Yisrael Hecht's story is a real-time report on crossing the line. Last month he took off his kippah.
Until recently he looked at the world as though through plate glass. Yisrael Hecht's longing to be secular was as tangible as that of a child eyeing a red bicycle. Over the past year he spent many hours walking the streets of Tel Aviv in his Charedi uniform, looking sadly into store windows, coffee houses. How relaxed and happy the people there looked! How he yearned for the freedom outside. In the evening, over his desk in a yeshiva in Bnei Brak, he was hit by waves of guilt and helplessness.
But last month he left the yeshiva, took off his black clothing, removed his kippah. The tension in hiding his true identity, he says, was intolerable. The thought that his turn to be married off was approaching pushed him; he feared he would not stand up to family and societal pressure and would instead be wed, making it difficult for him to leave. "I wanted to live like a regular person, a normal person, working for my living," Hecht says. "Not like a lot of people I know who wait for the government check the 20th of each month and teach their children to hate the government." So before the gates closed, he got up and did something he had practiced in his mind over and over.
The phenomenon of leaving religion has been spreading in recent years. Neri Horowitz of the Mandel School of Educational Leadership in Jerusalem, who studies the Charedi society, says that in the month of Elul and during the High Holy Day period many more calls than usual are registered by organizations which support youths leaving religion. During these periods, when religious discipline is more strictly enforced in yeshivot, youths who are on the fence feel a greater sense of distress, he says. Hecht himself speaks of a group of more than a dozen yeshiva students whom he knows have left Charedi society in recent months, including two of his close friends from the yeshiva. Some have already enlisted in the army. His impressions match reports from Hillel (an organization of those who have left religion) and Daat Emet (an organization whose goal it is to prove to the Charedi that the Torah was written by man) about the rise in the number of calls.
Hecht's story is a real-time report of crossing these lines. What is missing is the perspective of time, which often leads to acceptance and even nostalgia. From this point of view Hecht is like an alien who has just landed on the planet Earth: a description of his difficulties and his moments of joy show that the societal lag of one who grew up in Charedi society is not just a lack of education or knowledge, it is also a lack of prosaic human experiences like the feeling of a foot in sandals and no socks or the way one says goodbye.
Hecht, 20 years old, says that he never longed for physical pleasures -- money, girls -- or acted out of boredom. What ate him up was genuine curiosity and a feeling of injustice that he had been sentenced to live behind walls. The sixth of 12 children, Hecht learned in Litvak yeshivot.
His family cut off all ties. He was forced to get himself a place to live, but the worse part of being cut off was that this most difficult step in his life he had to go through alone, with no support. He turned to Hillel, but because of an acute shortage of sponsor families, they suggested he sleep on the beach or in public parks until he found work and could pay rent. Finally a family acquainted with Yaron Yadan, founder of Daat Emet, agreed to host him for a few weeks until he got on his feet.
"Even if you're an utter heretic for a very long time and secretly violate the Sabbath, the true barrier is putting on jeans and taking off the kippah," Hecht says. That's how it is in a society in which eyes are watching you from morning to night. The day he left the yeshiva he tried on the new clothing people from Daat Emet bought him: a pair of black jeans in his size and a black shirt. The feel of a shirt against his skin was odd, he says, but nice and soft. But habit is habit. Over the course of a few days he wore the new shirt, but didn't give up his old pants. In the end he parted with them, too, and packed them in a bag.
First he took off the kippah for a few hours a day. Only after about two weeks, having gotten used to the light feeling of being without it, did he begin going around a full day bareheaded. He kept it in his pocket, just in case. In Charedi areas he is careful to put the kippah back on his head, as though he's still afraid they will stone him.
He had never gone into a store and bought himself an item or clothing. Now he goes for a shopping spree in the Central Bus Station without fear and has bought himself some shirts and slacks. For some reason he chose dark colors. "It was a wonderful feeling," Hecht says. "I felt, for the first time, that I don't belong to a collective. That I don't belong to the rabbis." Over the last year he developed an intense hatred of his Charedi outfit. "The Charedi dress that way to preserve their isolation. But I felt that the clothes marked me. Every time I got on a bus or took a lift I was asked: Why do you learn? Why don't you go into the army? In general I answered the standard Charedi answers in which I did not believe. A year ago I said 'enough.' It wasn't enough that I suffered because of my life amongst the Charedi, I also had to find excuses for them? I began to answer that the Charedi should be drafted. People didn't believe what they heard me say."
