The New Flavor of the Month

     I just finished reading the new flavor of the month OTD book by Chaya Deitsch. Its called  HERE AND THERE: LEAVING HASIDIM , KEEPING MY FAMILY. It won't make the National Enquirer like most of the garbage OTD tell alls, but its the best and most realistic of them all.
     Chaya Deitsch grew up Lubavitch in New Haven , Connecticut. She had normal loving parents but she always had a curiosity for the secular. Growing up she slowly pushed the boundaries and eventually she completely went off the derech.
     I think that the biggest difference between Deitsch's book and some of the other OTD memoirs is that she wrote it at fifty instead of in her twenties or thirties like Deborah Feldman, Leah Vincent and Pearl Abraham. The other difference is that Deitsch does not have a dysfunctional family that she instead blames on religion like many other OTDers do. She just did not exactly fit in to frum society found her place in a more secular life. She also remains close to her family. I have the feeling more people are like this than those who write sensational memoirs blaming their bad choices on their religious upbringing ( like Leah Vincent. cough cough. )
       I really enjoyed this book. It gives me hope for the world. Perhaps it will help those who are searching make peace with their choices and hopefully it will give people with children who do go OTD hope that they can find a way to keep lines of communication open with their OTD children. Life does not usually happen the way we plan it to . This is yet another illustration of that. This book shows that no matter what path people take they can still stay together as a family. Isn't that really what the Torah intended?
       

No longer Off the Derech.

     I am always fascinated when I read about the OTD community as being a community. When do they stop calling themselves OTD and just consider themselves non-religious Jews ? Is it when they stop their internal dialogue and just fade in with  the rest of the less religious Jews? It is true that they have issues that others who grew up less observant do not have when they fade in with the rest of the world, but somehow by calling themselves OTD they are not really assimilated Jews they are still just OTD .  The derech is still in sight. Do they really want to go off the derech or do they want being off the derech to be their identity? Sometimes I really wonder.
   

Leah Vincent

     I just finished the latest off the derech National Enquirer tell all penned by Leah Vincent. I was thoroughly unimpressed. I would have preferred to have read The National Enquirer or Star Magazine.
     The book is called Cut Me Loose - Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood. It starts out with Leah , one of eleven children growing up in a yeshivish home in Pittsburgh. At that point I found it a little difficult to take her seriously. Growing up yeshivish in Pittsburgh is a lot different than growing up yeshivish in Brooklyn. She herself says she was sent to Manchester , England for high school because her family felt it would be a more appropriate so she obviously was exposed to people of different levels of religious as a child. Then again , I grew up orthodox outside of New York and though I was not yeshivish , out of town actually is a lot more sheltered than Brooklyn because you don't have  New York City beckoning only a subway ride away. Just being shomer shabbos and kosher and having a good Torah education gives you a different culture and when you mingle with secular people you are unfamilar with their standards. It may be a bit more pronounced if you grow up yeshivish or hassidish, but you are kidding yourself if you think being more modern makes you just like a secular person. So to begin with I forgave her a little for saying she had a difficult time merging with secular society. But then I read the rest of the book.
     Over time Vincent began to push the limits with her parents and after high school ended up in New York. Her parents found her a job and an apartment  and paid her first month's rent.  After that she was on her own. After this point the tabloid begins. She blames her parents for her lack of friends and loneliness which she claims lead her to years of living as a degenerate.
      Vincent lived in Kensington , Brooklyn which is on the outskirts of Boro Park and Midwood and are both chock full of OTD youth. Fifteen years ago when her supposed meltdown occurred there were plenty of young people who were full of questions who lived in the neighborhood that she lived in. I find it hard to believe that she was not able to find ANY of them to commiserate with . Instead she had a Rastafarian drug dealer boyfriend who she had an affair with. Gee that makes sense. I find it hard to believe that someone who grew up so sheltered would feel comfortable hanging with someone so degenerate. She eventually starts cutting herself, at some point is in a psych ward (where she should have stayed longer if you ask me) , becomes a prostitute for a few days and has an affair with an older , married Brooklyn college professor . Why would ANYONE  think that being a prostitute is a great idea? Why would someone with Leah's background not befriend any secular or modern orthodox or average respectable gentiles at Brooklyn college? Why would Leah think when her three times her age married lover's wife called her up and yelled at her for having an affair with her husband that she wasn't at fault since she was single?  Inquiring  minds want to know.
        The book reads like a bad version of a small town girl goes to the big city and does every bad thing she could do before she sobers up. Every time you think she could not have done anything more absurd she does. It almost seems fictional . How could anyone be so stupid? If she really did all the scandalous deeds she mentions why would she want put them in a memoir for all to see? Would she not be embarrassed?
       Vincent would like to blame all of her sins on her parents and a religion that is very strict about the separation of the sexes. She feels that because her parents equated writing letters to a boy to being slutty that it left her no choice but to fulfill that prophecy. Baloney. Her parents were not perfect. I don't think anyone religious or secular has perfect parents. After reading Leah's story I have sided with her parents. They were right to be strict with her. They were afraid that she would do the crazy things that she claims she did in her book.  However, it is clear from this memoir that Leah had a lot of untreated mental issues which it is too bad that her parents perhaps could have gotten her help for before she spun out of control . I am sure that they could not imagine that she would have such poor judgement. In my opinion not getting Leah proper mental health help was their only crime, the rest was her  own creation. You can only blame your parents and your religion so much. At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.
        I think that part of my problem with reading these OTD  books is that I want to read the story about the person who leaves their hasidic or yeshivish world , gets job , goes to college, gets married , lives a normal life, respects that even though they may not want to be observant that there are different strokes for different folks and they just move on . When I find a book like this I will let you know. I guess the people who end up normal don't need to write books about it. Though he's a bit of a nut, Shalom Auslander's book Foreskin's Lament still remains the best of the OTD books so far.
        In the meantime if you want to read about scandal read about the Kardashians or Paris Hilton rather than read Vincent's book. They are much more interesting.
 

