Authority, authoritarianism and the daughters of Tzelofchad

Authoritarianism is entirely different from authority: Authoritarianism is about power. Authoritarianism serves the few who want to dominate the many.

Authority has a growth-enhancing dynamic - if you know, and are able to argue your case, a community can and will accept your authority, while at the same time questioning and studying themselves. The example we open today with is in our reading. This is the story of the daughters of Tzelofchad.

This is very different than authoritarian.

Authoritarianism is aimed at reducing freedom by imposing conformity and restricting individual development. Authoritarianism is a repressive force whose tactics include coercion, force, manipulation, exclusion, and humiliation. The energy that flows from authoritarianism is designed to amass and maintain power and domination, to control people's lives.

Judaism's concern about the perils of authoritarianism goes back at least as far as the prophet Samuel who preached against the institution of monarchy (Samuel I 8:8-11). Samuel warned that unchecked centralized power would seek to accumulate and increase, that kings will take and not give. Finally, he predicted that the abuse of power would become unbearable. And Samuel was right; the Israelites were not well served by their kings, despite the existence of a counterbalancing institution, the Prophets, who were charged with speaking truth to power.

Much later in Jewish history the Hasmoneans assumed the monarchy. As priests, they combined religious and political leadership roles - to the detriment of both. Hasmoneans were authoritarian, ruthless rulers who corrupted the institution of the priesthood.

Looking in the Talmud, the most interesting moment of the question between authority and authoritarianism is Brachot 27b-28a, when Rabban Gamliel is deposed from the Head of the Academy because of his constant, non-stop attacks and humiliation of Rabi Yehoshua. Rabbi Eleazar Ben Azariah takes over, and the first thing he does is to open the academy to whoever wanted to study and was prevented by the policy of Rabban Gamliel.

A psychologist called Bob Altemeyer has been studying authoritarianism and authoritarians for the past 40 years. In your source sheets you have links to his work. There are two components to Authoritarianism - an authoritarian world view put out by a leader, and authoritarian followers who believe in what that leader says.

The world is made up of "Us" and "Them." - The fractionalization of Orthodox groups creates smaller and more particularistic in-groups that place all other Jews in the out-group category. Freud referred to this type of phenomenon as "the narcissism of small differences." Although the existence of multiple groups may superficially appear to represent diversity, in fact each group is authoritarian, requiring more and more conformity in order to fit in and carry its particular label. For example, Frumster, a dating website, asks its members to self-describe by choosing one of seven categories for Orthodox, four for the Orthodox-Conservative continuum, and one for everyone else.

"We" are good, and "They" are bad. - Many Orthodox people argue that we are a holy people-but non-Jews and their culture are at the root of most of the evil in the world; the rest is attributed to the rebellion of Conservative and Reform Jews.

We need to get them before they get us! - This is a defensive posture that perceives threats everywhere and leads to intolerance, hatred, and even violence. Furthermore, this stance leads to the interpretation of any action that we don't like as anti-Semitism.

The ends justify the means. - Since "our" values are right and true, we are justified in doing whatever we need to maintain our power and position. Financial fraud is accepted among some Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis, if they believe it is to the advantage of a worthy cause of theirs.

It is fine to have punitive attitudes toward the weak. - Authoritarians disdain those who are weak or of lesser status. Choosing conversion as an arena in which to exert power reflects this attitude-prospective converts are very low status; they are weak and vulnerable. Sexual exploitation of prospective converts and of children are crimes that demonstrate this attitude-they are two of the most vulnerable and powerless groups. Additionally, failure to resolve the institutional oppression of agunot reflects institutional indifference to these most powerless women.

Subservience toward authority is vital. - Authoritarians disdain those they view as below themselves and are very submissive toward those they see as being strong and above themselves. Rabbis in the Hareidi or Hassidic hierarchy defer to those with more (perceived) power-even if it means backtracking from a position that they had taken-even a public one-and they often claim that they had been "deceived" into taking the original position. The Rabbinical Council of America's capitulation to the Israeli Rabbanut regarding conversion procedure and personnel credentialing is another sorry example. Despite widespread acknowledgment of the Rabbanut's deficiencies of integrity, competence, and reliability, the perceived power of the Rabbanut was sufficient reason for the RCA to overturn centuries of the Diaspora tradition of local rabbinical autonomy and leadership.

When Abraham Lincoln is saying that, he is looking at the side of the equation that is having gotten to power. But Bob Altemeyer wants us to be cognizant of the other side.

In North America we usually see this among politically conservative people, but we should not mistake that for the idea that people in the politically left are somehow immune. Someone who lived his or her life under the Communist regime could as well fit in these categories. So I am not endorsing anything - I am just taking a step back and looking at the landscape, using primarily Jewish examples.

I so happen to have read many accounts of how in a small Jewish sect all those three things are true. How else do we explain Orthodox thuggery against those who leave the group, with slashing of tires and general destruction of their property? How else to explain throwing rocks at cars, in Israel, on Shabbat, if the car going to Hadasah Hospital takes the shorter route through a Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood?

