People don't join cults knowingly. They get lured via deceptive recruiting, and Meor, the Orthodox Jewish outreach group, seems to engage in fair measure of that. This alone doesn’t make Meor a cult, but it’s a start.
Look at their website. Looks like Reform Judaism to me. What do you see there? Photos of groups of attractive young men and women in various modes of college style attire (tank tops, t-shirts, shorts), all mixed together, in many cases right up against each other, arm in arm. Looks like a good place to pick up a chick or to meet a guy. It starts right on the home page. It’s the first thing you see there.
Then there’s the programs page:
Then the campuses page:
You’d think you are landing on the JDate dating website or Club Med.
Here’s a photo from the Meor of Maryland website:
And Meor of Boston:
And the Rutgers Learning Network, aka Meor at Rutgers in New Jersey:
Yet, in the Orthodox world, males and females are kept largely separate. They sit separately in synagogue. In the kinds of schools to which Meor rabbis send their kids, boys and girls spend their days in separate buildings or in entirely different schools. Premarital sex is forbidden. Even holding hands with anyone from the opposite sex who is not one’s spouse is forbidden. That’s fine, but it is distinctly incongruent with the image Meor tries to create of its gatherings serving as a pickup joint. It would be one thing if Meor had mixed classes because the contrast from the college scene to Orthodox standards is just too drastic for the latter to be the starting point. Maybe they could have mixed classes with separate seating, as you find in the right-wing Modern Orthodox world. But to so glaringly advertise what looks like Spring Break in Miami is over the line and manipulative. The Unification Church, aka the Moonies, are famous for sending out pretty girls to lure young men into Moonie programming sessions. I have been approached by such women in Manhattan. Sex sells. Here's Machon Shlomo a school in Israel where Meor sends young men:
What else is advertised on the Meor site? Trips to exotic places like Poland and Israel. Meor didn’t invent this. The Birthright program did. And other than the Birthright trips, these trips come with a price tag. The trip to Poland is $850. But they don’t tell you that on the main Meor website.
What else? Outdoor adventures and fellowships. Ordinary students don’t get fellowships, but now you can get one too. Think how that will look on your resume. What else? Leadership training. (More on that in a bit). Lively discussion. Professional advancement. Sounds wonderful in all its vagueness and secularity.
And what about Judaism? Meor advertises a personalized journey of discovery of your Jewish identity on your schedule according to your interests. Participants “connect with Judaism on their own terms and in their own time”. They “pursue the aspects of Jewish knowledge and experiences that they desire.” It’s like the old Burger King commercials – ‘Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders, don’t upset us. All we ask is that you let us serve it your way.’ The vibe is "Hey there's no pressure here, we are all cool and easy going. It’s California, baby. But it will be exciting too.” You’ll become literate, wise, engaged, and committed to Jewish values – whatever they are as the website doesn’t specify. But it will be a “comprehensive Jewish experience.” All of that could appear on a website of any branch of Judaism – Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Humanistic, Jewish Renewal and whatever else is out there today. Take out the word Jewish and it could be the website of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or New Age witches.
Now look at the staff page. It's all Orthodox Jews -- rabbis in light beards and women in sheitls (wigs). The average college kid will not be able to spot this. They don't know that they are looking at sheitls. They probably don't even know the word. They think that's real hair. But I know some of these people. They are Orthodox and their goal is to make you Orthodox, even better, to make you right-wing neo-Litivsh/neo-yeshivish or some kind of Yeshivish as that's what most of them are. (More on that in a bit.) For example:
Those are Orthodox Jewish rabbis. They look like pleasant fellows. They might even be well-meaning, but they are neither Reform rabbis, nor Reconstructionist nor Conservative nor Humanistic. They are Orthodox. They are not glaringly Orthodox. There are no long beards or side-locks. None of them are wearing black hats in their photos; although I’ll bet that most of them wear them in real life. None of them are wearing black jackets; although I’ll bet that more than a few wear nothing but that in real life. Even the yarmulkes are not obvious on most of the men. The photographer got just the right angle so we don’t see the head covering. Not every college kid who sees the staff page will know that the staff is entirely Orthodox. But they are Orthodox. The organizational IRS 990 forms show many of their home addresses. And they are places like Lakewood, NJ, Silver Spring, Maryland, Brookline, Massachusetts. These are cities with Orthodox Jewish communities. The President and Vice-President for education live in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Do you see the word "Orthodox" anywhere on the website? Go page by page (there does not appear to be a search box). Look for the word "God". I didn't find it. Look for the words mitzvah or commandment. Look for the word "Torah". Look for “halacha”, or “law”. I couldn't find any of them. Look for the word “observance” as in “Torah observance”. These are all the words these people would use to describe the lifestyle to which they subscribe and to which they want college kids to subscribe. Yet these words don’t appear on the site.I downloaded the site and did a search, but couldn’t find any of these words in any of the web pages. (Searches made in January of 2023) The word religion only appears on the contact page by the questions, “What religion were you born into?” and “What Religion do you identify with?” It does not appear by any description of Meor or its programs. Why does it appear at all? It appears on the contact page because this is a group run by Orthodox Jews. Reconstructionist Jews don’t care if you are Jewish by birth, but Orthodox Jews only do outreach on Jews, ie. people born to mothers who were born to Jewish mothers. It’s just more evidence this is an Orthodox Jewish organization as much as they try to hide it.
