A BEN TORAH’S GUIDE TO GOING OFF THE DERECH (PART 1 OF 3)

Introduction

Few experiences are as paradoxical as going OTD. For many people, going OTD is the most challenging experience they will endure in their lifetime, but it can simultaneously be the most liberating and euphoric of experiences. Many describe their journey out of Yiddishkeit as intensely disorienting, yet view this time as some of the most introspective and enlightening times of their life. Lastly, leaving the Frum community is an intensely induvial journey, with no two experiences mirroring each other. Yet, the points of commonality between those going OTD are universal to the point of tired cliché.

My intention on these pages is to highlight the knowledge we OTDers wish we had at the beginning of our journey. The prompt I gave myself and those who helped with this work was simple: If we could go back in time to the moment we lost our faith – what advice would we give our younger selves? What nuggets of wisdom did we have to learn the hard way? What advice would have saved us needless heartache and misery? This guide is the answer to that question.

Why call this work “A Ben Torah’s guide”

It may seem strange that I titled this work “A Ben Torah’s Guide.” Not only am I an atheist, I am practically an anti-theist. Yet for all my criticism of Judaism and Frum culture, I still identify as a Ben Torah. For me, being a Ben Torah entails being a person with a bikush ha’emes – someone who is committed to truth above all else. I was never trained in epistemology, and as a yungaman, my ability to parse reality from fantasy was stunted by my training; nevertheless, I spent almost fifteen years in the bais midrash being taught to care about the truth. This passion for truth led me to reject Yiddishkeit when confronted with the incontrovertible evidence that it was a false belief system. As much as I found Yiddishkeit comforting, safe, and meaningful, my training taught me to stand up and say, “I must live with the truth.”

There is a more profound element to my identity as a Ben Torah. Yeshiva culture has little patience for politeness and other pleasantries, and to the rest of the world, we appear rude and different. But within our eco-system, yeshiva guys are trained to be erlich – to take ownership of our actions and be held accountable for our mistakes. When I would act venal or selfish, the most stinging rebuke I could receive was, "Natan, you are a Ben Torah." Being a Ben Torah means being someone who wants to do the right thing, someone who is willing to put aside his discomfort and selfishness in the face of a morally clear choice. I may be an atheist, but I am proud to count myself amongst the ranks of Bnei Torah.

Going OTD is a challenging time, but like all challenges, you can persevere. As your tour guide, I am here, your friendly local apikores, to offer perspectives and advice. Much of what appears below is intuitive and self-evident but can be easily lost amidst the emotional chaos of going OTD. With this preamble, let us dive into what is happens when someone goes OTD.

Welcome to a Lifequake

The best way to understand the process of going OTD is through the lens of what Bruce Feiler calls “Lifequakes” in his book Life Is in the Transitions. Per Feiler, our lives are replate with disrupting events and experiences that shake up our everyday existence. These experiences range from getting married to losing a job to starting or finishing schooling to giving birth to a child. According to Feiler's research, on average, a person can expect to experience 30 and 40 disrupters in their life with a frequency of one disrupter every 12-18 months.

Disrupters are part of life, but per Feiler, one out of every ten disrupters will trigger a ‘Lifequake,’ an event exponentially worse than a typical disrupter. Lifequakes are the sort of crisis that causes a fundamental reorientation of the narrative of our life. During a Lifequake, meaning, purpose, and direction all go through a process of upheaval, transition, and renewal. We like to think that most of us lead humdrum predictable lives, but per Feiler, most people will experience between three to five periods of massive upheaval in their lifetime.

Feiler records numerous reasons why a disrupting event can turn into a life-shattering experience. Sometimes, the disrupting event is objectively calamitous, such as a mother burying her child or a person finding out that they have incurable cancer. Other times the disruptor is not objectively worse than other life events, but it precedes a longs sequence of disrupting events, and the unremitting pressure of it all becomes intolerable.

Going OTD will almost certainly trigger a lifequake because changing religious orientation has a domino effect, causing a cascade of disrupting triggers all at once. For many, going OTD can entail:

1. A notable change of routine and dress.

2. Enormous uncertainty about the future.

3. A crisis of meaning.

4. Leaving the safe confines of Yesivha / Kollel / seminary and beginning to seek a secular education.

5. Being shunned by a once loving family and community.

6. Navigating formally close relationships that are suddenly strained and hostile.

7. Social pressure and manipulation to go back to one's old life.

8. Divorce and custody battles.

Any one of the above disruptions in a person's life can be enormously challenging to cope with healthily. Yet, when loaded up all at once, the cascade effect of going OTD can feel utterly overwhelming.

