Who Can Have the Label of Frum?
Question
Eat cheeseburgers, and in the eyes of Orthodox Jews, you are not ‘frum.’ Drive a car on Shabbat and to many, you have forfeited the ‘frum’ label. At the same time, while most frum Jews are perfectly decent people and are law abiding citizens, it is no secret that there are a sizable number of ‘frum’ Jews who embezzle money, cheat customers in business, molest children, or beat their spouses, all as they continue to observe Shabbat and Kashrut and wear a kippah and most of all, maintain the ‘frum’ label. How can that be? Theft, deceitful business practices, sex offenses, and inflicting physical injury on others must certainly be graver sins than eating treif or violating Shabbat.
Answers
Sizable? Please allow me to disagree with you. Yes, there are, unfortunately, people who look Frum who do not behave the way they are taught by the Torah. And, yes, some of them are doing truly despicable things. And, yes again, even one person is one person too many, but to go from there to a “sizable amount” is an exaggeration.
In any event, are such people Frum? I don’t think so. They might be regarded as Frum because they look Frum and because their actions are unknown to other people. But when a person is behaving in such an obviously forbidden way on a continual basis, I think that it indicates that their look is a charade.
Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team