The word “Shabbat” does appear. However, that word is used to name a program called “Shabbat on Campus” which is described as this: “For thousands of years, Shabbat has enriched the lives of Jewish individuals, families and communities around the world, bringing meaning and context to the week that was and renewed excitement for the week to come.” And here’s what’s involved in that: “a delicious home-cooked meal complete with great company, singing and lively discussion.”
Those words describing the particulars easily could describe a gathering of Reform Jews. Actually, they could describe a gathering of Christians, Hindus, or even hippies on a commune. I can see fans of the rock band the Grateful Dead having a home cooked meal with great company and conversation as they follow the band around the country. There’s no mention of the 39 prohibited categories of work, including cooking, traveling, washing of clothes, or lighting a flame which includes turning on lights or using the computer or phone. There’s no mention of the prohibition of moving undesignated objects like plants, hammers, or electronics. There’s no mention of two and a half hour long synagogue services.
The site mentions study of traditional Jewish texts. But it sounds like a college course -- study of texts. That’s an innocuous word. They study those texts at Rutgers University and the University of Massachusetts. This whole thing is presented as a collegiate Jewish studies program, as something that’s entirely the same as what prospects of the program are used to rather than something completely different which is what Orthodox Judaism is.
I'm an Orthodox Jew and am glad to see outreach to help non-Torah observant Jews to take on a life of Torah observance. I consider it meritorious. But you have to be honest about it. All this dishonesty reflects poorly on Orthodox Judaism.
Chabad, the Chassidic Orthodox Jewish organization, is honest and is overjoyed if you just take on just a little observance. I have seen accounts from Chabad shluchim (outreach workers) that say things like “And today dozens of women across America light Shabbos candles because of what we did that week.” They are overjoyed that you light Shabbos candles now. They don’t push and they don’t hide their intentions. Look at their website. There are articles about prayer, sacrifices, faith, mezuzahs, mikvahs, tefillin. There’s a whole section of Jewish practice. The word mitzvah is right on top.
You don’t have to go page by page in search of any hint of religion. They even use the word “souls.” It’s all there on the home page. And there are no photos of handsome young men and pretty young women all mixed together, grinning ear to ear. They don’t portray Judaism as a pickup joint. Moreover, Chabad rabbis look like Orthodox rabbis. They have full beards and wear large yarmulkes and black hats. Here’s a photo of Chabad outreach rabbis at a group photo in Brooklyn.
There is no mistaking them. Chabad is Orthodox. They don’t hide it in the least. Meor is another story.
Being truthful is a major part of being religious. God told Moses that he would redeem the Jews from Egypt at midnight. But Moses told the Egyptians that it would happen around midnight because he feared that the Egyptian clocks might be a bit off and they’d accuse Moses of being dishonest. So even to the slave owning Egyptians whom God was assaulting with plagues, Moses endeavored to be honest.
When you tolerate a person being dishonest with you then you weaken your own resolve to live truthfully. You become vulnerable to the next untruth, and your relationship with that person or organization becomes unhealthy. In this case, it starts that way. Your mind becomes confused and you start to accept fantasy as reality.
And that's how we wind up with a story told by a mother on CultNews.com of a son who started with Meor and ended up at Tehillos Shlomo, a yeshiva in Israel that is known even in the Orthodox Jewish world to be extreme. Meor had introduced to him the idea of going to Israel by trying to send him to Machon Yaakov, a small yeshiva in Israel that is owned and operated by the men who run Meor. However, the young man’s parents convinced him to stay in the USA, taking a job that he had worked hard for as a student at the Wharton school of business at the University of Pennsylvania. While in Manhattan, he got involved with the West Side Kollel. According to the mother, people at the Kollel also pushed him to attend yeshiva in Israel. (This is a pattern.) They instructed him to lie to his parents and say that he was going only for two months and not to specify where he was going. He quit his job and went to Israel. Now the boy says he’s staying there indefinitely. According to the mother, the rabbi in charge of the yeshiva refuses to return the parents’ phone calls.
The young man’s mother says that her son has become depressed, spaced-out, extreme in his views, rude, lacking in good hygiene, judgemental, stressed, overwhelmed, and agitated as he operates under the control of rabbis in Israel who seem to monitor his every move. He refuses to eat even at genuinely kosher restaurants because they are not kosher enough. The mother says that the boy was nothing like this beforehand. The mother summarized the history:
Our son was transformed by Meor and a network of “Jewish Outreach” rabbis that completely changed his life through their undue influence. He was once an independent, analytical, well-informed, free thinking, happy-go-lucky soul. Now he has been distorted into a miserable, tired, rigid, condescending, racist, and empty person dependent upon his “leaders” for every basic life decision.