I am not here to sugarcoat the situation: for most people, going OTD is hard, and nothing I can tell you will make the pain go away. But sometimes, we are our own worst enemy. It can be all too easy to act against our best interest when overwhelmed, depressed, or dealing with difficult circumstances, and going OTD is a process fraught with complex and consequential decisions. That is where this guide hopes to be useful. I have broken the guide into three parts. Part I addresses how to psychologically cope with the inner turmoil and chaos of losing one's religion. Part II discusses tips and insights regarding navigating religious trauma. It also explores the experience of shedding religious observance and rebuilding a framework to contextualize your relationship with Yiddishkeit. Part III discusses interacting with religious friends, spouses, children, and parents.

PART I:

FINDING YOURSELF

Opening thoughts

The process of going OTD can be long and destabilizing, and the degree of difficulty coping with this new reality directly correlates with the emotional tools at your disposal. At a time of immense change and challenges, the most essential tool a person can have is the capacity to regulate their emotional mindscape and overcome challenges in a lucid and level-headed manner. Your family and friends may paint you as a villain, trying to guilt you back to observance; all sorts of negative feelings may spring up when exposed to various religious experiences, and every instinct in your body may be telling you that you are a failure and do not deserve happiness. Here are a few tips and perspectives to help you regain control of your internal mental state, allowing you to focus on your decisions and the people in your life with clarity and poise.

1 - Accept The "Facticity" of Your Situation

One of the most significant and vital steps that a person can take to regain control of their internal mental state is acknowledging the reality of their situation. Human beings prize stability and are terrified of change, and, as we approach “the point of no return” in our OTD journey, it is all too easy to shield our gaze from reality. Feiler refers to this phenomenon as ‘facticity avoidance’ – our instinct to resist change and deny reality for as long as possible.

Per Feiler, the instinct to avoid facing the truth of our situation can be spurred by fear of the unknown, sadness over what we are losing, and shame triggered by a sense of personal respectability and failure for the situation. For me, the fear of the consequences of going OTD was paralyzing. As my sefkaos began concretizing into disbelief, I felt like my entire life was at stake. I was happily married with two beautiful children. I had a wonderful group of friends, and my Kollel provided an enormous sense of camaraderie.

Furthermore, my entire life revolved around religious belief and observance. All my goals were religious – how many Blatt will I conquer this zman? What sugyas do I want to explore? What area of halacha would I write chiddushim on? I was settled and content. My wife worked hard while I was in Kollel, and we had a stable income – even a home to call our own.

Yet, for all the beautiful elements in my life, my questions just kept getting stronger and stronger. Standing at the precipice of disbelief, I was terrified. My wife would divorce me. My children would be taken away. All my friends would shun me. I would lose everyone I loved.

Furthermore, my wife had a prestigious postgraduate degree. She made all the money in our relationship, while I did not have a high school diploma or any means of supporting myself. I imagined that going OTD meant losing everything and crawling back to my mother’s home to avoid homelessness.

Like a goat caught by a predator, the fear of the unknown caused me to freeze up and shut down. I bought kiruv book after kiruv book, hoping to find the magical answers to all my questions. Sometimes the books helped for a bit - when I discovered ideas that I had not been exposed to previously. “Perhaps there is hope after all,” I would tell myself. But eventually, my mind would start picking apart the arguments I read. I found myself compelled to Google the keywords of the idea with the word ‘debunked’ appended at the end to see if others had criticized the argument. To not check the ideas for criticism felt intellectually dishonest. Inevitably, I would discover the various plot holes and sleight of hand contained in the kiruv arguments, and my world would start crashing around me all over again.

Eventually, I found my courage. I realized that avoiding reality will not change reality. Indeed, the facts honestly did not care about my feelings. Suppose my wife would divorce me for being an apikores, well then, my marriage was already dead. There was no point in hiding. I might end up divorced, penniless, unemployable, homeless, friendless, and estranged from my children – but too bad, that was the cards I had been dealt. If I wanted to change my situation, the only way forward was through – I needed to pick up my chin and acknowledge reality.

