Assimilation

After deciding to commit to going OTD, I found myself between a rock and, well, nothing. Because I had spent all of my life really involved in learning, all of my old friends were super-shtark bochurim that wanted to have nothing to do with me. It hurt, but I honestly don't know what I would have done if the tables were turned. While I was frum, I had no room in my life for people who weren't, unless of course, to be mekarev them; They were wasting their lives, and to spend time with them would be a waste of mine. So while I didn't blame them, I was left feeling rather alone.

One of the main hurdles I felt I had to overcome, was figuring out where I stood in society. People don't realize how hard it is to go OTD, from being so frum. I had always define myself with my religion, and now I felt like I didn't even know who I was. Looking around at the world for the first time, it seemed like everyone had a place, a niche that they fit into. I remember taking drivers ed classes and being so jealous of everyone. Even if they didn't know each other they could find something to talk about, but I had nothing to say. I hadn't read any books, gone to any movies or watched any tv. I didn't even know how to dress. All I owned were white shirts and black pants.

One day I went to the local mall and went a little crazy. I went into a bunch of stores, and asked for random things. Into the book store, asked for some best sellers. Into the music store and asked for whatever was popular. Into Eddie Bauer and literally bought the clothes off of a few mannequins. I came out looking like a preppy Ken doll, listening to madonna and janet jackson and reading some crappy mystery/romance novels. Something just didn't feel right. For so long I had been part of a very tight-knit group, centered around learning, and while it was hard being without it, just trying to fit in to some random group wasn't the right thing either. So, I spent time trying to figure out who it was I was, and who I wanted to be. Reading voraciously, listening to music all the time and always trying new things. Nine years later, I have a much better idea of who I am but it's still an ongoing process. I still like to find new things, always feeling like I may have missed out on something. But finding friends and people that I felt comfortable hanging out with, that's a whole separate story...

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...

The Reverse Kiruv

Shtreimel deals with an interesting question in his latest post. Since we think that frum people are wrong in what they believe, should we actively try to be 'merachek' them? This was my comment to him.

My take on the original question, and on the post is that ultimately it's the thought that counts. Not of the proselytizer, but of the person being proselytized. I don't think it's important to actively try to make people stop being frum, even though I don't there is any inherent value to being frum. What is important is making people think about what they believe in and why they believe in it. Most of the people who have the negative traits associated with being frum, are the people who never really thought about why they're frum or what it means to them to be frum. They will always just follow the pack, usually with negative results. But in my experience, the frum people who really thought about it, and struggled with it and decided that it had meaning and value to them, are the people who I consider to be 'good frum Jews'. Because ultimately, to quote someone smarter than me, "the unexamined life is not worth living."
So while I don't think it's important for us OTD'ers to try to actively make people not frum, I think it's important for us to try to make people question their beliefs and question the status quo, regardless of whether this makes them go OTD or not. In the end I'm fine with being a חוטא ומחטיא. It actually sounds kind of cool.

Introduction Part I

So, I decided to start this blog, inspired by some of the other ex-frum blogs out there, to talk about my experiences going off the derech and becoming an atheist. I recently moved to NYC (astoria), and in trying to find other people like me, people who went through the same hardships in going OTD, I found some really cool blogs on which I've lurked for some time now. I figured that I would join the fray.

I grew up in Monsey, in a family that was a wierd mix of chasidish, yeshivish, shephardi and modern. I went to Sqvere every Yom Kippur, but wore sephardi tefilin. Went to YSV, a typical kid just doing the basics. In eighth grade I realised that some of the more shtark kids, started wearing only white shirts after they became Bar Mitzvah and keeping their tzitzis out. Because being shtark was equated with being good, I decided to follow suit. I had always enjoyed learning, and I found that wearing the outfit of a 'learner' helped me become just that. Fueled by what I thought people would expect of a real bochur, I buckled down and began earnestly shteiging away.

After finishing eighth grade at YSV, I went off to learn at Ner in Baltimore. Honestly, I wanted to go to a more yeshivish place like Riverdale, where my cousins went, but the more modern elements of my family prevailed and off to Baltimore it was. When I got there, I immediately threw myself into my learning. I really enjoyed the give and take of gemarra, and I excelled. But I found something new there as well - Mussar. Looking back now, I think something I Loved about mussar was that it eliminated the guesswork. 'These things are wrong, these things are right - the end.' It made me feel good to know that I was doing the Right thing. By the end of ninth grade, I had full Brisker payos, thick tzitzis out, and wore my jacket and hat whenever I went outside. By the end of eleventh grade I felt like my path was set on becoming a real Rav, and that was exactly what I wanted. I was waking up between four and five in the morning to be the first one in the Beis Medrash and take the chairs down. I would spend some time with another bochur, just us, learning mussar for an hour before other people would start filtering in, when we would switch to halacha and gemarra. During seder throughout the day, I was one of the people that other bochurim would come to when they had questions on a shvere sug'ya. After night seder and maariv, I stayed learning until at least midnight, usually closer to one or two. My rabeim all loved me.

At some point during all of this, I got into the idea of kiruv. It occurred to me that we spent all of our time learning gemarra and halacha, but not about why we believed what we did. Now, it was obvious to me that what we believed in was true, but I wanted to know how I could prove it to other people - frei people. And so I jumped into that, learning all I could about proving god and yidishkeit to people who didn't believe, without ever questioning my beliefs for myself. I even started learning the first part of chovas halevavos which I was told explicitly not to. My rabeim warned me that it would just confuse me. In that first part, the chovas halevavos deals with the idea of first cause. And while it readily became clear to me that the proofs made no sense, my faith was still unshaken. I knew that while I may not understand the proofs, my god was still god.

Now, during all of this I was also subjected to an english education. But being as frum and shtark as I was, I never took it seriously. When I was younger I had a voracious appetite for reading, often I was so lost in a book that I couldn't hear people calling my name a few feet away. Once I got to yeshiva, I channeled all of that into learning. At Ner I did the bare minimum to satisfy my english requirements. I even took the rare option to take on extra gemarra seder in exchange for english credits. But Ner does take its secular studies program more seriously than other yeshivas, so there was a decent library for goyish books. Not that I ever challila used it. Feh.

In twelfth grade, I was at the top of my game. I was learning non-stop. Unlike many of my classmates who were going to Israel for a year, I was going to Philly, a top yeshivish yeshiva. I had people calling ahead to ask if I would be their chavrusa for seder. My rabeim were asking me to grade other students' bechinos when they didn't have time. During this I had an english project that needed to be taken care of. I had to write a paper on a writer of my choosing. Going into the library (for maybe the second time in my almost four years there), I scanned the books for a well-represented author, who would present no real challenge, so I could get back to my learning. I chose Mark Twain, remembering that I had heard he had good things to say about jews and thinking that it was a quick, easy and painless choice. I was wrong. Mark Twain changed my life. He let the mysterious stranger in.

To be continued...