Other parents have written eerily similar accounts.
How do we go from leadership training to being a de facto slave to some strange man that you met four months ago? How do we go from programs in professional development to young people declining good job offers? (This is particularly alarming considering that you need a six figure salary to support an Orthodox Jewish family today.)
Well, Meor really doesn't offer bonafide programs in leadership or professional development. Look at the Meor leadership training. Refer to their very own description: “MEOR’s Maimonides Leaders Fellowship provides the most promising Jewish students on leading U.S. campuses with a unique opportunity to explore Judaism at a level of depth and sophistication commensurate with their academic skills and aspirations. In a dynamic and open environment, students are introduced to classical Jewish philosophy, the relevance of Jewish wisdom to contemporary issues and Jewish perspectives on some of life’s most challenging questions.”
Do you see any leadership training described there? Why does a leadership program consist of exploring Judaism? The promotional video for the Maimonides Leadership program at one of the campuses actually describes the agenda for the program as follows: “Forty-five minutes to an hour of introduction to Judaism. The second half of the class is a motivational speaker.” For this they give a $400 stipend upon completion. That’s not leadership training. That’s religious proselytizing through trickery. And what’s the connection to Maimonides? They are just using his name for credibility. The material isn’t geared specifically to him or his teachings.
I have talked to young people who have participated in the so-called leadership training at Meor. It consists of study of religious texts, mostly through source sheets. That's it. I asked, what about it concerned leadership? One disgruntled guy was very honest about it. He said, "Nothing. It had nothing to do with leadership." Another fumbled for an answer. He said finally. "Well, the leadership is that we go out and get new people into the program."
That’s not leadership. That’s obedience to the organization and its pretensions to constituting a movement. Yes, Meor sees itself as a movement and you can be one of its leaders. “Our mission is to create a vibrant Jewish future led by a new generation…”
The Moonies also offer what they call leadership programs that are not really leadership programs. This is common with cults. As webcaster Jordan Harbinger noted about his encounter with cults, “Even I have been duped into what you might call a leadership class. And you show up and there ain’t nothing about leadership going on here.”
Cults can’t offer actual leadership training because they want you to be their follower. However, they do offer you the ’once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to pretend to be a leader by following them in their revolution. That’s not true leadership. It’s being a lieutenant in somebody else’s army, following their picture of how things should be.
The Moonies take this to cartoonish proportions with promises to cult members of leading their own countries after the Unification Church takes over the world. Meor isn’t quite so grandiose about it, but it still is plenty grandiose.
It’s delusional too. Traditional Jewish texts offer many different things but leadership is not prominent among them. And leadership emanating from a new generation of college students is not found there at all. Orthodox Jews are very heavy on obedience to tradition and authority. You remember Fiddler on the Roof: “Tradition, tradition.” Orthodox Jews follow rabbis, particularly elderly ones, and rabbis follow the rabbis of earlier generations, tracing back to the Talmud and earlier still. Orthodox Jewry, particularly in our times, doesn’t look to young people for leadership.
What’s the Talmud? It’s a comprehensive and complicated literature of law, derivation of law, and ethical teachings presented in roughly 1.8 million words. By comparison, the 37 plays of Shakespeare use 835,997 words. When’s the last time that you read all of Shakespeare? How many people are experts in all of Shakespeare’s plays? It’s a formidable task. On top of that, the Talmud is accompanied by hundreds of commentaries that might contain even more words.
The Talmud was redacted 1,500 years ago, as based on written and oral teachings given by God to Moses more than 3,300 years ago. Orthodox Judaism, which is where Meor wants to take you, is not led by college students. It’s led mostly by Talmudic scholars. This applies in particular to the branch of Orthodox Judaism that the leaders and employees of Meor subscribe to. Newcomers find themselves taking the backseat. They don’t become leaders of anything more than a small study group in their house. They don’t lead the generation. It’s bad enough to promise leadership programs that in actuality consist of an introduction to religious thought (and propaganda), but it’s completely cynical to promise leadership in some kind of new Jewish future to young people who, if they become Orthodox, will be lucky to lead their own families within communities that cling to tradition.
If I signed up for a leadership program that was advertised to involve the teachings of Lao-Tzu and then a bunch of Buddhist Monks walked in the room in robes and started talking to me about the eternity of the universe, the universal spirit, and the beauty of the Buddhist life, I’d exit the room. Same with a leadership class involving the teachings of St. Augustine that turned out to consist of readings about Christ, the Apostles, Mary, the Trinity, and the Resurrection. I’d run because I had been lied to. And it’s very dangerous to be around people who lie to you.
What about the Meor Internship program: “While living and working in Jerusalem like a true resident (rather than a tourist), students take classes in Jewish and Israeli history, literature and culture, participate in guided study of Jewish philosophy and business ethics, and work with mentors to develop plans for personal and professional advancement.”
