The electric attraction of Orthodox Judaism - opinion

I’m not telling you this for any kind of self-praise. Honestly. Rather, I’m sharing it because I knew the impact it would have.

Religious Jews have gotten tired of being punching bags for people like Julia Haart of the Netflix series My Unorthodox Life who beat up on their Judaism in order to become famous. They’ve gotten tired of being referred to as “ultra-Orthodox” with its connotations for extremism and fundamentalism. And they’re fed up with being portrayed as backward rejectors of modernity.

The truth is that Orthodox Judaism is quickly establishing itself as the very future of the Jewish people, and that’s why people responded so positively to the article. Not only is Orthodoxy not inhibited about sex, the way Haart portrays it, but precisely the opposite is true. Orthodox men and women are told before marriage to swing for the chandeliers once they tie the knot.

While other segments of the Jewish community struggle not just with intermarriage but, even more worrisome, lack of marriage, religious Jewish men and women are marrying in their early twenties and having large families that are replenishing the Jewish people.

The other night I went to a kosher pizza shop in Monsey, New York. I was gobsmacked by how busy they were and the sheer weight of numbers. I quickly posted a video to Instagram just as a curiosity item for my mostly non-Jewish followers. It quickly racked up thousands of views. People could not believe how large the Orthodox community is becoming.

Orthodox Jews have now captured the mainstream public imagination, which is why you now see so many TV series about religious Jewry, and not just boring, self-indulgent drivel like My Unorthodox Life but passionate and moving series like Shtisel, which so many of my non-Jewish friends have watched and praised.

Travel during the summer to the Catskills and get ready to be blown away. The hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jewish men and women who inhabit the bungalow colonies beggar the imagination. This is not Bnei Brak or Jerusalem. This is the mountains of New York.

Haart can assail the “ultra-Orthodox” all she wants. It will not change the simple math that they are the exploding future of the Jewish people.

It’s a truism that the large organizations like AIPAC and the ADL better begin to address. The smart communal activists who can see the future are hiring people who have connections in the hassidic Jewish world, even as the more ignorant elements of our community continue to dismiss Orthodoxy as something that will forever be on the fringes of Jewishness.

NO SEGMENT of Orthodoxy has been more unfairly attacked than our women, especially by people like Haart. Orthodox women are portrayed as submissive, unattractive, monolithic baby-makers. They are described as wearing baggy clothing and being – quite literally – bald.

How gross. Tell me of one other female demographic who would ever be subject to such negative stereotypes and such offensive depictions.

The truth, of course, is precisely the opposite.

Orthodox Jewish women have a feminine mystique and womanly allure that is unmatched.

Attraction is only 10% of the body. The other 90% is the mind. The essence of attraction is the sexual polarity of masculine and feminine. And men are drawn to Orthodox Jewish women because of how strongly the feminine polarity is captured by them – in dress, speech and action.

The erotic mind works through differentiation. Sexual polarity is key. When, say, a husband and wife become too alike, when they do everything together and never have any space, they begin to tire of one another. This is due not only to the loss of novelty, but more importantly to the loss of sexual polarity.

This is a strong argument for the need for zones of privacy even in marriage. Yes, when we marry we become one flesh. But it’s important that we remain one flesh clothed in two bodies. We dare never become one person.

To be sure, I am a great believer in the most intense intimacy in marriage and would never advocate distance between husband and wife in the most important spheres. But there is a good reason that Jewish law says that a wife should preserve a modicum of modesty even in the bedroom, and that a husband not attend to hygienic needs in his wife’s presence. Not everything in marriage is designed to be shared.

This is why the Bible insists on certain incontrovertible differences that must forever remain between men and women. It says that men must not wear a woman’s clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5) and men are not to uproot the hair on their faces (Leviticus 19:27) (yes, that is the reason many Orthodox men have beards). Even in external appearance, men and women share differences.

Who says that American womanhood needs to be defined by sexual experimentation before marriage and revelatory dress that emphasizes women as eye candy for men? With such emphasis, Haart is actually behind the times, as was Victoria’s Secret over the last years as it watched its market share plummet along with its stock price.

I see more women following the Orthodox female code of intense sexual expression that comes about through passionate monogamy and joyous marriage; of more feminine dress as a form of intimate outward expression rather than submission to a cultural demand of catering to male fantasy; and finally, a belief that motherhood requires no apologetics but is a majestic calling even among the most highly educated women, as Orthodox Jewish women usually are.

Orthodox Judaism is ascending. Neither critics nor scoffers will stop it. All those shooting darts at its rise should be reminded of the haunting words of the great Maya Angelou: “You may shoot me with your words. You may cut me with your eyes. You may kill me with your hatefulness. But still, like air, I’ll rise.”