Indeed, I am haredi. I am haredi circa 1970, my father’s generation. Then, yeshiva students wrote, spoke and thought in English. They dressed in color. Frum men went to college to train for a means to make a living. People were pashut in their hashkafa and sincere in their avodah. They would enact chumras when advised but did not see stringency as a path to purity. They had a closer relationship to secular Jews because of their secular first cousins and to non-Jews because they lived in mixed neighborhoods. Their motivation was to build a frum infrastructure for the next generation where observance would be easier and Yiddishkeit would be the natural choice. They were not motivated to get their kids into “the best” school and their kids married off to “the best” shidduchim.
They were American haredim. And I am an American haredi. I pray that my children will be haredim like my father. And I pray, fervently, that they maintain, live and promote the haredi values he promoted: fealty to Torah, reverence of Torah leaders, and a lifelong commitment to the Jewish people. All in a very simple and very straightforward American way.
The author of two books, Yaakov Rosenblatt tends the flock both literally and figuratively, as CEO of AD Rosenblatt Kosher Meats and a rabbi at NCSY-Dallas.