Why Stringency Always Wins

A recent discussion in a professional Charedi women’s circle of which I am part began, ostensibly, as a conversation about the conditions required for organizing a group event. Yet it soon revealed something far larger: a powerful social mechanism that consistently rewards movement toward greater stringency, while rendering moderation difficult to voice and costly to defend.

The ground rules were defined before the conversation had even begun: food under the kashrut of the Eda HaCharedit, and complete separation, down to the level of the lecturers themselves.

Negotiations with outside parties in order to secure these conditions were far from simple. Yet they concluded with understanding, and with considerable effort on the part of those very parties—who do not belong to Charedi society—to arrange the special conditions required. And then a single email, cast into the group space, made plain just how elusive and fragile that achievement really was. One of the participants wondered how it could be that no guarantee had been given that all the professional lecturers would themselves be Charedi. She added that she was certain most of the group shared her view, and that without this condition, the event ought simply to be cancelled.

The email, sent to a distribution list of some two hundred women, was met with silence, save for one apologetic response that attempted to explain the bureaucratic difficulty of persuading those responsible of the necessity of this new condition. After several days, I decided to respond. I felt I had to explain that it was hardly self-evident that cancelling the event was the only possible outcome, given the new, wholly unexpected threshold that had been set.

It turned out that at least half the women in the group thought I was right, and some even thanked me for having “spoken for” them. Yet despite this broad agreement behind closed doors, not a single woman dared voice her opposition publicly, and some were afraid to do so even in private conversation.

Following that email, something interesting occurred: my private inbox was flooded with dozens of messages. It turned out that at least half the women in the group thought I was right, and some even thanked me for having “spoken for” them. Yet despite this broad agreement behind closed doors, not a single woman dared voice her opposition publicly, and some were afraid to do so even in private conversation.

This episode is only a small window into a phenomenon I have been observing with no small measure of astonishment. It is a one-directional, deeply consistent mechanism existing within Charedi society (and likely within other value-driven societies as well) that grants unqualified social capital to the movement “to the right”—not in the conventional political sense, but in the direction of the society’s foundational values, toward greater stringency.

By contrast, it activates a well-oiled system of social sanctions against anyone who dares to voice positions of moderation or compromise. In sociological language, this is known as a one-way ratchet of stringency. Within such a system, deviation in the conservative direction is always perceived as “prudent caution” or chassidut, while any attempt to ease or moderate is seen as “spiritual cooling” or reform. Extremity thus becomes a kind of social insurance policy, one for which there is no penalty. The result is a steady erosion of the moderate voice and an unceasing shift toward greater stringency.

Costly Signals

In his book Judaism Straight Up, Professor Moshe Koppel explains that a communal society requires mechanisms that ensure its members are in fact committed to it and are not merely “free riders” on the community’s resources. The more alluring—and threatening—the world outside becomes, the more the community requires “costly signaling”: acts that demand unusual sacrifice and effort in order to demonstrate loyalty. Within this structure, stringency and extremity are perceived as the highest forms of loyalty-signaling, and they confer on those who perform them prestige and coveted social standing.

The unceasing need for ever-new signals gives rise to what may be called a “purity spiral,” a process in which the group enters an internal competition over the title of who is more stringent, more loyal, more committed. It is a spiral with no natural stopping point, for one can always become a little more stringent, and today’s extremists quickly become tomorrow’s casualties of those yet more extreme. Within such a spiral, the dominant strategy of each player is to signal a higher degree of religious commitment than the average member. If the median member of the group opposes X, then whoever wishes to preserve a reputation for being especially “high quality” must oppose not only X, but Y as well.

One could adduce countless examples of how this “purity spiral” manifests itself across different societies and settings. To distinguish, of course, with a thousand thousand distinctions, consider for a moment the chain of organizations that eventually produced the monster known as ISIS. It began in the 1980s with the Maktab al-Khidamat in Afghanistan, a logistical organization whose purpose was to recruit funds and volunteers to assist in the war against the Soviets, while focusing on the relatively moderate goal of liberating Muslim lands. Out of that organization, Osama bin Laden established a body with far more radical ambitions: al-Qaeda. He raised the bar to a global jihad against the West, casting his predecessor as a compromiser. The spiral accelerated further when ISIS split from al-Qaeda on the grounds that the latter had grown too soft, and adopted a far more extreme level of brutality. The process reached its height within ISIS itself, with the emergence of the Hazimiyya, a faction so radical that it dared accuse even ISIS leadership of liberalism.

Anyone to whom this pattern of branching sounds familiar from other movements, each one producing from within itself an even more extreme offshoot, does so entirely at his own responsibility.

