What is the Charedi view of secular Jews who work hard and raise families with values — even without Torah?

In a world split along so many lines, it is a fair and important question: how does the Charedi world view secular Jews — the ones who work hard, raise their families with real devotion, contribute to society, give tzedakah, and live by a genuine moral code, all without Torah? The honest answer is warm, and it is layered. The Charedi world does not measure a Jew by his label. It begins from a single, unshakable conviction: that every Jew, observant or not, carries within him a holy neshama — a chelek Eloka mima'al, a spark of Hashem Himself — and that this makes him, always and unconditionally, our brother.

I. A Jew Is Always a Jew — and Always Hashem's Child

Start with the bedrock. "Af al pi shechata, Yisrael hu" — even when a Jew has sinned, he remains a Jew (Sanhedrin 44a). The kedushah of a Jewish soul is not a light that switches off with behavior. The Jew who has kept every Shabbos of his life and the Jew who has never once lit a candle share the very same essence: both are banim laHashem, children of Hashem (Devarim 14:1) — and a child does not stop being his father's child by wandering far from home. As Chazal put it, whether they act as children or not, they are still called His children.

This is why the Chazon Ish taught the principle that governs how we are to see the non-observant Jew of our own time: not as a rebel who threw off the yoke in defiance, but as a tinok shenishba — a child taken captive and raised never having been taught what Torah even is. Such a Jew is not weighed by Heaven as a sinner in revolt. He is a beloved child who was simply never brought home. And once you truly see him that way, it changes everything about how you relate to him.

II. The Good They Do Is Real — and Precious

Let there be no misunderstanding on this point, because it matters: the good that secular Jews do is genuinely good. Raising a family with devotion, working with honesty, treating others with decency, giving generously, carrying the love of fellow Jews and of the Jewish people in their hearts — these are not nothing, and the Charedi world does not pretend for a moment that they are. They are the shining-through of the tzelem Elokim, the Divine image, in a Jewish soul; they are the pintele Yid expressing itself even where the person himself might not name it that way. The Torah itself prizes human goodness. A Charedi who fails to honor the kindness and the integrity of his secular brother has, quite simply, misunderstood his own Torah.

III. And Yet — Torah Is the Standard of What "Good" Truly Is

Here the Charedi view goes deeper, and it has to be said with care. The Charedi world holds that the ultimate measure of good is not human consensus — which shifts, sometimes wildly, from one generation to the next — but the will of the Creator. "Ki lo machshevosai machshevoseichem" — My thoughts are not your thoughts, says Hashem (Yeshayahu 55:8). What one century is certain is moral, the next may look back on as monstrous, and the reverse; only the Torah's definition of good is anchored somewhere outside the tides of fashion. So the Charedi does not for an instant doubt the sincerity or the kindness of his secular brother. He believes, rather, that goodness reaches its truest, deepest, and most enduring form precisely when it is rooted in the One who defines what good is — that the very same acts of kindness, done as the will of Hashem, become not merely beautiful but eternal. As Rav Aharon Kotler taught, ethics severed from Hashem can be real and admirable, and yet it floats without an anchor; tied to its Source, it lasts forever.

IV. In Humility, Plainly

And one thing must be stated plainly, because without it everything above curdles into something it was never meant to be. None of this is a claim that Charedim are better people. It is not. There are secular Jews kinder, more honest, more patient and more generous than many a frum Jew, and every honest Charedi knows it perfectly well. The Charedi claim was never "we are superior." It is something altogether different: that the Torah is true, and that it is a gift — the greatest gift our people was ever given — and that we want, with everything in us, for every Jew to have it. A person who has found a spring of water in the desert does not look down on the thirsty. He runs to bring them to the water. That, when it is healthy, is the entire posture: not superiority, but the urgency of family wanting family to share in what it has been given.

V. The Ache — a Father's, Not a Judge's

And so, yes, there is an ache. When a Charedi sees a secular Jew pouring himself into the good — working, giving, raising beautiful and decent children — and living all of it without the light of Torah, it genuinely hurts him. Not out of arrogance; out of love, the particular kind of love that aches. It is the ache a father feels watching a child who is thriving and generous and good in every visible way — and who simply never comes home, never calls, never lets him back in. The Torah Jew looks at all that goodness and cannot help but think: how much more beautiful still, how much more lasting, those very same deeds would be if they were lit from within by their Source.

Picture a man who says, in all sincerity, "I love my wife — I have simply never called her, never visit her, and never do a single thing she asks of me." We would gently wonder what that love might become if it were actually lived. The neshama of every Jew is already, from birth, bound to Hashem in just such a bond. The ache is only for it to be lived.

VI. Which Is Why We Reach Out — With Love, Never Down

This is the whole reason the Charedi world pours such enormous effort into kiruv — the countless organizations and the quiet, unnamed individuals who give their lives to reaching out to secular brothers and sisters with warmth and patience. A yeshiva bochur sitting down to learn alef-beis with a teenager who never once had the chance to learn it; a chassidishe family setting an extra place at its Shabbos table for a guest who has never in his life tasted a Shabbos. This is not done from looking down — chas v'shalom — but from the simple conviction that every Jew deserves to taste the sweetness of what was already his by birthright. The Mishnah states the principle that holds the whole people together as one: "kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelek l'Olam Haba" — all of Israel has a share in the World to Come. Every Jew. The outreach is never to earn that share for anyone; it is only to help a brother live, here and now, the inheritance that was always already his.

VII. Come Home

So the Charedi view of the hardworking, devoted, decent secular Jew is, at its very heart, simple: he is our brother, our flesh, a part of our soul and our shared destiny. We admire the good that he does, and we honor the sincerity behind it — and we ache, with love and never with judgment, for the one thing we believe would make all of it whole. We do not think the Torah is a pleasant addition to an already-good life. We believe the Torah is life itself — "ki heim chayeinu v'orech yameinu," for they are our life and the length of our days (Devarim 30:20).

And so we say it the only way that family can ever truly say it: come home. Your mitzvos are waiting for you. Your neshama is waiting. And your people — all of us, every one — are waiting too.

May every Jew come to taste the sweetness of his own Torah, may Hashem gather in all the scattered hearts of His people, and may we all be reunited in His service — bimheirah b'yameinu, amen.

Sources

Every Jew's essence and worth

• Sanhedrin 44a — af al pi shechata, Yisrael hu, that a Jew remains a Jew even when he has sinned; Devarim 14:1 and Kiddushin 36a — that a Jew is always called a child of Hashem; the concept of every Jew as a chelek Eloka mima'al, a spark of the Divine
• The Chazon Ish — that the non-observant Jew of today is to be seen as a tinok shenishba, a captive child, drawn close with love rather than treated as a rebel

Goodness and its source

• Avos 3:14 — the honor due every person as a bearer of the Divine image; Yeshayahu 55:8 — that the ultimate measure of good is Hashem's will, not shifting human consensus; the teaching of Rav Aharon Kotler that ethics rooted in the Creator gains an eternity that ethics severed from Him cannot
• Mishnah Sanhedrin (Perek Chelek) — kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelek l'Olam Haba; Devarim 30:20 — ki heim chayeinu, that the Torah is our very life

The structural relationship to other articles in this series

• "The Charedi Approach to Kiruv" — the outreach this love gives rise to
• "Sinas Chinam and Ahavas Yisrael" — the love that underlies it all
• "Is Unity Possible Without Agreement on Zionism or Army Service?" — the brotherhood that crosses every divide