What makes a cult?

So I have had a boy and we are doing a Brit. Part of that entails me going around and telling our friends and acquaintances when and where. Most of my Israeli friends don’t even bat an eye, or if the press for details and I tell them who the sandak is going to be I get “zacita”(what a merit!).

The Americans however are a little more sheepish with an “Oh…” You know the kind that trails off like they are leaving enough unsaid to fill the grand canyon. When I press for details I hear, “isn’t that place kinda cultish” or “I thought they were a cult”. Personally I have never thought of it as a cult, as it never met any of the criteria that I thought of as being cultish. Members are encouraged to learn elsewhere as well, we argue with the Rosh Yeshiva all of the time, never been asked for money or to fundraise, never been discouraged from speaking with/relating to my family(even the secular parts). So I did some research, wiki has several cult checklists, as does cult-buster Rick Ross then there is my personal favorite from Cultwatch which was actually featured on CNN some time ago and lead me to leave a B”T Yeshiva I was in, because as I read through the criteria it eerily sounded like the life I was living.

The main complaint is that my Yeshiva is such a tight knit community. Which admittedly is true. We are. It is not an instant thing, it builds over time, as friendships and relationships are established, but it is a tight knit community that takes care of each other. For instance we have had three children, for each I was at least part time in another Yeshiva. Never did we have a Rabbinit(Rebbetzin for you Ashkenazim) make the trip out to the hospital to visit my wife. Not so here, once word got around that she was in hospital and which one, the Rosh Yeshiva’s wife, and the wife of another major rabbi both visited right away. My wife called the Rosh Yeshiva’s wife a one person baby shower. Part of that is that they know we have no family to speak of in Israel, and so they fill in to a degree. However, unlike a cult they don’t try to take our family’s place. They encourage us to visit, and to have them visit.

So I have come to two(semi-controversial) conclusions. One is that many American Yeshivot are Ashkenazi which tend to avoid Kabbalah and have a bit of a general fear of it. So labeling Kabbalistic Yeshivot cults is a way to protect their people from something they consider dangerous. The second is that some of those American friends belong to the cultish Yeshiva(or its offshoots) that I left behind, and well I guess the best way to keep people in your own cult is to label everyone else a cult as well.