Where's the internship there? Internship means working in a job, getting work experience. It doesn't mean "guided study of Jewish philosophy." Also not qualifying as an internship is a brief chat about professional advancement with a mentor, who probably knows nothing about any actual careers but knows mostly about Orthodox Judaism of a particular type.
A Meor promotional video talks about actual six to eight week internships in Israel (far from parents and support networks) that are accompanied once again by guided Jewish philosophy. I guess this can be considered some kind of on-the-job experience. The program description references “high-level” internships, but the testimonials in the video describe basic internships helping out in an office, which is what you’d expect. No college kid walks into a high-level job, and few people can make any kind of contribution in six weeks to an organization or field with which they are not familiar such as to justify their being part of a high-level anything. The use of the term high-level is problematic. It’s more of Meor’s hyperbole.
Even if there is a semblance of an internship here, I fear it sounds more like a front-group, which is a cult tactic of attracting people through their interests when the real goal is to bring them into the group. According to cult expert Steve Hassan, the Moonies have 100s of these groups. They have artists’ groups for people interested in art, business groups for people interested in business, and so on. People participate in the group because of their occupational ambitions, not because they want to be part of the Unification Church. But along the way, they get exposed to cult propaganda that draws some of them in. That’s the goal all along. If the Meor internships weren’t accompanied by “guided study of Jewish philosophy” then it wouldn’t arouse my suspicion. It would be even better if Meor specified that the Jewish philosophy was given from an Orthodox Jewish perspective. But as I mentioned, the word Orthodox doesn’t seem to appear on their website. If they did that, I’d say, OK they are trying to get you to be Torah observant through a job internship. That would be manipulative but not devious. The way it stands, Meor is being devious.
Appeal to the ego is also common with cults as it reflects the big egos and ambitions of the cult leaders. Meor is interested in "the most promising Jewish students on leading U.S. campuses." What about regular people from ordinary schools? Not interested in them? By contrast, Chabad is interested in everybody.
What else is appealing? Money. The concerned mother in her post on CultNews says that her son “was offered a large sum of money (for a college student) to attend a weekly lecture series.” Meor was offering students a $400 stipend to participate in its Maimonides Leaders Fellowship program at the University of Pennsylvania but stopped in 2014 after parents complained. Meor at Rutgers still pays $400 for attendance.
So where are we? Meor pretends to be non-denominational – at least in its advertising – but is really Orthodox. Its real goal does not appear to be to provide leadership training or internships but to introduce young people to Torah thought and observance with the leadership training as bait. They use also money and sex as bait. Their methods are problematic in my opinion. I would imagine that a number of smart kids realized that they had been tricked and walked away resentfully. This is a big problem because these guys may never return to Judaism after that. But what if some good comes to some of the participants. Maybe Meor shows them some edifying material. Maybe it teaches them a bit about religious life, about the commandments which constitute it. Maybe we could live with it if Meor stopped there.
But it doesn’t stop there. Meor wants to ship you out to yeshivas and seminaries in Israel. And that’s where the real trouble begins as some of them are crazy places.
Meor and other outreach groups enter dangerous territory when they employ a dishonest approach. The outreach groups get the youth to lower their guard to enter a lifestyle that few of them would have agreed to if everything was said up front. It could be that the leaders of some of the outreach groups themselves don’t have a completely negative view of the world, but if they are going to bring people in, they have to guide them constructively, not hand them off to neo-Litvish yeshivas in Israel. (In yeshiva, you don’t even talk to women, a far cry from those photos on the Meor website.) Otherwise, they are satisfying the first stage of cult activity: deceptive recruiting, and handing people over to other groups to complete the other stages: isolation, personality breakdown, and reprogramming.
So we might say that no single organization here by itself is a cult, but that together they comprise a cult. Meor likely would not send a young person to Tehillas Shlomo. Likewise, the head of Tehillas Shlomo isn’t likely to advertise leadership classes where a young person pursues Judaism on his own terms. However, the two together make a poisonous brew. They are likely not consciously working together. Rather, dare I say, there appears to be some kind of devilish force that is coordinating them. Orthodox Judaism is not a cult. However, together, these groups are turning Orthodox Judaism into a cult for these young people.
Meor isn’t the only culprit. There is an outreach organization that a decade ago featured on their website what I’ll call the me-ism campaign. Since they have since dropped the campaign, there’s no need for me to tell you the organization name. They showed a photo of a handsome young man (seemed to be a model) and wrote underneath it Bradism. That is to say, his name was Brad, but he wasn’t pursuing Judaism, which sounds too imposing and impersonal for today’s youth. He was pursuing Bradism. Judaism was going to be crafted for him to such an extent that it took his name. I don’t recall all the names I saw there, but it was something like Julieism, Karenism, Brianism.
