Introduction Finale

So I was in Ner, scheduled to start beis medrash at Philly in the fall. My absolute faith was shaken, but I still believed. Or rather, I still didn't not believe. I started investing more time and energy into trying to figure everything out. I graduated high school and went to spend my summer at Agudah Masmidim with Yisroel Belsky. While I was in camp I focused on my learning, but when I had free time I would sneak off and read all the 'kiruv' books that a shtark yeshiva bochur like me wasn't supposed to be reading. But they didn't really do anything for me. They never really held up to strong questioning and logic. I also read a lot of Avigdor Miller and though he seemed to come at things with a more scientific edge, he still came back to a lot of ideas that were clearly based on flawed logic or a deliberate misinterpretation of scientific facts. (I think I'll come back to these in later posts and address them, one by one.) Nothing really seemed to satisfy me, but there wasn't any real way for me to get my hands on secular information to compare things to.

I had one week at home in Monsey in between camp and Philly, and I was determined to try and use that time to try and get real answers. But it was 2000 and the Internet, while already popular, wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now, and coming from a frum home, I didn't have easy access to it. I would leave early in the morning, say I was going off to the beis medrash to learn, and walk half hour to the library in my black hat and jacket. I began to research alternate ideas and I was shocked out how straightforward things were. Instead of obtuse and roundabout explanations, clear facts were presented and clear conclusions drawn. It turns out that the Mabul couldn't age fossils millions of years! The paths of evolution could indeed be followed and understood. Things had rational explanations that didn't rely on god to make them happen. During that week, for the first time since I turned Bar Mitzvah, I skipped a day of tefillin. It felt weird, but also liberating. Until that point most of my questions were god-centric, how could god do this or how can we know this about god, but at that point I started looking deeper and asking why I even believed there was a god.

After that everything progressed rather quickly. I went off to Philly, but my heart wasn't in it. I didn't feel right spending hours of my day learning random tracts of gemarrah that didnt mean anything to me anymore. One day I packed up my stuff, called a cab and went home. But of course, it's never as easy as that. While I cut off my big payos, stopped wearing tzitzis, and put on a (gasp) blue shirt, I couldn't change my life so radically in just one day. I spent some time in a small yeshiva in Monsey that was based out of Ohr Samayach. While the yeshiva itself wasn't part of OS, I got to meet people who weren't quite religious yet. They were on their way in and I was on my way out, but we met in the middle. I remember watching the 2000 elections with someone who just enrolled in OS. He was telling about the fast food that he had eaten a few days earlier as his last meal, and I was thinking to myself when I would have my first fast food meal. I went out to Wendys the next day and got a burger. It didn't taste as good as I thought it would, but the act of eating it deeply satisfied me. I was beginning to make my own choices.

And so ends the Introduction. It's now nine years later, I'm twenty six and living in NYC. A lot happened in those years. I went to aish for a bit, to hear what they had to say. (nothing really worthwhile, it turns out.) I've dated several non-jewish women and lived with one for a while. I spoke to a lot of rabbis, at my families request. I got my first tattoo before I had my first piece of bacon. I dated frum girls who knew I wasn't. I learnt a lot about Judaism, in terms of both, the religion and the tribe. My frum friends still ask me halacha questions. But to hear all of those stories, you're just going to have to come back and read them soon...