Yaron Yadan was the head of a kollel before he left Charedi society with the slam of a door. Since then he has run a widespread campaign amongst Charedi to prove the contradictions and mistakes in Halacha, in order to sow doubt and to shake people's faith. The serious violence to which activists from Daat Emet (which he heads) are subjected proves that rabbis truly fear his actions. Now he's begun spreading his message to the secular, too.
On the Sunday morning after Shavuot Chaim, Yaron Yadan's son, called from the army. During the conversation he related that at the entrance to the base in which he serves, up north, there were Charedi having soldiers sign a paper in which they promise to dedicate a letter of a Torah scroll. "Tell the soldiers to refuse to sign," Yadan ruled. The chairman of Daat Emet, which, among other things, directly mails heretical materials to the Charedi, had a moment of satisfaction. "Usually my children aren't comfortable with my activities," he said. "They do learn in the national educational system, which respects religion. It seems to them that I deal with the religious too obsessively."
When you have seven dissatisfied children, you've got a protest you have to face. But it looks like the oldest, Chaim, is beginning to change his mind: "As he deals more and more with Israeli society, religious coercion has begun to bother him. Suddenly he gets upset that when hesder yeshiva students arrive at the base all the girls are transferred to another base. He's beginning to understand where he lives."
It took Yadan, who had originally returned to religion, 17 years deep in the Charedi world to open his eyes. Seven years ago, a father of seven and the head of a kollel in Rechasim, he and his family left the Charedi society, slamming the door behind them. Since then he has been involved in a private campaign to sow doubt amongst the Charedi and to publicize what he sees as the truth as it was revealed to him before he left religion: G-d did not give the Torah to Moses at Sinai. In other words, the words of a Daat Emet activist, Yadan wants "to take god out of the business."
For the past three years the Daat Emet organization which he heads has been mailing pamphlets, leaflets, and thin booklets with words of Torah, the contradictions and logical difficulties which are found in the Gemara and the words of Chazal, proof that the Torah is a human creation.
But he wants to impress this message, that the Torah (particularly the Gemara) was written by commentators who were influenced by the spirit and science of their times, upon the secular as well: "The secular have also been taught that the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai, that the Torah is moral, and that we Jews are the chosen nation. Therefore they have allowed the Charedi to take possession of Judaism. They don't understand that we could have a Halachic state here and that they must fight for the democratic character of the state."
Next week Daat Emet's first conference in Jerusalem's Beit Shmuel will be held. The conference, which has been preceded by conferences in Kfar Saba and in Holon, marks a turning point for the organization. Up to this point its activities have been aimed only at the Charedi sector, and now Yadan is turning his attention to the secular public. Starting next month the organization will hold two conferences a month in different cities throughout the country.
Yadan also participates in parlor meetings which are held every Friday. He tells his life story and preaches his doctrine. His tone is soft, his story sprinkled with spicy details of Charedi life like the laws of sex from the Shulchan Aruch. In conversations Yadan says that he means to establish a secular movement which will fight for civic education and basic tools like English and math for the Charedi, which will demand decision-making power for itself about personal law, burial, and all those important personal crossroads which today are part of the Charedi monopoly. In Daat Emet's ordination courses for its activists he prepares a group to disseminate his philosophy. In these courses they learn a series of Talmudic issues in which he has found scientific errors so that they can debate the Charedi themselves.
Yadan arouses hard feelings in the Charedi community. In the wake of stickers put up in Charedi neighborhoods two weeks ago, advertising the conference, Yadan received two explicit death threats in telephone messages from the Charedi organizations "The Committee to Safeguard the Purity of our Camp" and the "Modesty Patrol." Some 40 Charedi came to disturb the last conference, in Holon. During the speech tempers flared and one car belonging to Daat Emet activists, papered with the organization's flyers, was torched. The police plan to guard the Jerusalem conference site, and Yadan plans to wear a bullet proof vest during his lecture.
Yadan is the first to force Charedi to deal with heretical material. His method is controversial: not only does he send material through the mail, his activists make weekly mid-night trips to Bnei Brak and Jerusalem and place the pamphlets in yeshivot and synagogues. The title sounds perfectly Charedi: "Daat Emet--True Knowledge." The pamphlet is white, serious in appearance. At the top it is written "With Heaven's help." At the bottom, before the Jewish date, it requests "Please safeguard the sanctity of this page." The writing style is the sophistry characteristic of the learning style current in the yeshivot. All this may lead an innocent yeshiva student into the trap.
A Charedi who finds the pamphlet in his mailbox -- Yadan claims to have the addresses of 80,000 Charedi -- is commanded by the rabbis to burn it. Burnt remnants in envelopes are sent to Yadan after every mailing, accompanied by curses. But many read the pamphlets and respond. Each day Yadan receives questions by e-mail and letter. Dozens talk to him by phone. He answers in the spirit of the questioner and has long discussions with them.
Prof. Menachem Friedman of Bar Ilan University, a religious sociologist who specializes in Charedi society, says that phenomena like Daat Emet were expected quite some time ago: "Charedi society requires its children to believe in a complex set of beliefs and opinions," he says. "One must not think things over. If someone expresses doubt about the smallest component, the infection of doubt enters and crashes the entire defense system."
