.

------
aomurphy
I don't quite agree with the author about modernity. I argue that the modern
Ultra-Orthodox are modern, specifically in the way they justify their beliefs.
Most of what I'm going to say is just a summary of this lovely paper by Haym
Soloveitchik then at Yeshiva University:
[https://www.lookstein.org/professional-dev/rupture-
reconstru...](https://www.lookstein.org/professional-dev/rupture-
reconstruction-transformation-contemporary-orthodoxy/)

The basic point is that modernity has destroyed tradition as a justification
for a way of life. Look, before people were often happy to say "We do this
because our ancestors did it." and that alone was enough. And when the sacred
texts was a little off with tradition, people were happy to try and make sure
that they could be read to agree with tradition. But now, you have to try and
fall back and argue from higher authority. In the end this often looks the
same, but it lends much greater power to those who interpret sacred texts, and
pushes people to more and more extreme interpretations.

There's a book I just read, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell.
It's a travelogue though the Middle East meeting the small religious movements
that survived Christianity and Islam over the last ~2000 years: Mandaeans,
Yezidis, Coptic Christians, Samaritans, and the Kalasha. The Kalasha are a
tiny group of pagans who live on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and
one of the interesting things that comes up when Russell visits them is that
they don't really have explanations for a lot of their rituals. They do things
because their parents did them, and so on. and it's troublesome because when
faced with Islam, or outsiders, it's hard for them to justify what they're
doing, there's no intellectual basis.

And I think that, on a much smaller scale (Judaism has had a more formal
intellectual basis for a long long time) is what modernity, chiefly through
literacy and improved communication, brings. I also think that blanket
rejection of groups like the Ultra-Orthodox or fundamentalist Christians as
"dated" or just wrong isn't very helpful, certainly they're not going away any
time soon.

------
zeveb
> What happens, I wonder, if this boy discovers at the age of fifteen that the
> deepest love he feels is for another man? Or less dramatically, if he wants
> to eat a cheeseburger? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that his
> father’s response will be anything but modern.

I wonder very much how modern Shalom Auslander's response would be if his son
at the age of fifteen decided to become a Hasid …

~~~
verbify
Shalom Auslander wouldn't disown his son. He wouldn't refuse to go to his
wedding (unlike children of Hassidim who marry people who aren't Jewish).
There's a world of difference between what he would do and what Hassidim do to
their children when they become irreligious.

You also need to take into consideration that Auslander had a very negative
upbringing as a Hassid, and therefore his supposed lack of tolerance could be
put down to PTSD - Hassidim don't have the same excuse.

------
jwilk
Archived copy that can be read without JS enabled:

[https://archive.is/1g9QG](https://archive.is/1g9QG)

------
dredmorbius
Modernity as indicating a sense of progress, as opposed to simply
distinguishing "now" from "then", is itself ... modern. Roughly 1897.

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/modern](https://www.etymonline.com/word/modern)

There's also the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, in Christian faith,
dating to the 1920s & 1930s, largely a response to WWI and what was seen as
dislocations imposed by the rapid advance of modernity (in the ... modern
sense) as technology and industry developed especially ~1860 - 1920.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93Moderni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93Modernist_Controversy)

------
erikb
I like this discussion from a "modern" perspective. I think there are three
not-modern things and in my opinion it's quite clear how to handle them.

1) There's the thing that survived modern trends and still exists. That is a
useful thing, a kind of truth that has been found and embodied in this thing.
People should learn about it, no matter if it's 10 months old or 1000 years.
Language is such a thing, forks are such a thing, Vim is such a thing. If you
don't use this thing you are bound to rediscover it under a different name.
E.g. Unix attempted to be the platform neutral programming environment, then
some people forgot about it. So they developed Java as platform independent
programming environment. Now if you look at both, you find a lot of great
things, but they are similar. And you also find that both have not fully
succeeded in their goal of being platform independent.

2) There are emotional attached things. They are objectively viewed not really
valuable anymore, but people get sentimental about them. This is an individual
experience and therefore must also be an individual decision to use or not
use. E.g. old tv shows with mediocre ratings. You might like it or not like,
but another person can feel different because they have/haven't seen it in
their childhood. The correct approach is to let each do their own thing in
this area.

3) There are old things that haven't survived the connection to modern things.
Strict hierarchical organisations for instance. A more flexible, democratic
organisation usually ends up beating a strict competitor. That's why we now
have republics, federations etc instead of kingdoms. You should stay away from
them and not support anybody who attempts that. People try to sell this as
sentimental with words like "in the past everything was better". Screw it. We
don't live in the past, we live now. And if it would really be that good this
thing would still be there.

Sadly we have a lot of discussions in society if obvious category 3 things
might actually be category 1 for some abstract reasons. It's unnecessary to
discuss. Communism is dead. Faschism is dead. Islamic Traditionalism is dead.
Get off these horses.

Instead we should discuss category 1 things that are interesting from a modern
perspective. For instance in school we learn that slavery is dead, but if you
learn and learn and learn about the global economy you find there is still an
awful lot of slavery out there. Women get cought and sold, or forcefully
married. Children are used for 16h/day jobs without any pay. Prostitution
itself only has a very small minority of really free participants. How the
fuck can something like slavery survive? What is actually good about it? This
kind of thing would be an interesting discussion in my eyes, because there is
some value there to be learned about our morals and reality. Talking about if
dead horses are really dead is a waste of time tho.

~~~
humanrebar
I think "modern" perspectives are also being attacked from a progressive
perspective. Freedom of speech, for instance, is losing its appeal as
different groups see speech itself as despicable and on par with physical
misbehavior. I guess you could group that into your #2, but in a future-
looking perspective, towards some sort of utopia where everyone has pleasant
thoughts and words.

