USA
The former Charedim finding solace on Facebook's 'Sounds Yeshivish But OK'
Social media is providing a home for Jews who have recently left the Strictly Orthodox world
September 20, 2018 08:36
Social media is providing a home for Jews who have recently left the Strictly Orthodox world
September 20, 2018 08:36Not so long ago, if someone left the Strictly Orthodox Jewish community, all ties would be cut.
Now, communities on Facebook have been created in a network of groups some call Jewbook. And many who left the yeshivish world have found a home away from home in a satirical Facebook group called “Sounds Yeshivish But OK” (and known now as SYBO).
“It’s allowed people to find a voice that they otherwise wouldn’t have had,” said Deborah Blaiberg, a longtime member of the group. “Those people who are still in the yeshivish world, those people who are not, those people who dip in and dip out who have yeshivish families. It allows them to have a voice and a community.”
The group was created by Yehuda Greenfield, a recent Yeshiva University graduate, as a place to express the culture he had grown up with. “It’s still such a big part of me that I want to go back, talk the lingo, and reminisce about it,” Mr Greenfield said, though he admitted that “a lot of that nostalgia is difficult.”
There are plenty of jokes going around. A recent one involves a picture of a flyer for a caterer that says “our professional chefs will cook your bris”. Another asks members which social media platform should be used to announce the Messiah’s arrival.
But the satire also addresses some of the darker problems.
“If you actually listened to what [people posting in the group] were saying and some of the issues they were bringing up, they are quite serious issues in the yeshivish community,” Ms Blaiberg said. “[They are] making fun of the fact that they’re more concerned about skirt length than they are about fraud; [that] it’s okay to defraud the government, but if your hair is long we’re going to measure it in school and cut it.”
SYBO only had around 100 members it the months after it started in October 2016, Mr Greenfield said. But things “took off when I began posting more and more, and other ex-yeshivish people found the group.”
Many are just “trying to get back that culture they lost” when they left the Strictly Orthodox community, he said.
Growth came quickly for the group as it gained over 19,000 members in a single year. Anyone can apply to join, but applications must be approved by one of the group’s administrators.
For many, the humour is a cathartic look at the community they came from.
“I found it therapeutic because of the system that I grew up in, in a very frum world and a yeshivish home,” said Rosie Brustowsky, a regular poster. “It took things that had negative connotations and it became funny.”
Many formerly Strictly Orthodox posters criticise the yeshivish world for teaching the higher morality of Torah and the Jewish people, but acting hypocritically in other areas.
One recent topic of discussion was Lakewood, a heavily Strictly Orthodox Jewish town in New Jersey, which was rocked in recent years by multi-million dollar welfare fraud committed by some residents. Events like these, and the growing number of members, have brought out SYBO’s political side.
There is a divide on whether serious politics have any place in the group, but longtime members admit that it may be out of anyone’s control.
“It’s not what the group was intended for,” Ms Brustowsky said, “but it’s inevitable that these things will be put in.”
Alexander Mayer, another longtime member, believes that SYBO is “an established community, it can serve purposes beyond its original intent, as long as it doesn’t shift too far from the group’s origin and flavour.”
The group is “getting people to have dialogue, to speak, to ask questions, and not be afraid so much any more to be different within the yeshivish world,” Ms Blaiberg added.
“Because I think that’s the hardest part for a lot of people: being different. This fear that you are a square peg in a round hole.
“I think a lot of the ‘sounds yeshivish’ lot are square pegs trying to fit into round holes, and they don’t need to. They have created a community that is supporting each other.”