Daat Emet's main weapon is Yadan's prodigious knowledge of Torah. Amongst his greatest critics, along with those who curse him, are those who are willing to admit this fact. But there are also those who claim that it is empty knowledge, because these are issues of faith, not subject to rationality.
One way or the other, Daat Emet has managed to establish itself in the Charedi consciousness as a threat. For the past two years there have been no denunciations and warnings in the Charedi press, for fear that the very act of denunciation can achieve the opposite effect. But this tactic has not quieted the agitation about the organization's activities. Only a week ago, on an internet forum, a user named "Parchment" asked for "urgent, immediate help" rescuing someone from the clutches of Daat Emet. Forum members sent him to sites with answers by rabbis like Dov Stein of Jerusalem and Yaakov Segal of Bnei Brak. Segal calls the pamphlet he wrote "Squashing the Bug." He answers the pamphlets one by one, with titles like "Muck 1," "Muck 2," etc.
Yadan is aware of the potential contradicting the important principle of Torah given to Moses at Sinai has to undermine a Charedi. While his friends were enlisting in the army, Yadan returned to religion. During his teenage years he underwent a crisis stemming from a search for significance. One day, while traveling the #5 bus in Tel Aviv, a Charedi standing next to him struck up a conversation. At the end of the conversation he invited Yadan to a lecture at the Charedi Naaseh V'Nishmah organization, not far from the bus stop. That same evening Yadan attended a lecture, peeked and was struck.
At the end of the huge 1980s wave of return to religion he learned in the Ohr Sameach yeshiva. "We lived together, some 40 people, in a mystic bubble," he relates. "We slew ourselves in the tent of Torah. I learned 18 hours a day until I saw the Gemara in green and red."
But ten years ago he discovered, coincidentally, a contradiction between the facts of reality and what is written in Tractate Hulin about animals with specific anatomical defects. The Talmud discusses a cow whose windpipe divides into three parts and reaches the heart and the liver. "I recalled, from nature classes in school, that the windpipe divides in two. I wasn't ready for that, that they'd deceive me about facts," Yadan says. "I told myself: everything written in the Talmud is the word of the living G-d. So how is it possible that there are mistakes? When you discover that, you're pinned to the canvas."
"Daat Emet is an issue which greatly worries the Charedi," Friedman explains. "The Charedi have a lot of time to think. After all, not everyone is cut out to learn. Thoughts are a serious enemy. Maybe your life is all a lie. The vast majority bury the doubts, but many in the Charedi community today are eaten alive by doubt. Daat Emet grew on fertile ground."
Friedman explains that technology, cell phones, and the internet accelerate phenomena like Daat Emet, which certainly lurk below the surface. "There is a large group which is troubled by the economic distress and growing social problems. They feel that they are facing a dead end. Therefore there are many in this group whose hearts are empty of faith or ethics."
The acts of violence prove that there is basis for the Charedi fear of Daat Emet. R, an activist who in the past has taken part in the distribution of pamphlets at yeshivot in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem, relates that he was once given "death blows." The other activist who was with him was hospitalized following the incident. R, a 23 year old computers and English teacher, began volunteering some two years ago. Now he dedicates a great deal of time to the activities, but is hesitant to be identified by name. "I'm afraid of them. They could come to my house and hurt me." After the incident, he stopped his night-time activism.
Yadan is aware of his problematic image and that of his organization, similar to the image of the Shinui political party (of which he is a board member), an image of "one who eats the Charedi to satisfy his appetite." He is angered by the secular public who accuse him of missionary work and yet allow outreach professionals to work at the taxpayers' expense. He accuses the secular of ignorance, of seeing the Charedi community in only one dimension. He claims that world views have to be changed from the root (which he claims to be doing through Shinui). "Why do they want to draft the Charedi? We allow them to educate their children, up to the age of 18, as anti-Zionists, and then we complain that they don't enlist in the army? It's like educating a child to be vegetarian and then complaining that he doesn't eat meat."
One of the areas which Yadan attempts to show the secular is the activities of outreach professionals and their sophisticated methods. Only recently Radio Jerusalem refused to accept ad copy announcing the Beit Shmuel conference, claiming that the message encouraged abandonment of religion. "What's the difference between inviting the Chief Rabbis to appear on radio or inviting professors? My message is academic to the same extent," he says. The organization's goals, he claims, are to refine thought processes, criticism, and examination of the Halachic system, to fight the ignorance of the Charedi, and to encourage open debate. Yadan states that anyone not interested in the Gemara is not, in his eyes, a partner for dialogue, but those who do learn should be encouraged to think critically. "The others do not interest me, and I don't interest them."
What they don't understand, he claims, is that he has great empathy for the Charedi. It is the secular who must be shaken out of their ennui. "I love the Charedi. I just pity them." Sometimes he presents an innocent yeshiva student with a pamphlet, and by the light of a dim street-light the student tries to read the fine print. "Who else has such an honest desire for letters and books?"
From: Ha'Aretz May 28, 2002