That night, I sat down with my wife and laid it out. I no longer believed that Judaism is true. I did not have “questions” – what I did have was a probability matrix that put vanishingly little credence on Judaism's truth claims. I desperately wanted to stay married, but I was prepared and understood if she wanted to divorce me. It was a tumultuous time. After consulting various rabbonim, my wife remained with me on the condition that I present myself to the public as a Frum Jew and raise our children the way we had initially intended. One by one, I worked through my fears, but the most pivotal moment in my journey was finding the strength to acknowledge my situation's reality.

When we are in denial, we are impotent and reactive; once we face reality, we have power and agency. We become the masters of our lives. If you will eventually have to face the music, you might as well be the conductor.

2 - Celebrate The Experience

Everyone might be trying to demonize you, but recognize that you are a hero. Few people on the planet possess the mental fortitude and courage to unflinchingly gaze past their childhood indoctrination. But you did. While most of the planet is stuck living a fantasy, praying and worshiping an entity that does not exist, you get to see the world as it actually is. You took the red pill and survived to tell the tale.

It may take time to adjust, but being OTD has the potential to be so much more rewarding than being Frum. Our universe is vast and contains a massive panoply of experiences. Yet, the Frum lifestyle stuffs its adherents into a tiny cage, giving them a small and limited sampling of “kosher” activities. It may be hard now, but trust me, it gets besser.

One of the tragedies of the OTD experience is that so many of us fall for the Frum narrative. We are nebbuch broken. We are outcasts and social misfits who could not hack the system. We are deranged hedonists who cannot control our raging libido. All these are lies Frum people tell themselves to avoid facing the reality that their religion is not particularly special or noteworthy. In fact, it is perfectly reasonable for someone to want to leave.

I have the unique perspective of living in both worlds. I am ‘in the closet’ and spend my day surrounded by Frum people, but I also am an active participant of the OTD community. In my experience, people who go OTD tend to be some of the most sensitive, empathetic, intelligent, and courageous people in the Jewish world. OTD people self-select to consist of people who rejected the falsehood, the hypocrisy, the shallowness, the preening overconfidence, the monochromatic perspective, and the petulant childishness of the Frum community. They are people with the courage and gumption to refuse to lower their heads and submit.

The Frum community often paints the outside world as one of misery and meaninglessness, and there is no denying that the transition out of the Frum community is complex and can often extract a heavy toll - but listen to what I am about to say carefully: It is rare to meet someone OTD who regretted their decision to leave.

If you want to go OTD, you are in good company. You are leaving a community that hurts their LGBT+ members, that subdues and erases their women, that mutilates their babies, that professes abstinence while indulging in astounding levels of material consumption, and that forces its members into a limited number of superficial and predestined molds. You have broken free, saving not only yourself but all your potential progeny from a lifetime of servitude to an imaginary master. If there was ever a reason to make a Shehecheyanu blessing – this is it! The rest of your life awaits.

3 - Go Easy On Yourself

People tend to be their own worst critics, and most of us fill our inner dialogue with self-criticism, shaming, and denigration. “What is wrong with you?!” “Why couldn’t you accomplish task X like a normal person?!” “Everyone is living functional lives – except you” “Because of your inability to ‘adult’ properly, your life is a train wreck dumpster fire.” “Will you ever grow up and get a grip?!”

These sorts of biting inner messages arguably have utility, stirring us to work harder and achieve more in life. But when a person is going through an objectively challenging time, these sorts of self-criticism become toxic.

Going OTD is a punishing experience by any metric of difficulty. For me, going OTD entailed watching my entire world crumble around me in slow motion. I was hurting everyone around me and it somehow all felt like my fault. I was also incredibly angry at the Torah – I had spent the past 12+ years studying Torah all day, every day because I thought it was a work of moral perfection. I felt duped and taken advantage of.

I did not have the vocabulary to understand my feelings, but for the first time in my life, I experienced powerful depression. Waking up became difficult. I had a number of projects that I was hired to perform, yet I found myself missing deadlines. I would watch the days tick past with a growing sense of dread, knowing that I am letting people down and not performing my obligations, but I felt paralyzed. In Kollel, my chavrosos grew increasingly impatient with one mumbled excuse after another for my tardiness. Even simple tasks would feel impossibly difficult. I was a father, husband, chavrusa, and employee, yet I seemed to be failing in my every role. I had always considered myself a driven person and I for about a year I endlessly beat myself up for becoming what I deemed a failure and disappointment.

