What Divides Us

'Once skipping kiddush would have been a sacrilege for almost everyone around the table. These days, making the choice is its own blessing. The men and women sitting at the table are all former haredim who broke out of their dogmatic, strict confines, on pain of excommunication, poverty and loneliness, to live in a world in which they can choose how to live.' (Jerusalem Post, 8 March 2007, from the beginning of the article 'God Forbid?')

A dichotomy: 'haredi' against 'a world in which they can choose'. That world is later described as 'secular', 'more beautiful', 'mainstream', and 'Israeli'.
What makes 'secular' more 'Israeli' than 'haredi'?
What makes 'secular' particularly 'mainstream'?
What makes 'mainstream' more 'beautiful' than not-'mainstream' alternatives?
What is outside of the 'mainstream'?
The associations may not be wrong, but they are tenuous enough to ask explanation and examination. Too often, as in the article, we do not investigate the validity of these associations, we accept them, without question, as givens, absolutes.

Broken relationships between children and parents, marital strife, adolescent rebellion against parents and their values, poverty, educational deficits—these are cited as problems among 'haredim' and 'former haredim'. We could recite them as problems throughout our whole community. Why focus on 'haredim'? Rather than divide us, these difficulties davka unite us.

Those who traverse the dichotomy from 'haredi' to 'secular' are named in several ways. They are called 'former haredim', implying they have re-formed themselves and somehow advanced.
Have these 'former haredim' re-formed their identities?
What is it to re-form oneself?
What counts as change and personal growth?
The article discusses clothes, manners, language-skills, mitzvah-observance, educational aspirations, and television-watching. Are these good measures of a person's form, re-form, advancement?
The same people are also called 'yotzim -- exiters, going-outers', using -- and arguably turning inside-out -- the images of Avraham's journey and the exodus from Egypt. Egypt is Mitzrayim is, literally, a place of 'strict confines'. 'Strict confines', in the first quote, is identified with 'haredi'. 'Haredi', therefore, is Egypt and exile. Perhaps this explains the appearence of the article at this time, just before Pesach. 'Strict confines' (and Egypt and exile) apply especially to 'haredi' and not to 'secular', but then the 'yotzim', says the article, must learn new behaviors in order to fit into 'secular' society. Apparently secular society also has strictures and confines. What is the difference between those identified as 'haredi' and those identified as 'secular'?
The 'former haredim' and 'yotzim' (also 'yotzim b'she'ela -- those who go out with questions' -- as though 'haredim' did not have questions!) are also named 'defectors'. The name conjures images of political violence and regime conspiracy behind a 'haredi' iron curtain, and on the 'secular' side, liberation and prosperity. Will we question the implications of violence and conspiracy or accept them as givens, absolutes? There is no evidence presented, so perhaps we are supposed to already know something about the haredi world, or to believe rumors we have heard, or to suppose that the truth of the implications is self-evident. Does the 'haredi' distinguish itself in violence and conspiracy? That would be an important topic for a newspaper article!
Perhaps there are problems with violence and conspiracy in the 'haredi welt'. Perhaps there are as well in the 'secular world'. Whether there is violence, however, is a separate issue from the usage of this implication to divide Jews into these categories and to exalt one group above the other.
Furthermore, despite the implication of prosperity in the 'secular', the 'defectors', by the article's own account, experience 'poverty'. Reality is more complicated than the article's words imply.

Another example of complication: the 'defectors' are sitting together for a Shabbat meal, so are they not still 'religious'? The article tells how kiddush was cut off and left unfinished. So then am I to think that they are not 'religious' and are instead 'secular'?
Jews often make mistakes in their observance, even in matters more severe than blessings, yet they are still called 'observant', 'religious', 'haredi', etc. So what does the story mean? Kiddush, Ha-Motzi, Birkat Ha-Mazon, gratitude, 'divrei Torah', words from the heart, a personally meaningful story, all these make a Shabbat meal special, and none are exclusive property of 'haredim'. Presence and absence of ritual observance and service of the heart cannot divide us.

The Jerusalem Post on its website enables readers to 'talkback', and many of us choose to do so.
The term 'talk-back' evokes 'back-talk', a child's raving against his parent. Those who choose to add their opinion, implies the title, are disobedient, immature, and anti-authority. We who talk-back, how are we perceived, by The Jerusalem Post, by ourselves, by others?
The talk-back forum is open only for some articles, so the discourse is limited to topics chosen by the newspaper's authorities; and the forum is open only the day following the article's publication, so meditated and thorough criticism is hardly possible. What are the effects of these limitations on our news, on our understanding of the news, on our relationship to media and authority, on our relationships Jew-to-Jew?
Many comment on this particular article and object to the dichotomy between 'haredi' and 'world'. A theme repeats: it is possible to 'be in the world' and also be 'shomer mitzvoth' (the term hardly translates, alternatively we sometimes say, 'religious'). This idea is meant to resolve a dichotomy, but instead two more dichotomies crop up: 'haredim' against 'plenty of people [who] live in the real world and have proper Torah values' (in the words of one talk-backer), and the 'plenty of people [who] live in the real world and have proper Torah values' against 'secular', i.e., those who, by implication, do not 'have proper Torah values'.
Do 'haredim' not live in the real world? (If not, where do they live?)
How does one 'live in the real world'?
And furthermore, do the 'secular' not have 'proper Torah values'?
Who is 'secular'?
What are proper Torah values? Justice and patience, for example? Is there a group of Jews that specifically shuns these values?
We proliferate division in the talk-back.

We can stop back-talking at each other and begin talking with each other. If we want solidarity and strength for our people, we must put away the habit of undermining each other -- ourselves -- with our words. If we aspire to the mitzvah and great princple 'v-ahavta l-re'akha komokha - you shall love your neighbor as yourself', we must think and speak among ourselves with trust and the will to learn.
If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?