In a July 2014 Commentary essay entitled “What You Don’t Know About the Ultra-Orthodox” Jack Wertheimer a Conservative expert on American Jewry wrote:
One might assume that the intensity of Jewish living in Haredi communities would spark some curiosity if not admiration among their more acculturated Jewish counterparts…. Nothing of the sort has happened. Anyone following Jews’ discourse about their communities cannot fail to note the near-universal hostility and derision directed at Haredim. Indeed it is hard to escape the conclusion that no other Jews are as reviled by their co-religionists.
What kind of way is that to open a column appearing just before Tishah B’Av a week in which we hopefully reflect on the root causes of the Churban? Because for there to be any hope of banishing intra-Jewish hatred we’ve got to be able to raise the very disturbing question of who in today’s Jewish world harbors animus toward other Jews — and why. I quoted Wertheimer because I’m going to offer a limud zechus on behalf of the Jews he wrote about.
For one thing non-Orthodox Jews often don’t arrive at the animosity he describes on their own. Jews religious or otherwise aren’t hard-wired to hate. But many Jews bereft of Torah do carry around a burden of guilt and envy they’re not even consciously aware of because the Jewish soul knows what it’s missing. And it is those emotions that give rise to “bageling ” propelling the secular Jew upon meeting or speaking with a frum Jew to make some Jewish reference in an effort to identify himself as Jewish and make a connection with a “real Jew” — i.e. religious Jew.