So rabbosi, take it from a veteran self-critic, all this mental harassment is toxic and ridiculous. Going OTD may likely be the most difficult experience you will ever have in your time on this planet. Go easy on yourself. It would be very strange if you did not fall apart. Appreciate the hugeness of what is happening to you and cut yourself some slack. Your focus during the transition should be self-care and finding ways to support your mental and emotional health. You will get through this and come out stronger afterward – but the road is bumpy and do not expect to operate through life with your former efficiency and ease. You have been dealt a difficult card and you must recognize your limitations and forgive yourself. Acknowledge the emotional difficulties of the time and adjust your expectations of yourself accordingly. Simply surviving and getting to the other side of the OTD transition is a commendable accomplishment that should be celebrated.

4 - Get Into Therapy, Dammit

The Frum community has a complicated relationship with mental health therapy, and it can be difficult to shed those biases when one becomes OTD. The hesitancy to trust the therapeutic system arises because for many years the Frum community (led by gedolim such as Rav Moshe Feinstein) has held the party line that psychotherapy was useless, and psychologists were incompetent. The Frum community has long stigmatized the field of mental health as being anti-daas Torah and swept up in the mindless cultural zeitgeist of American silliness. Therapists were caricaturized as a bunch of perverted Freudian spewing, evolutionary believing, free-will denying, kofrim who made a profession of allowing man-babies to excuse terrible behavior under the guise of self-actualization. Furthermore, given the shidduch crisis, many people who would otherwise seek mental health treatment, refused to acknowledge mental illness for fear of being stigmatized as a family and ruining the dating options of their children and siblings.

Thankfully, the attitude in the Frum community has changed due to a combination of four factors:

1. The tireless work of Rabbi Twerski Z”l. Rabbi Twerski lost much social capital within the Frum community, yet his works succeed in introducing and normalizing concepts like self-esteem, addiction, and mental illness within the Frum mental landscape.

2. Frum, mostly female, writers within the Frum community saw the effectiveness of therapy and promoted mental health specialists in the Frum magazine, starting with Ami and bleeding into Mishpacha and recently, The Voice of Lakewood. To this day, insular yeshivish and chassidish people will not bring these magazines into their homes because they feel betrayed by Frum writer’s acceptance of mental health issues and the field of psychotherapy.

3. A critical mass of Frum young men and women stood up to the community ethos and became practicing Frum therapists. This created a safe bubble of sorts where people could go to a yarmulke/wig-wearing “unzara” (one of us) professional for mental health counseling and assume that they were being protected from the traif ideas of psychology.

4. As the mental health world became more sophisticated, rabbonim slowly began realizing that they were out of their depth when approached by congregants and students suffering from various addictions and mental illnesses. The efficacy of the normal rabbinic toolkit of teshuvah, Mussar, his’lahavus, encouragement, and calls to prayer and Torah study paled in comparison to evidence-based medicine and therapies. Slowly, rabbonim began sending their more troubled adherents to seek professional help.

Yet resistance to therapy persists in the more insular Frum communities and as a freshly minted OTDer, I found myself stigmatized against therapists. Aside from Frum social conditioning, there are a number of other reasons that people avoid seeking therapy. Some people think that therapy is ok, but only for “crazy” people. This is blatantly not true. A therapist creates a safe, trusting space for a person to explore and nurture their mental and emotional capacities. Going OTD is a time of transition and is often accompanied by extreme stress and anxiety. Furthermore, for many people, the challenges of going OTD are not fleeting or temporary. Every Shabbos, Pesach, family reunion, and Simcha can be fraught with a strong negative emotional resonance. A therapist can help someone in this situation work through their thoughts and feelings, allowing them to face the world and make decisions with maximal empowerment and self-agency. You are going through a lifequake and any help is good.

Others object that mental health therapy is expensive. I get that concern, yet for fear of sounding privileged, I contend that, if it is possible, it is worth tightening your budget to accommodate the cost of mental health counseling. Your sanity and mental health are your most precious resources, and it is worth prioritizing your money towards maintaining your mental health more than almost anything else.