His most exciting purchase was sandals. The air flowing over his toes excited and tickled him. "It's like in biblical times," he smiles. In his hosts' home he leapt another mental hurdle: a real dog sniffed him. "The first time I was shaking, but my host explained that the dog doesn't bite, and after a while I dared call him closer and even petted him. Now I can say that even though they taught me to be afraid of dogs, I love animals."
It is not surprising that the coffee house culture and pub entertainment seemed strange to him at first. But he's trying to get used to it. "I saw that people work there, too, and talk about serious things. Besides, so what if they're just enjoying themselves?" He prefers pubs. "It's the company of the insolent, but it's freeing," he says.
He has no nostalgia for or good memories of the Charedi world. One Friday night he went to a movie with a group of Daat Emet proteges who had left religion. He noticed the couples at the movie. "I saw people around me who had come to enjoy not only the movie, but each other. It's legitimate. In the Charedi society they forced us to study and to study so we would be separated from desires. But love is a legitimate emotion. It's what makes the world go."
His separation began about two years ago, but it has deeper roots than that. Hecht comes from a difficult background. He father is violent. He and his younger sister were scapegoats. When the authorities found out that the father was abusing his children, the community hushed the matter up. Instead of the father paying the price for the blows they absorbed over the years, Hecht was sent to a London yeshiva. He got himself back to Israel a few months later. The suffering he underwent in that yeshiva, the feeling of injustice which was born inside him, and the doubt which began to burn within him as he grew and developed did not let him rest. He began to break out.
"I had a dream of reading secular books," he says. "I knew that there were books other than the Gemara, the Mishna, and the Holy Writ, but I didn't have the guts to read them." He once went all the way to Beit Shemesh and there, in the municipal library, he found what he was looking for. "I was shocked. I sat there for five hours and didn't lift my eyes from the book, like we were taught to do with a Gemara."
His heart beating fast, he one day crossed the bridge that joins his small neighborhood at the edge of Bnei Brak and the Bar Ilan University. One of the librarians, who noticed his desire for knowledge and culture, referred him to the appropriate books and taught him to surf the internet. "In yeshiva I was thought to be a student uninterested in learning," he relates, "but in the library I began reading about evolution, the Big Bang. I swallowed books of philosophy and biblical criticism. I read newspapers. I discovered democracy, freedom, the relationship between man and society. I discovered that people make art.
"All this information enticed me. I understood that the level of culture in the world was much higher than I had been shown. The secular have an idea about how the world developed. The Charedi have no such concept. I think that if the Charedi would open their eyes and see the beauty of the world, they might not be so extreme."
Hecht has strong criticism of the rabbis, whom he considers dictatorial. "They lead their followers into poverty and absolute dependence through unified education whose goal is that they won't think," he says. He has a dream, he continues, that the age of enlightenment will return and that young Charedi will open their eyes and make their way out. "I made sure to open the eyes of some Charedi, and now we're out together. It's a lot easier when you're not alone."
Being ostracized hurts him. Rumors that he had left flew. For the past two weeks mysterious messengers are bothering him by phone, embarrassing him and threatening him. Others still try to talk to him, heart to heart, asking him to return instead of causing disaster to his family.
But Hecht has other plans. He has decided to finish his matriculation exams and study in university ("something in the sciences"). He is waiting for an answer from the army about a deferment.
Getting used to the independence he so longed for is not simple. He was taught to be dependent. The requirement to take care of his own basic needs worries him. A few days ago a member of an internet forum for those leaving religion asked what he called "a burning question": where does one do laundry? Hecht, too, often comes up against this issue. "When you're in yeshiva, you don't give it a thought. I ate three meals a day. Someone washed my clothing. Suddenly it all becomes your problem. It's difficult," he says.
It looks like it will take Hecht a long time to adjust. He isn't rushing to find a job to support himself. Maybe he doesn't understand the urgency. In the meantime he works three hours a day in a small mini-mart, and in his free time he continues to walk around and to read books. "Maybe I'm really a little bit of a parasite by nature," Hecht agrees. "Even though I want to work and to support myself, it's difficult for someone who was taught not to work to get used to the idea that I'm on my own."
When the conversation was over, Hecht left with the typical Charedi "All the best." He's still not used to the breezy "bye" he hears everywhere, he says. He plods down the street, a moving sight, a plastic bag clutched in his hand. Will he manage to fit in? Suddenly he returns, agitated. "Tell me, can people see that I'm Charedi?" he asks, and then continues on his way.
From Ha'Aretz September 6, 2002