On the opposite side of the ideological divide, one finds that very same purity spiral at work within the radical Woke movement. There, “holiness” is not measured in terms of fear of Heaven, but in “social justice awareness” and in the capacity to identify with the victim of the moment. Just as ISIS accused al-Qaeda of weakness, so in Woke culture we witness classical liberal figures turning overnight into enemies of the people when they refuse to align themselves with the latest and most updated edge of orthodoxy. Does anybody even remember that J. K. Rowling, darling of anti-Woke conservatives, defines herself as a left-leaning, Labor-voting Liberal?

In such an environment, the way to signal loyalty is by means of updated terminology. The moment a given concept becomes commonplace, it loses its value as a signal of enlightenment, and the spiral drives the invention of a still more extreme, or more “proper,” term. Each player in the group seeks to signal that he is aware of more postcolonial injustices than his fellow players. Whoever dares to wonder, “Perhaps we have gone too far with the boycott of X?” is immediately suspected of “privilege” or of insufficient awareness.

Whether the issue is the demand for exclusively Charedi lecturers in a professional setting or the demand to boycott a novelist at Harvard University, the sociological mechanism is identical. The purity spiral is blind to ideological content; it is interested only in status and in whatever accumulates social capital. It will always reward the one who sets a higher threshold, and punish the one who seeks moderation, change, or compromise.

Alongside the purity spiral runs a process of “preference falsification,” a term coined by the economist Timur Kuran. As the spiral accelerates, group members who do not personally agree with the new and more extreme norms choose silence in order to avoid social sanctions. That silence creates a “false consensus,” which gives radicals the power to push still further, since they mistakenly believe they enjoy sweeping support.

Thus emerged the obligation to travel only on mehadrin buses, the prohibition of phones capable of receiving SMS messages, and the blanket ban on concerts for men and women, even when fully segregated. New stringencies, time and again, win the day.

A rabbinic figure close to me once observed, not without irony, that this dynamic is typical of rabbinic gatherings: each rabbi at the table looks to his right, fears the possible backlash, and decides it is wiser to remain silent. Thus emerged the obligation to travel only on mehadrin buses, the prohibition of phones capable of receiving SMS messages, and the blanket ban on concerts for men and women, even when fully segregated. New stringencies, time and again, win the day.

The silent majority thus becomes captive to the loud and extreme minority. Extremism triumphs not because it is more persuasive, but because it is the only view one may voice “for free,” without incurring a social cost. Moderation, by contrast, becomes a costly good that very few dare purchase openly.

Pluralistic Ignorance: Who Is the Majority, and Who the Minority?

Beyond the natural fear of deviating from the norm, a more basic error is at work: a misunderstanding of the norms themselves.

The professional term for this phenomenon is “pluralistic ignorance,” a state in which the individual holds a mistaken perception of the broader social mood. He wrongly assumes that his own view belongs to a minority. Dr. Nahumi Yaffe has studied this phenomenon specifically within Charedi society, and her findings reveal a dramatic gap between what Charedim themselves think and want for their own lives, and what they attribute to others. Her research found that roughly 50 percent of the Charedi community holds positions favoring greater integration, education, or change in certain norms. Though they make up half the community, those people are convinced that they are a small and isolated minority, and they regard their own view as outside the mainstream—when in fact that imagined mainstream exists only in their minds.

Yaffe explains that Charedi society operates through meta-perceptions. A meta-perception is my perception of what others think. Thus, for example, in my private judgment, I may think there is nothing wrong at all with bringing in a professional lecturer who is not Charedi, but the meta-perception whispers to me: “All the other women in the room will think I am compromised if I say that aloud.” As a result, people keep their opinions to themselves. The silence causes the individual to assume that everyone around her really does endorse the more stringent position, and that she alone is the problematic or weak one. To avoid being pushed out of the group, she radicalizes her outward behavior to align with what she imagines is the majority view. Thus, a self-reinforcing cycle comes into being.

Wherever ideology becomes entangled with social status, extremism becomes the safest refuge. The mechanism is always the same: extremism is the only currency that does not suffer inflation.

It is important to understand that this mechanism is not unique to Charedi society. It operates in every group whose values stand at the center of its identity, from progressive academic circles in the West to elite military units. Wherever ideology becomes entangled with social status, extremism becomes the safest refuge. The mechanism is always the same: extremism is the only currency that does not suffer inflation. When a society rewards only the step “to the right,” the spiral will not stop until it consumes itself—or until someone dares to stop falsifying preferences and say: enough.

