Chareidi Feudal System...

Rampant poverty. Control by a few elite. Limited (if any) education.

Sounds like the Middle Ages, doesn't it (less the diseases)? Well, it's not. It's the Yeshivish/Chareidi world. The, if you will, other part of the non-frum world.

So many people love to pontificate about how horrible the Conservative and Reform Movements are in regard to Judaism. They don't keep Torah, are Mechalel Shabbos, etc. Ok. But most of them are nice and I'm tired about hearing how awful they are. On a personal level, my in-laws, who are Conservative, have helped us immensely over the years. Can't say the same, except for one instance, of the Chareidi/Yeshivish, or even the regular frum community.

But nobody wants to admit that the Yeshivish/Chareidi community are just as not frum as the other groups. I'm not sure I understand why. Sure, you get the reasons of they keep Mitzvos. So what. It's not even really true. They keep some Mitzvos, the ones they choose to keep, just like the Conservative and Reform Movement.

Instead, what you have a modified version of the Medieval Feudal system. You the overlords, today known as the Chareidi "Gedolim," who essentially control all aspects of one's life, including how one should think. Ed, from a few posts ago, is a blaring example of this. Chareidim no longer think for themselves. They allow their "Gedolim" to do the thinking for them. The result is the "Gedolim" have far too much power over their "peasant" population. The Gedolim have become so powerful, so absolutely powerful, that I fear, as happens with power, they have become corrupt as well. Part of the fault is their own, part goes to their "handlers," the Kana'im who surround these "Gedolim" and control all the "Gedolim" see and hear, kind of the way the evil advisors would to their lord in Medieval society.

These "Gedolim," with their absolute power, control their population by keeping them economically depressed. There is more poverty now in the Chareidi community than there ever was before. But that poverty is also due in part to the "Gedolim" controlling how educated a person becomes. In Israel, in the Chareidi schools, it is assur to learn secular studies past a certain age. In the Chareidi community, women may now only be educated so far, and no more. The Chareidi "Gedolim" fear so much for their power, they can't allow others to figure out there is more the world than their twisted version of the Emes. And certainly not the women in their society. See this post.

And speaking of Emes, the Chareidi version of is apparently the only correct version of it, and anything else is pure sheker. This too goes against a very basic concept of Yiddishkeit - "Shiv'im Panim La'Torah - the Torah has seventy faces" - meaning there's more than one way to skin a cat (pardon the cliche). There is more than one correct way to interpret Torah, and when the Chareidiim reject all other interpretations, they also reject what it is to be Jewish. And by threatening their followers with the indisputable FACT that their is no other Emes, and that to believe so is tantamount to heresy, well, by doing that they have achieved thought control as well.

So it seems to me this is what the Yeshivish/Chareidi community has become - a pseudo-Medieval society that its leaders perpetuate because to change it would mean to lose power.