(A Note About Frum therapists)

As a final note on the topic, be careful with Frum mental health counselors. Parents and spouses will often pressure you to go to a Frum therapist in the (often explicitly stated) hope that they will get you to return to the fold. From an OTD perspective, a Frum therapist may also make sense because. The reason to favor a Frum therapist is that a secular therapist cannot relate to the endless nuances and subtleties of Frum culture. There is truth to the idea that a Frum therapist has a greater cultural connection to an OTD person than a secular therapist. That said, the ugly reality is that many Frum therapists have lost all sense of professionalism when dealing with OTD people. They view their work as kiruv and are deaf to the pain and suffering of their clients. That said, I have also encountered some Frum therapists who are consummate professionals, putting aside their biases and focusing on addressing the mental and mental needs of their clients, irrespective of their religious orientation.

The key distinguisher between a good and bad Frum therapist is the degree of rigidity in their religious thinking. An open-minded competent therapist who has not been radicalized by their Frum beliefs can often be wonderful allies to the OTD community and can effectively work with OTD patients. Conversely, indoctrinated fundamentalist Frum therapists who occupy the black and white world where Yiddishkeit is the one and only truth are often unable to work past their biases to effectively treat OTD people. Stay away from those therapists.

5 - Do Not Let People Delegitimize Your Journey

Many people who leave the Frum community often experience their Frum friends and family attempt to pick apart their stated reason for leaving, spinning it in its most negative connotations. “You left because you could not face the truth.” “You are an irresponsible child who left because you are incapable of accepting an “ol” (yolk) and want to be “hefker” to do as you please.” “You are emotionally damaged and are running away from your childhood.” “You just want to taste cheeseburgers and sex.” Nebbuch, you were molested or abused.” “If only you saw the truth and beauty of Yiddishkeit you would never leave.” All these sentiments are wrong and pigheaded.

I, and many of my friends, left Yiddishkeit because it was false, not because Yiddishkeit was unpleasant or because we were running away from anything. That said, for all the joy that I derived from Yiddishkeit, I also experienced a lot of pain. I was emotionally abused by various Roshi Yeshiva. Additionally, my father’s craziness often manifested in religious ramblings, ultimately leading to my parent's divorce. And I was scarred by the guilt and self-loathing that Yiddishkeit encourages over teenage masturbation and bad thoughts. Yet, despite these challenges, I somehow managed to develop into a reasonably well-adjusted adult. I did not go OTD because of my prior traumas. I left because I realized that Yiddishkeit could never meet the burden of proof required to justify its existence.

Yet, during my time going off, I talked to a number of rabbonim. After hearing my story, with few exceptions, the rabbonim spent inordinate amounts of time trying to convince me that I must have left because of trauma or because I was too scared to “live a life of achryaus.” I was running away from the pain and hurt that I experienced as a Frum person. My protestations fell on deaf ears. The narrative was prewritten, and my story ticked all the boxes. For a time, I doubted myself. Did I leave because my rabbeim hurt me? Perhaps these rabbi’s knew me better than I knew myself? Eventually, I stood my ground, the narrative of “running away” and “victimization” might be true for some people, but it just was not the reality of my situation.

The experience of having my sanity questioned repeatedly was traumatizing. The actions the Frum community took to keep me doubting myself were textbook gaslighting, and to this day, I am angry at these rabbonim for their utter inability to see past the pre-written story that they shoehorned me into.

Your journey is your own, and only you get to author your story. Do not let the judgments and pre-written narratives of others color your perception of yourself. The only person you need to answer to is yourself, and no one is entitled to opinions regarding the legitimacy of your journey.

Frum people believe that Judaism is a religion created by an all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent super-being. The truth is that Judaism, for all its positive qualities, is a flawed, broken, limited, human-made creation. If not for our indoctrination, it is almost instantly evident to most people that Judaism is human-made. The community is flawed. Its leaders are flawed. Its laws are outdated and its stories sound exactly like the sort of laws Bronze Age farmers would invent - full of giants, witches, seers, menstrual blood taboos and animal sacrifices. Yet because we have been told the same ideas so many times by everyone around us since we were tiny children, we believe it unquestioningly. On a communal level, our Gemara centric education favors only a small intellectually superior subset of our population, our daughters are taught to glorify marriage, yet we engineer a system that leaves many of them waiting years for shidduchim, our culture is rife with racist and backward attitudes; our rabbis and leaders, when examined closely, seem just as human and prone to failure and vice as any other person; and finally, our community exhibits all the follies and failures of other restrictive fundamentalist groups, yet we are taught to believe mi ki’amcha Yisroel - that our community is somehow superior to all cultures and civilizations in the world.