I have a friend who wrote to the organization protesting that such a campaign was disingenuous since the actual Orthodox Jewish world talked much more about the yoke of Torah and obedience to rabbis. This isn’t to say that one can’t go on a personal journey in Orthodox Judaism. You can and should do that. Judaism should be a blend of the personal and the normative. But to call it Bradism? That’s ridiculous and not good preparation for what people will encounter if they go to many of the yeshivas. In all my years, I have never been asked by anyone about the state of my relationship with God, my awareness of God, or the personal aspects to my consciousness as a Jew. But I have been asked numerous times “Do you have a rav?”, ie. a rabbi to rule over your life. And I have told even more times, “You have to have rav.” They go as far as warning women not to marry men who do not have a rav. Over and over again, rabbinic authority is the theme. And the people who run the aforementioned organization subscribe to that approach. So calling the religion Bradism is a lie by their standards. Lying is another trait of cults.
I know of two other outreach institutions (one of them Machon Yaakov) that tell people that anything they do now they’ll be better at if they become Orthodox. Now that too is ridiculous. I know of a woman who was a classical musician with enough talent to get a job with a professional orchestra. However, she had to give it up because orchestras generally perform on the Sabbath and an Orthodox Jew does not play musical instruments on the Sabbath. OK, religion can involve sacrifice, but let’s be honest about it. It’s very difficult to be a professional journalist and nearly impossible to be a professional athlete as an Orthodox Jew. The same applies to many other professions and interests.
So many of the promises are deceptive as is the demeanor of the outreach people when compared to some of the handlers in neo-Litvish yeshivas. Look at this blog comment from a guy who protested to one of the rabbis at his yeshiva that he was being brainwashed: “I know I have been indoctrinated for 3 years (or, as one of the rabbis put it : "we, brainwashing you ? Listen, son, if your brain got dirty because of the schmutz of the outside world, of course it needs some cleaning !").
How obnoxious is that? Read it to say, sure I’m brainwashing you. You need it. And I’m just the guy to do it. As one blogger wrote, “they pretend to have an answer for EVERY question!” This is the kind of blunt indoctrination that goes on in some yeshivas, particularly those for newcomers because kids who have been religious their whole lives won’t put up with it. They know better. But a newcomer is vulnerable. He encounters an abrasive arrogance unlike any that he’s ever seen before. (Unfortunately, New York City and Israeli culture dominate the Orthodox world today, and that means chutzpah.)
Another example is the response of the head of a yeshiva in Israel to a concerned parent as described in the CultNews article, “I can see why he left his family. If you were my family I would leave too.”
Hello, it’s called a concerned mother, you stupid man. If the boy had encountered this kind of attitude on his first exposure he would have walked away.
That’s why outreach groups put on a friendly face. They get pleasant, oftentimes good-hearted and well-meaning people to butter you up. It’s classic sales. You feel like the sales guy really likes you and that he cares. Cult deprogrammers call this love-bombing. Lonely people – and many of us are lonely – get bathed in a fabricated warmth that seduces them.
When you meet the friendliest people you have ever known, who introduce you to the most loving group of people you’ve ever encountered, and you find the leader to be the most inspired, caring and compassionate and understanding person you’ve ever met, and then you learn that the cause of the group is something you never dared hope could be accomplished, and all of this sounds too good to be true—it probably is too good to be true! Don’t give up your education, your hopes, and ambitions to follow a rainbow.
This is a quote from Jeannie Mills, an ex-member of the Peoples’ Temple—she was later found murdered.
Newcomers to Orthodox Judaism encounter lots of love bombing. They are invited to strangers’ homes for the Sabbath where everyone is on their best behavior for this new prospect. That is not in itself a bad thing. People believe in their religion and believe it can be of good to others. You have to be on your best behavior in order to make a good first impression.
The problem with the neo-Litvish world is that becoming a religious Jew is not enough for them. They insist that you go to a yeshiva or seminary in Israel. There’s a different kind of Judaism there. Whereas the Jewish texts that you saw in the outreach program likely talk about the commandments and a complete Jewish life, many of the yeshivas in Israel care only about pilpul, about abstract study of tiny selections from the Gemara. It’s a whopping bait and switch more drastic than that of Meor’s non-denominational facade and its true ambitions underneath. You see that in America too, but yeshiva guys in America often go to college on the side. Yeshivas in Israel are far more extreme in their approach.
Old-time Jewish outreach was honest. ‘Hey I’m a Torah observant Jew. I see that you are engaging in forbidden practices. Can I teach about your religious heritage and the meaningful life of an Orthodox Jew?’ In the old days, they didn’t ship you off to yeshiva in Israel. They did what Chabad does. They tried to help you to observe the commandments and build a life around God. You didn’t have to move. You didn’t have to drop out of school. You didn’t have to close down your business. You didn’t have to drop your friends or develop strained relations with your family.
Actually, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky (1891-1986) advised this kind of outreach. He was a contemporary figure of the old-time yeshiva variety. He said that the goal of outreach should be simply to help the newcomer take on the commandments. He should not impose conformity or eradicate the essence of the person. Rav Yaakov, as he is affectionately known, said that it is important for the newcomer to feel normal. He said that, for example, the typical newcomer will not feel normal if he does not complete his or her college education. Thus, he or she should not be discouraged from doing so.