I am not, Heaven forbid, opposing the addition of holiness or the pursuit of hiddur in halachah. I ask only that we place on the table the unnoticed social background at work here, and bring some order to a social phenomenon that exacts a heavy price. In our current reality, many boundaries of modesty or halachic embellishments that someone casually releases into the air become, within a short time, a new standard to which all are expected to conform. A person who adopts a new and radical act—whether in dress, technology, kashrut, or public positions—rarely has reason to fear any social cost. The opposite case, however, is a deeply unfair equation: any attempt to propose a necessary correction in places that have drifted somewhat to the edge brings in its wake no small measure of social sanction. This ensures that the movement is always in one direction alone.

As noted above, the situation has reached a point where even rabbis and public figures, whose commitment to and fear of Heaven are beyond question, may at times be afraid to publicly support measured and thoughtful compromise. They may refrain from doing so even when they are convinced that such steps are critically important for the Yiddishkeit of the generation.

Try to imagine a mother arriving at an educational institution and asking to add a new, stricter rule to the dress code. Her proposal may be accepted, or it may not—but one thing is certain: she will not leave embarrassed. In complete contrast, a mother who arrives and attempts to challenge an existing rule or suggest a more lenient approach will be framed at once as problematic, someone seeking to cool the spiritual atmosphere.

I am reminded of my own days as an elementary school student. The ongoing friction between teachers and pupils in the Jerusalem Bais Yaakov then revolved around cotton stockings patterned with small holes. Nearly all of us—girls from homes of God-fearing kollel families—wore them. At a certain stage, some teachers began to fight the phenomenon. The next stage was a move to knee socks, and after that came tights. Today, tights—I am not objecting to them; I mention them only as an illustrative example of the phenomenon I am describing—have become an absolute Bais Yaakov standard from kindergarten age onward.

The Broken Ratchet

In the literature, this phenomenon is known as the “ratchet effect,” or, as I prefer to call it, the broken zipper mechanism. Imagine a ratchet wheel, a toothed gear constructed so that its teeth allow motion in only one direction. The moment the lever advances a single notch, a spring locks it in place and prevents any backward movement. Such is the condition in which social change becomes irreversible: once a stringency becomes normative, it is difficult, if not impossible, to go back. Whoever attempts to restore the previous state of affairs—to allow what was permissible and accepted a mere decade earlier—will immediately be regarded as one who breaches the fence.

The recent stories surrounding segregated Chassidic music performances illustrate the broken ratchet at work in real time. Activists, producers, and interested parties involved in such productions flee from branding as compromisers or permissive types as from fire; such labels can deliver a reputational and economic death blow to any public-facing marketing figure. The result, yet again, is the same destructive race toward the most stringent possible standard. And in the end, it is the quiet public that pays the price: the vacuum created by extreme ideology pushes parts of the community to seek entertainment in places the Sages would certainly not approve of.

When I approached the librarian and explained my difficulty—my five-year-old son was being made to wait outside in the cold for an extended period—her response was brief and cutting: “Are you Charedi?”

Here is another example. In the neighborhood Torah library where I held a membership, there are separate hours for women and for men. At first, the separation was enforced from age nine and up. But over time, the ratchet wheels began to turn, someone saw fit to raise the fence, and the age of separation was lowered to five. The practical meaning is that mothers who come to exchange books in the afternoon are forced to leave young boys at home alone or standing outside the library door. When I approached the librarian and explained my difficulty—my five-year-old son was being made to wait outside in the cold for an extended period—her response was brief and cutting: “Are you Charedi?” Since then, of course, I have not dared open my mouth again. The new norm became fixed, though I could find no traditional or religious source for it whatsoever. My silence, and the silence of many others like me who encountered that same closed door, is the fuel that continues to drive the purity spiral.

It is important for me to clarify that I am not claiming the Charedi public is becoming more extreme across every measure. Reality is more complicated than that, and it includes many movements of change and openness as well—some blessed, some destructive. My aim is to explain why extreme norms gain such momentum despite the opposition of a silent majority and why, once entrenched, they become almost irreversible, driven by that same purity spiral.

At the same time, one cannot ignore the deeper processes unfolding at the other end of the scale. Very often, the openness penetrating our camp does not arise from an ideal choice made lechatchilah, but as a counter-movement born of necessity, acute need, or at times painful weakness. I often wonder whether it is precisely this pressure toward ever more stringent extremes that produces, as a counterreaction, a movement suffused with anger—one that may in the end lose precious Torah assets in its desire to escape the suffocation.

I am fully aware that the very act of placing this phenomenon on the table may itself be read as a dangerous signal and exact a personal social price from me. Yet I feel bound to raise it for the sake of all those good and God-fearing people who have found themselves wondering of late: Ribbono Shel Olam, what is happening to us? How did we get here? The goal is not to provoke, but to give language to social processes unfolding beneath the surface and shaping all our lives. Understanding these mechanisms is the first step toward restoring balance and sanity—and a drop of awareness has never yet harmed anyone.