For many, all it takes for a person to reject the narrative in the Frum community is a trigger, some event or emotion that allows them to find the seam, exposing the façade. This trigger often comes in a flash of insight - something is not right. Once a person experiences this ‘glitch in the matrix,’ they will become attuned to other issues and start noticing problems and inconsistencies everywhere.

For others, there was no specific triggering episode or thought that began their journey, their change from belief to non-belief was the result of countless imperceptible micro-triggering moments. These triggers typically fall into three categories: questions regarding belief and hashkafah, problems with the community, and problems with Jewish leaders.

For me, the issues that started my journey were hashkafic questions. I loved the community and revered the gedolim, but as an inquisitive Kollel man, hashkafic questions began piling up leading to my eventual decision to go OTD. Perhaps more common are people who begin questioning after coming face to face with the hypocrisy, shallowness, or general failing of the community.

Frum people claim the if someone left because they were hurt, that means that their journey is illegitimate. The OTD person left because they were “just running away.” But the truth is often the opposite: believers decide to never question their beliefs because they are comfortable and do not want to disrupt their life. When people are satisfied and content, they rarely scrutinize their foundational beliefs, happy to live the life they have been blessed to experience.

Pain is a catalyst. Pain wakes us up, telling us to dig deeper into ourselves and lead an examined life. When a person uses pain as a fulcrum to leverage themselves out of the indoctrination of their childhood, that does not mean that their journey is somehow illegitimate. Rather it means that they are ‘lucky' enough to have been the given tools and motivation to perceive the world in a way that others do not.

6 - Find A Community

One of the great pains of going OTD is loneliness. I have never felt more alone than sitting in shul on Yom Kippur looking around at everyone crying into their machzor. I felt like I was the only sane person in an insane asylum. It was clear to me that I was irreconcilably different than everyone I ever knew. They could never understand me and I could no longer relate to them.

Once someone comes out as OTD, there are a host of challenges that come with navigating friendships with Frum people. The sad reality is that many Frum/OTD friendships fade. Many Frum people find it mentally straining to interact with an OTD person in a normal fashion. Human beings avoid discomfort, and without maintenance, friendships stagnate. Furthermore, the OTD person will often have difficulty relating to the daily woes and drama of Frum life. Yom Tov, chavrusos, child-rearing; the further one leaves the community, the more difficult it becomes to relate to the life cycles and rhythm of Jewish life.

Friendships are also difficult for those ‘in the closet.’ I have many Frum friends, but my friendships feel fake, hollowed out by the massive lie shrouding the relationships. The friendships are infected with a falsehood, sapping them of much of the joy of connection.

The antidote to this loneliness is simple. Make new friends. Many of us tend to self-isolate, but it is in your best interest to try to put yourself ‘out there’ and connect with other people. To paraphrase the Talmud, sorrow shared is sorrow halved. The Frum community instinctively vilifies Footsteps. This is expected. After all, the Frum community’s only analog to such an organization is its aggressive kiruv organizations such as Arachim, Aish, and Ohr Somayach. In their bias, the Frum community assumes that everyone is like them and that an organization for OTD people must be a ‘reverse Arachim,’ gleefully pushing people to rebel against Hashem. This is silly. I cannot speak for Footsteps, and my opinion is nothing but my own, but as a member, my experience has been that Footsteps is simply a vehicle for OTD people to meet and support each other. Many OTD people are shunned by thier community and in desperate need of a little chavershaft. Join Footsteps (or Freidom). Attend a meeting or a game night. With Covid and the advent of virtual events, there is little excuse not to meet people in a comparable situation as you.

Another wonderful place to meet OTD people is Facebook. There are numerous OTD groups, built around various demographics and interests. Find a group that you connect with and start making friends. I personally found the “Frum/OTD Dialogue” group incredibly cathartic during my journey away from Judaism.

Going OTD, especially at the beginning of the process, is a time of extreme vulnerability and change. Few things help ease this transition more than a loving and supportive community of people who understand your struggle and accept you. Go at your own pace, but trust me, you will not regret meeting people who share your struggles.