While Rabbi Kamenetsky is held in high esteem even in the neo-Litvish world, he is not listened to on this matter. Like many of the old-time figures, he is used as a lure, as bait to catch the fish. The Orthodox world is proud of its great rabbis, and tells stories about them, stories about their wisdom and sterling character. We put photos of their noble faces on our walls. But not all parts of the Orthodox Jewish world necessarily listen to these sages when it comes to yeshiva curriculum or outreach.
So off to Israel you go. Now stuck there in an institution it’s harder to leave. The student is isolated, surrounded by dominating people who all seem to be of one mind. The young person starts to lose himself. But as Walter Lippmann said, “Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.” One former Machon Shlomo student writes on his blog, “one has to admit it is a cookie-cutter institution with a very set hashgafa (outlook)” He added, “That was one of the truly cultish things about machon shlomo- the daily reinforcement of the idea that they had the patented ‘correct’ view of judaism and no one, not artscroll, not the chassidim, no one really ‘got it’ but them.” He writes also, “questions are NOT part of the machon shlomo curriculum. In fact, guys are hand picked for their competitiveness and non-questioning nature.” Students called it MacClone Shlomo because it produced clones of the leader.
Isn’t it amazing that the same guy who ran Machon Shlomo when this blogger was there has Meor giving you the appearance of offering no-pressure, personalized study where you cultivate your own views?
And it’s not just the attitude of world=bad and yeshiva=good that messes up these kids. It’s all the fear tactics, all the shame. The Meor website doesn’t utter the word gehennom, which is the Aramaic word for hell. But you hear that word in certain yeshivas over and over again. They terrorize the young people with the threat of hell for every infraction.
In many yeshivas, you’ll hear about gehennom plus the phrase yetzer hara – translation, evil inclination. All people have a yetzer hara (inclination for the bad) and a yetzer tov (inclination for the good). It’s the angel and devil on the shoulders in the old cartoons. But the good one doesn’t seem to apply to young students. They are portrayed as having only an evil inclination. That’s the same as a Christian fundamentalist calling you the devil. “He’s got the devil in him,” they’ll say about a child. That’s how it’s presented in the crazier places.
There are normal institutions where this is handled appropriately, where the idea of the yetzer hara is instructive and the idea of the yetzer tov is emphasized. But from the accounts of the parents on the Cult News site, we can see that many young people are being directed to dysfunctional places where students are flushed with negativity about the world and about themselves. This all leads to increased dependency on the rabbi which can become a master-slave relationship if you are not careful. After a year of this, a person’s brain can shut off. After that, ANYTHING can happen.
So why Israel? There are plenty of yeshivas in New York. There’s a nice Litvish place for beginners in Monsey, New York called Toras Dovid. There’s one in Long Island, New York called Shaar Yashuv. Chabad has several places for beginners in America. There’s one in Morristown, New Jersey, one in Brooklyn, and one in Miami. Why not suggest those places? Why is it always Israel? And why is the internship program in Israel? Are there no jobs in Boston, New York, Chicago or Washington D.C.? I’d think that there would be quite a bit more for English speakers.
Is it because, as I mentioned, the guys who run Meor operate two small yeshivas in Israel – Machon Shlomo and Machon Yaakov. Is that why they send you to Israel because they need tuition paying students in the building? Tuition at Machon Shlomo is $10,500 per year and at Machon Yaakov it’s $20,000 per year and everyone is obligated to pay either at the time of their enrollment or later on.
A person who is becoming religious is going through a comprehensive life change. Does he or she really need to pile onto his or her strained psyche a new culture that is conducted in a strange language. If you go to yeshiva in New York, and it gets overwhelming, you can take a short flight or even a Greyhound bus back to Detroit to calm down, say hello to parents, hook up with old friends, to feel normal, to ground yourself again. You can go to a baseball game or to the lake where you and your friends used to boat.
But in Israel you don’t know anybody. You are stuck in your yeshiva. You are isolated. You don’t speak the language. As you will recall, isolation is a primary trick of cults. Your brain is overwhelmed with information. Information overload is another trick of cults. You are dependent on the yeshiva, which could be a nurturing place, but could easily be one that is taking advantage of you.
Why would they do that? Why do rough edged men who don’t really seem to care about people work at some of the outreach yeshivas? I don’t know what’s in the heart of any man, but I’ll tell you this, there’s money in it. Decades ago an acquaintance of mine was ordered by a yeshiva to walk around selling raffle tickets. He approached one religious man who refused. He was a working man and he didn’t like the idea of guys studying forever on his dime. When my acquaintance told him that his yeshiva was a place for beginners (baalei teshuvah) his whole attitude changed. He bought a ticket. For baalei teshuva he’ll give money. So there are jobs to be had at these schools for these men who have no other way of earning a living.
But only religious Jews are going to give money to help people to become observant. If you want big money, you have to appeal to the non-Torah observant Jews. They might be Reform. They might be Jewish in name only. But they have some kind of Jewish identity and will give money for trips to Poland to learn about the Holocaust and to Israel.
