Ami Magazine – Are They Hidden Heretics?

At the conclusion of this post I am going to make a bold statement, that some of the writers for Ami Magazine, Including their chief editor Yitzchak Frankfurter may be hidden heretics; double agents planted into the depth of the chareidi community. Their goal and mission is to very subtly plant seeds of dissent and heresy into the hearts of men and women, and before anyone takes notice these pure souls will fall to the devil like dominoes. Well, I might have caught up with them just in time, although I have no interest whatsoever to do anything other than expose them for whom they really are. I want to clarify that I have no concrete evidence and I am not claiming to know anything. I am merely suggesting a theory and I would like to hear your opinion on it. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let me take this from the top.

Every now and then a controversy flares up about one Ami article or another. Many blog posts are written on the issue, regular people are stomping with their feet in their Facebook statuses and the twitterers tweet as loud as they can, while I sit and wonder, Are they really this stupid? Can it really be that these people could make such outrageous claims on this or that issue? Off the top of my head I can recall the infamous Webberman article, the article on orthopraxy and the Shais Taub letter to the woman with questions, but I know that there were many more.

Today I finally came to the conclusion that Yitzchak Frankfurter and his staff might not be as stupid and ignorant as we think they are. You see, when they publish a well written and coherent letter written by a fully chareidi woman that is questioning the basic tenets of our religion, this in itself will definitely get other people to think. A young man or woman who never thought about these issues is all of a sudden exposed to a new fact, that it is okay to think and question. Other ‘normal’ people also have these questions. This is basic apikursus tactics 101. But when Taub gives an infantile response which basically tells her, don’t ask or probe because you might not like where it takes you, that will seal the deal and to the job. Taub basically is telling his readers that there aren’t any real answers to these questions.

So why doesn’t Taub just come out clearly with that message? Well, if he would do that he would automatically be banned from the community and he and the magazine will lose their influence on all of us. Instead, Taub makes some snide remarks about those who question, there’s nothing better than a good leitzonis on account of heretics and with that he and his article are officially kosher for all to read.

The same goes for the article on Orthopraxy. The observations and questions in that article were way stronger than the answers and solutions given by the author. He reveals to Ami’s eighteen thousand readers that there is a huge community of hidden koifrim, among them are rabanim and klei kodesh. This alone would be enough to shake a chareidi person to their core. Knowing that there are so many koifrim in the midst of the holiest community would make any sane person question if they are on the right side or the wrong one. The fact that the main character in that article was a rav made me fear that it might be my own rav.

What is Ami’s answer to this “terrible” problem? Leitzonis. Let’s say that these hidden koifrim are sick or stupid. This way the smart people will get the irony of our position and wink wink, they got the intended message. On the other hand, the leaders of the community will not be able to ostracize Ami, because they clearly wrote that these hidden koifrim – the orthoprax people – are sick and stupid, and they even quoted some mental health professional who concurred with their diagnosis.

For extra measures Ami added at the end of the article that “appropriate steps have been taken to protect the public from this hidden heretic Rabbi”, this despite their guarantee of anonymity. With this statement Ami became the hero and together with its authors and editors they live on for another day.

My dear friends, one day down the road when this scandal bursts onto the scene, (and it will be bigger than the ‘Finkel Scandal’ from Monsey), one day down the line when history will record the real numbers of OTD and Maskilim caused by the Ami magazine, you should all remember that I, Chanaya Schreiber, was the first one to suggest this theory.