 

See The Light

     I went to Touro college many moons ago and when I was there one of my Judaic studies teachers presented us with an interesting quandary. He was under the impression that even with as many bts there are there are more people going off the derech. I do not know if he is right or wrong .To me its irrelevant. I just think its an important question. I don't even remember what specific class he taught.. Was it halacha or was it chumash?  I do remember this question. The rabbi who asked this of us certainly understood the issue. He was rumored to have had a son who was on his way off the derech. Even though this question was posed quite awhile ago it is just as relevant now. He proposed that everyone should find where they feel comfortable religiously and stay there. The room was filled with young women who went through the school systems of modern orthodox to more yeshivish .
     The truth is when all is said and done, one really has to figure out where one belongs and inhabit that space. If one feels more comfortable with the right wing  philosophies one should stay there. If one feels  more modern orthodox one should stay there. I have seen a lot of different versions of orthodox and as much as the black hat community feels that they are superior they are really not all that different than modern orthodox in my opinion because they are both orthodox. The only difference is that the yeshivish folks follow a stricter dress code on the whole than modern orthodox . For me there is also a feeling of big brother  is watching you (and I don't mean G-d) in the yeshivish camp whereas I don't feel  as stressed and I feel more accepted among the modern orthodox camp. But this is just me.

       I think that staying frum when one has grown up that way is often being assumed rather than cultivated. I grew up in the Midwest and the school I went to did give a person a good feeling about being Jewish and religious. Many of the kids who did not come from religious homes did eventually become shomer shabbos themselves. We were allowed to ask questions. Even so, things weren't always perfect. The kids who came from rich families often got the better parts in plays and other honors. A lot of our teachers were from the New York area even so and they brought with them attitudes that were prevalent at the time. After living in the New York area I see that New York Jewry is another animal altogether for better or for worse. As frum as many are here there is a great pull from secular society no matter how insular one is. New York is the fashion center, and has a lot of culture that is not always so good. Where I grew up you were a bit more sheltered even if you may not have been as ritually observant. Even in the age of the Internet general culture is  still more conservative outside of New York .
     That said, with all of the Jews who live in New York there should be a way to keep people interested in remaining frum as opposed to being frustrated. There are so many reasons for people going OTD. There really is not a one size fits all cure. We CAN find an answer though, even if its just our own personal reason for staying on the derech. Let the light of the Hanukkah candles lead the way.
   

extremes

often when people find themselves they find it hard to understand why everyone does not believe as they do and they become intolerant of those who still adhere to beliefs they no longer adhere to. when people go off the derech they become so comfortable with who they are that some (not all) become intolerant of those who still believe. this of course is the other side of the coin of when someone who becomes baal t'shuvah who does not understand why anyone can remain secular once they have seen the light of the torah..
just because you may be otd does not suddenly mean others won't believe in being frum. deal with it. just because you may have frummed out does not mean that all of your relatives will abandon their secular lives after spending quality time with frum people. just because you may have made these decisions does not mean others   will no matter how much you would like them to.

not staying on track

when i was in college i had a friend who used to laugh about friends of hers who had been frum for awhile and then went away from it. she would always laugh and say that these friends would say that being frum ruined them from going back to practising judaism as a reform or conservative jew. once they knew how life as an orthodox jew should be any other way of practising it did not seem as meaningful. they would not necessarily become frum again, but being frum had definitely had an impact upon them..
i hadnt really thought about my friends axiom until recently when many bloggers have been trying to reconcile why those who go off the derech completely jump the derech and remain unaffiliated jews.  . perhaps being frum also "ruined" other forms of judaism for them .