Ever seen the list of American billionaires? Around half are Jewish. There’s a lot of money to be had in general Jewish outreach. And so that’s what you see on the Meor website, general Jewish outreach, even though they also seek to find students for their neo-Litvish “yeshivas” in Israel, and to get what they deem will be divine rewards for making you Orthodox. What Meor has done is found a way of getting non-Torah observant/non-Orthodox Jews to fund Orthodox Jewish outreach without their knowledge. I don’t want to be overly cynical, but I find it hard to justify what’s going on here.
Meor’s finances are puzzling. Several of the campus branch directors earn more than $100,000 a year. Meor’s yearly revenue in 2019 was around $4.7 million and it appears that most of it went to salaries either through direct payment to Meor Inc. staff or cash contributions to subsidiaries where most of the money goes for salaries. Certainly the IRS 990s of many of the local branches of Meor indicate that most of the revenue goes to salaries of the directors. However, judging from the inactivity on their websites and the program expenses list on the 990s, it’s not clear what they are doing to earn it. For example, in 2019 one of the Meor branches on the East Coast had $499,439 in revenue but gave out $276,799 in employee compensation. Most of that compensation went to two people, the Executive director getting $135,596 and the Vice President getting $101,391. Meanwhile, they spent $55,156 on programs. Maybe some part of the salaries can be considered program expenses too, but again, there does not appear to be much happening at the branch.
At another branch, revenue in 2020 was $369,560, employee compensation $225,734, and program expenses $57,599.
Yet, at the moment on their Homepage under the title Upcoming Events, it says “No upcoming events at the moment.” This is right in the middle of the school year. Purim is in a month, and they have nothing announced for that.
There are two full-time employees making excellent salaries for non-profit work. What are they doing all day long? Let’s propose that they fund-raise via Meor Inc. accounts and get the money back as cash contributions from Meor. Whatever the real story is, they pay themselves handsomely. Usually fund-raisers get 25% of funds raised, not 60%. Maybe they get paid for the fundraising and the administrative and outreach work. Still, those are good salaries. What are the donors getting for their money? I’m only going by the IRS 990 form and the websites, so maybe I’m judging without having the full story. But it seems very strange and needs to be explained.
And why would they first channel the funds through Meor Inc? Is that to make it seem like a bigger organization than it is. Meor talks about itself like it’s some kind of major success story, a revolution that has taken over the outreach world. Yet, judging by the websites, there’s not much happening at any Meor branch. I don’t know if any of them have their own facility. It seems that all activity takes place at campus facilities and in private homes. Making themselves seem so happening and popular is another lure. Meor claims 26,000 contacts over 20 years. That’s around 1,300 a year at 10 locations or 130 a year each, an average of 2-3 per week. That’s not so much. Chances are good that they include in that count people who came for five minutes and ran away. I don’t want to pick on anyone who is trying humbly to do good in the world, but we are seeing here dangerous grandiosity and dishonesty that opens Meor up to critique.
Many of the lower staff and volunteers might be well-meaning. They are being used, and they may not realize the harm they are doing. Many of them don’t understand the complexities and challenges of becoming an Orthodox Jew. They don’t understand the dangers of moving people too fast and of not properly addressing the concerns of students. Somebody should train them. They figure, these college kids don’t know anything about Orthodox Judaism and I have been doing it my whole life, so surely I am qualified to teach them. But that’s like me saying that I can, without training, be a pediatrician because I am an adult so surely I know more about medicine than a child. The soul is a delicate instrument. You have to be very careful when you do surgery there.
The same applies to any rabbis who are dealing with newcomers. Many of them don’t mean harm; although they don’t seem bothered when they cause it. They are foolish and attached to a very simplistic outlook on life. Maybe that outlook works for them and their families, but that doesn’t mean it works for all. In general, kids raised in what the world calls Ultra-Orthodoxy don’t take the extremist rabbis so seriously. They have fathers and uncles to give them a more sensible perspective. Newcomers don’t have that.
Ultra-Orthodoxy is not itself a problem. I realize it seems extreme to outsiders, but so do the Amish, and the Amish have impressive communities. So do the Ultra-Orthodox. (They actually call themselves Charedim.) I know many fine Charedim and lovely Charedi (Ultra-Orthodox) communities. It works if you grow up in it, but for most newcomers, it’s too much. And a wise rabbi realizes this.
The Meor organization as a whole in my opinion is hurting at least some people. They might help a few. They might bring some people closer to Judaism. Maybe some have found marriage partners via the mixed groups. I haven’t interviewed every person who passed through there. So whether or not Meor is actually good for anybody, many of the young people who buy into the “seek greatness” allure and disappear to Israel get ruined, particularly when they marry unsuitable partners after 4 dates. I can tell you horror stories that I have witnessed.
A blogger who went to Machon Shlomo wrote: “There are divorces and unhappy marriages behind the scenes. There are unhappy guys. The place should tell potential BT's everything up front. Otherwise, it's a major stumbling block.”
He wrote elsewhere, “I've had 4 former machon shlomo alums contact me about their truly depressing married lives and I know several others personally. I feel like I dodged a bullet, frankly!”