1. Illusions of invulnerability create excessive optimism and encourage risk-taking.

Example:
There is a widespread belief that social problems such as substance abuse, spousal or child abuse, and addictive gambling are less prevalent in the Orthodox community than elsewhere, even when there are no reliable statistics, or that the statistics indicate otherwise. When a scientific study by Rachel Yehuda, Ph.D., Michelle Friedman, M.D., Talli Y. Rosenbaum, P.T., Ellen Labinsky, Ph.D., and James Schmeidler, Ph.D., published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, found that the Orthodox women in their sample were sexually abused at about the same rates as other women, Avi Shafran, representative of Agudath Israel, sprang into action, claiming not only that the survey was biased, but also that "the Torah-observant population is greatly underrepresented in the realms of societal ills like rape, AIDS, prostitution and marital infidelity that affect their less repressed neighbors," while simultaneously admitting that he has no statistics to back up his claim. He just knows.

Other leaders within the Orthodox community dismissed the results of the survey by saying that "approximately 40 percent of the respondents were ba'alei teshuva, and therefore, their experiences are irrelevant to those raised in Orthodox homes."

2. The group rationalizes warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.

Example:
Yitzhak Kakun, editor-in-chief of the Shas weekly Yom Le'Yom claimed that the arrests of members of the Syrian Jewish community of New Jersey and Brooklyn, on suspicion of money laundering was an anti-Semitic plot cooked up by the FBI.

3. There is unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

Example:
In offering an explanation of why leading Hareidi religious figures (and others) allowed Leib Tropper and EJF to control conversions, Rabbi Steven Pruzansky wrote that "Gedolei Torah-and most rabbis-are incapable of recognizing true evil and hypocrisy. Call it the ‘Yitzchak Avinu and Esav Syndrome.' I have been in the presence of Gedolim, and they live on a plane of purity and saintliness where such incidents-while theoretically possible; after all, the Tanakh is filled with stories of the foibles of great people-are not considered practical possibilities. Most never encounter salaciousness, degradation, and the dark side of man." (Pruzansky blog, Dec 23, 2009)

Another example of this willfully amoral mindlessness is the increasingly frequent reference to "Daas Torah is hefekh daas Baalei Batim," (Lay understanding is the opposite of Torah wisdom), a phrase that insulates rabbis ("Gedolim") from criticism and replaces serious, respectful dialogue with contempt for anyone else's perspective.

4. The group promotes stereotyping of those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.

Examples:
Consider the following quotations:
"The Conservatives begin the process with a desired result in mind (abolishing the mehitza, permitting cohanim to marry divorcees, counting women in the minyan, etc.) They are quite adept at manipulating the halakha to achieve that result, twisting and turning the words of our sages until they are "saying" what the Conservatives want them to say." (Pruzansky blog, Dec 4, 2009)

"The feminist movement ravaged the American family." (Pruzansky blog, Nov 29, 2009)

As another example, When Nofrat Frankel and the "women of the wall" attempted to read from a Sefer Torah in the women's section at the Western Wall, they were accused of doing it solely for political purposes, and of "inverting every relevant fact in order to make [their] argument" (Yaakov Menken, "The right to disrupt your prayers" Cross currents, November 30, 2009). Commented one of the readers of this column: "Getting arrested for wearing a tallit makes this woman a martyr for egalitarian rights and for civil rights. This gives the small group of non-Orthodox Jews in Israel a way to be noticed. Otherwise, they are totally ignored."

A common theme is to accuse others of nefarious motives, even when they have stated benign or benevolent ones. How exactly is it that the in-group members know the motives of others so much better than the others know their own motives? Or are they accusing them of deception and trickery?

5. Direct pressure (aka peer pressure) is used to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty."

Example:
Rabbi Norman Eisenstein announced that no judge on a conversion court would be accepted if he believed the universe was more than 5,770 years old.

6. The group self-censors ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.

Example:
For a clear and compelling example of this, think of the number of people who you know who have altered their publicly expressed opinions or behavior (or asked family members to change theirs) in order to not threaten the matchmaking options of their children. In cases we know personally, a young man was denied permission to go to college because of the danger it posed to his sisters' marriage opportunities, while middle-aged couples have stopped going to the movies (although they will watch the same films at home, in private) for the sake of their children's potential "shiddukhim."

7. Illusions of unanimity among group members is promoted; silence is viewed as agreement.

Example:
Everyone might disagree, but everyone thinks that everyone else agrees:
You conform to a certain dress code in order to fit into the group-"I don't think there is anything wrong with wearing pants...but..."

8. The group has self-appointed mind guards, who shield the group from dissenting information. These can be group leaders who guide the flock and weed out dissenters, and who cultivate a negative attitude about talking to outsiders. These are often Hareidi journalists and columnists.

Example:
Forbidding Hareidim to use the internet, Rav Yisrael Hager, the son of the Vishnitzer Rebbe, called on the community to refrain from buying tefilin and mezuzoth from anyone connected to Hareidi websites. The Rav's comments came at the start of the Shovavim period (the period that begins with the reading of Parashat Shemot and ends with Parashat Mishpatim), a time that the Kabbalists teach is auspicious for repentance. The Rav added that children from families with internet connections should not be accepted to schools, and that rabbis and teachers who do not conform to this policy should not be employed as teachers.