7 - If You Can, Move

I live in a Frum-only crowded development in Lakewood, and this advice is not mine to give. However, moving out of the Frum community was one of the top suggestions given when I polled OTD people for what they considered the most crucial piece of advice for a newly minted Frei person. The olam’s advice was consistent across the board - If you are single and not tied down, then as soon as you gain a modicum of financial independence, get as geographically far away from the Frum community as possible. This is especially true if you live in the NY / NJ area.

Moving is terrifying, but it also solves many of the issues that accompany going OTD. There is no judgmental former community in Nowheresville, Nebraska. No manipulative Frum relatives. No suffocating sense of social pressure to conform. No endless parade of Frum people engaging in triggering behavior. Nothing. Physical distance gives you the mental space to dull the shrill or disapproving reactions of your family or loved ones. You are free to restart, to become whoever you want to become.

Furthermore, if you are living in your parents’ house or next to all your in-laws/ Frum friends, their opinions and attempts at eliciting compliance through shame, guilt, or emotional gaslighting feel powerful and outsized. Geographic distance between yourself and the Frum world will allow you to perceive how hollow and empty their threats and manipulations actually are. Distance creates powers. It tells your former co-religionists that they do not own you. You got away, and there is nothing they can do about it.

Moving also has the psychological effect of externalizing and concretizing the transformation you are undergoing. Gone is the old, often painful past, left behind in the trail of your exhaust pipe or the receding skyline from your plane window. The world is open to you. Distance creates agency; it creates choice. But there is something deeper: being part of the vast outside world gives instant clarity on just how tiny and narrow the cage you formerly occupied was. The endlessly rich and varied people, customs, ways of life, and experiences of our planet are like a burst of color, exposing the deary, gray, self-centered, preening, myopia of the Frum community.

People who go OTD and move away report that, in the beginning, the adjustment can be is difficult and isolating. But as you make friends and connections outside your old life, everything becomes brighter. Your accomplishments grow, you build a new community, and your old life recedes into the background. Moving away from the Frum community allows people to move beyond their past in a manner that is simply unavailable to those who stay within the confines of the Frum community.

Obviously, this advice is not relevant for many, including myself. For many, the cost is too high. But for those who can, the advice is unanimous, “get out of Frumville ASAP!”

8 - Reclaim Your Life

Yay! You realized that Judaism is a made-up religion! You win level 1 of life. Now please step into the shimmering Doom elevator to go to the next level: becoming a functional human being in the real world.

For many people, going OTD feels like life is crashing around them. But life is just getting started. It is so easy to stagnate in our misery – to crawl into a mental hole and pretend everything is ok. But facing the outside world is a critical part of moving to the next step in your development as a human being.

Being OTD means being free. Free from a God with a million asinine rules. Free from a community full of judgments, prejudices, and pre-written life scripts. Free to do, think, and become whatever you want. This freedom is terrifying and glorious – and ready or not – your future is here.

For many OTD people, this freedom creates a desire to enter society. So here I am to tell you to take that first step. For many Chassidic women, getting a driver's license is their first step into their new world. For others, getting a GED and learning how to spell and type is their first act as a free person. For me, my first foray into my new identity came with creating a Facebook account and starting to study for the LSAT to enter law school.

Everyone’s journey is their own, and I have little advice to offer you other than to be proactive and dream big. At this stage in your journey, you do not even know what you do not know. Allow yourself to fully engage with the outside world. Find a good mentor and soak in the experiences of the world. You may need to take baby steps in the beginning, but before you know it, you will be galloping like a stallion - doing things and meeting people in a way that you never imagined was possible at the start of your journey.

Do not be deterred or disheartened by the fact that you are starting life later than everyone else. So many people only find their real happiness and identity later in life. You are lucky that you are no longer trapped by your old life. It is never too late for a fresh start. You got this!

(As an aside: As a practical matter, feel free to reach out to me if you (a) live in the Tri-State area, and (b) are considering going to law school and want advice on how to get a high school diploma equivalency and a “Yeshiva credits” Excelsior/Thomas Edison college degree within a few months. I am also happy to share what I know about LSAT prep and law school admissions (I scored in the top 4th percentile). (Just to be perfectly clear, I have no special expertise and this is not some sort of paid service I offer, just, as someone who has gone through the process, I am happy to freely share my experience and advice with anyone contemplating this career choice.)