This is not to put the blame on the wives. They probably are unhappy too. I have seen marriages that are just bad matches. I have seen those where the wife is crazy and the husband normal, and I have seen the opposite.
Another former student wrote:
Hi... I also went to Machon Shlomo, also quite a while ago, and also have gone down in observance lately.
I can totally identify with your wife's statement "If you find the right spouse becoming frum will make your life great, if not it will ruin your life." I got married after a very short going out period and engagement. When I brought up my misgivings while there was still time, I was told, "love comes later" and "love is not important" (even though those 2 contradict each other). The marriage was hopeless from the start but I've let it go on and on, with kids of course. Now my life is very confused and messed up and I feel trapped.
Also the financial aspect with the crazy tuition prices is getting me down. Before I went to the Machon, I was making a great salary and and could have easily advanced or started my own business to the point where I would be almost ready to retire now. As it is, I/we are a financial basket case with no retirement plan whatsoever and no plan even to pay for weddings / college / yeshiva or whatever.
I often wish I could go back and change the part of my life where I became frum, or at least where I got married.
Does this mean Orthodox Judaism is synonymous with bad marriages? No, it just means you have to look before you leap. You have to date for a sufficient period of time, which for newcomers means at least six months. (This sounds like a ridiculously short period of time to the outside world.) The yeshiva world doesn’t do that for various reasons, but baalei teshuvah must follow different rules. Their lives have just changed radically and in many cases they are playing out identities and roles. They have to be much more careful when choosing marriage partners. The rabbis who guide baalei teshuvah have to understand that. Many of the rabbis are so fanatical in their beliefs that they don’t bother to build a more complex outlook to address the needs of newcomers. And love does matter. Almost every troubled marriage I have seen (and I have seen many of them) resulted from the couple being pushed by an outside party and their misgivings about the suitability of the match ignored.
I am not trying to indict all rabbis. The Lubavitcher Rebbe said, “When it comes to a marriage, not I can help you, not your father can help you, not your mother can help you, not your seichel [your intellectual faculties] can help you. The only thing that can help you is your heart. If you feel for her, go ahead. If you don't, do not."
That sounds good to me. The reader might be surprised to hear this, but I have found in general that Chassidic rebbes in general are less extreme or not extreme at all when handling newcomers. Probably people who don’t know anything about Orthodox Judaism imagine Chassidim to be the most extreme because their clothing is so unusual. But in fact, Chassidic leaders generally encourage people to earn a living, don’t terrify them about the world, don’t impose fear of hell every other minute, and don’t view the purpose of life to be abstract argumentative study of a few pages of Talmud. All of that is neo-Litvish (which again is not the same as Litvish). I know more than a few people who have been told by Chassidic rebbes to slow down, not to change their clothing, not to toss away all their music, not to quit college, etc. That’s healthy. That approach can work, since, as the blogger wrote, “the true harm came in my being cajoled and pushed into levels of observance.” Sephardic rabbis can also be more reasonable.
If you tell the horror stories to the people who run Meor and some of the other Orthodox outreach organizations (not Chabad) they’ll just say, ‘Oh those guys had problems.’ I don’t know if they started out with problems, but they sure have problems now. And even if they entered with certain psychological challenges, religion is supposed to heal you, not make you sicker.
Of course you’ll find testimonials of praise on the various yeshiva websites from former students. Maybe those places were good for some of the students. But there are people who like the Church of Scientology too. Whether it’s good for some and not good for others, they are mostly very different from Meor and some of the other outreach organizations.
Are students warned about the difference? From what I hear, they are told only fairy tales about how going to yeshiva in Israel is the next stage in this exciting journey, the necessary step for “the best and the brightest,” a phrase that actually appears on the Machon Shlomo website. Nobody I have talked to was warned that the laid back atmosphere is about to change to super intensity, that the broad mindedness is about to become isolation and control – for your own good of course. This is deceptive recruiting. And the campus directors get good salaries to engage in it.
What to do? Well, trying to get your sons to drop religious practice probably is going to backfire. And there is no need to try it. Orthodox Judaism, when practiced properly, is not a cult. It is actually a very healthy lifestyle that involves independent thought, dignified living, reason, and common sense. What you have to do is get away from the crazy people, the ones who don’t embrace the entire religion, the ones who take little pieces of it and build their little fiefdoms on it.
You might suggest different approaches to your kids, ones that include working, bathing, and thinking for oneself. Actual Torah Judaism includes all of that. Modern Orthodoxy has that. Check out Yeshiva University and its many affiliated institutions. Seek out the writings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. Chabad also is not controlling. See Chabad.org. Try to get them to switch to one of the more healthy schools for beginners like Yeshivas Darche Noam, Orayata, Dvar Yerushalayim, Maaynot, and Hadar Hatorah. Authentic Litvish Judaism in general is also different as I have explained. But one is seeing less and less of that these days. It’s quite different from the fake Judaism that sadly has a hold on part of the outreach world.
Comments
Post a Comment