{"id":35102,"date":"2014-02-26T18:59:07","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T18:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=35102"},"modified":"2014-02-27T18:19:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T18:19:18","slug":"ultra-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/news-op-ed\/ultra-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does Ultra Mean to You?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s so \u201cultra\u201d about striving to observe Torah law, and make it part of one&#8217;s life, as Orthodox Jews do?<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Avi Shafran asks this question in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/forward.com\/articles\/193209\/dont-call-us-ultra-orthodox\/?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=Opinion&amp;utm_campaign=Opinion%202014-02-24\">Don&#8217;t Call Us &#8216;Ultra-Orthodox&#8217;<\/a>,\u00a0an Op-Ed published on The Jewish Daily Forward website.<\/p>\n<p>Shafran, director of public affairs for\u00a0Agudath Israel of America, believes the term\u00a0\u201cultra\u201d (Latin for \u201cbeyond\u201d), when used to identify a large swathe of Orthodox Jews, has an inherently negative connotation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/Hello-My-Name-Is1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-post-35102 wp-image-35108 alignright\" alt=\"Hello My Name Is\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/Hello-My-Name-Is1-300x216.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"216\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/Hello-My-Name-Is1-300x216.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/Hello-My-Name-Is1.jpg 408w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>He deems the term <i>Haredim\u00a0<\/i>less offensive. It&#8217;s from a Hebrew word that literally means \u201ctrembling\u201d but implies meticulous care in practice and worship, but would prefer to simply be known as \u201cOrthodox\u201d when other Orthodox-identifying groups choose to self-identify as \u201cmodern\u201d or \u201copen\u201d Orthodox.<\/p>\n<p>Samuel Heilman counters in his own Op-Ed in the\u00a0Forward, <a href=\"http:\/\/forward.com\/articles\/193306\/ultra-orthodox-jews-shouldnt-have-a-monopoly-on-tr\/?utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=Opinion&amp;utm_campaign=Opinion%202014-02-24\">Ultra-Orthodox Jews Shouldn&#8217;t Have a Monopoly on Tradition<\/a>, that \u201cthe difference is in the claim by people like Shafran that what they have chosen to believe and the way they have chosen to act is in absolute fealty to the Judaism of the ages.\u201d\u00a0Heilman, a professor of sociology at Queens College of the City University of New York, stresses that \u201cneither is more or less Orthodox than the other; neither is ultra nor inferior. They are just different choices.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s so \u201cultra\u201d about striving to observe Torah law, and make it part of one&#8217;s life, as Orthodox Jews do? Rabbi Avi Shafran asks this question in\u00a0Don&#8217;t Call Us &#8216;Ultra-Orthodox&#8217;,\u00a0an Op-Ed published on The Jewish Daily Forward website. Shafran, director of public affairs for\u00a0Agudath Israel of America, believes the term\u00a0\u201cultra\u201d (Latin for \u201cbeyond\u201d), when used<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":730,"featured_media":35157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-op-ed"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Does Ultra Mean to You? - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/news-op-ed\/ultra-mean\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Does Ultra Mean to You? - OU Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What&#8217;s so \u201cultra\u201d about striving to observe Torah law, and make it part of one&#8217;s life, as Orthodox Jews do? 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