[I apologize to people who read this blog for my extended hiatus. See the end of this post for an explanation.]
One common refrain the Frum community likes throwing at OTD people is that our choices are causing other people pain. “Look at all the pain you are causing to your loved ones,” “Bubby cries every day over your neshama,” “You broke Mommy’s heart,” “How can you do this to your wife and kids?”
I do not think that the people who say these statements realize how manipulative and hurtful these statements are. Many of us who go OTD are relatively normal, decent people. We do not want to hurt anyone, much less those we love. Many of us, like most people, hate conflict. Because of our disposition, this attack cuts us deeply. We feel like the villain for wanting a small slice of freedom.
Although often unavoidable, the truth is that these emotional appeals are profoundly flawed and are symptomatic of the Frum community’s need to control its members. By leaving, you have triggered an alarm within the system, and guilting dissidents into compliance is one tactic that frum culture uses to perpetuate itself.
Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind when confronted with someone trying to guilt you back to Yiddishkeit.
This Argument Is Applied Hypocritically
Frum people seem to have a strange blind spot at how inconsistently they apply an instance of feeling empathy for one’s loved ones. When a secular young man is invited to a class at Aish Hatorah and is encouraged to adopt a radically different lifestyle and set of beliefs, no one seems to care about the fact that his choices are “breaking his mother’s heart.” What happened to all the appeals to empathy that you are throwing in the faces of people who reject your lifestyle?
I have never met a Rav with any qualms about convincing a man or woman to abandon their non-Jewish life partner if they were not interested in conversion. The length and depth of the relationship are irrelevant. The presence of young children is irrelevant. No one asks, “how can you betray someone who cared about you for so many years?”
The hypocrisy is stunning.
Being Frum Is Not The Default
The world is massive, and for all its positive attributes, the frum community is one tiny, insignificant, often problematic, and radically delusional way of living. It is unfortunate that you were born into such a lifestyle and could not see through the bullshit in your formative years. Mazal tov! By going OTD, you graduated – you realized that your former community is not the chosen nation, handpicked by God not to eat strawberries and pine for the day when they can slaughter goats inside a shiny temple. With this recognition, your status quo has changed. You are not a sinner, someone who has nebbuch, strayed from the path. No, you are a regular person – a member of the human race – fully capable of self-determination. You are not breaking any rules by choosing to not wrap a peice of dead cow around your arm every morning or by wanting to wear clothing that makes you feel good about yourself. You have as much reason to be Frum as you have to be a Wiccan Satanist.
Ask yourself, would you become a full practicing Southern Baptist because your parents are sad that you are trying to live your best life? What about a hijab-wearing Muslim? If the answer is no, then there is no reason you should feel compelled to become Frum. They are all burdensome and mistaken ways of living – and the fact that your parents and former community happen to embrace one particular mistaken belief system does not mean that you owe that belief system fealty.
The bottom line is that you are allowed to live your life however your choose. If someone tells you that your choices hurt them, well, that is their problem, not yours. You do not need to take ownership of the pain people feel over your decision. Yes, it is sad that your loved ones are in pain. But you are not the villain. The “villain” is the firm belief that one must be angry at sad at those who reject the community. Frum people are trapped in a cage of bad ideas that have been imprisoning them for millennia. You do not need to crawl back into the cage because people will be hurt by you finding your freedom.
Do not contort your life to fit the expectations of other people. The world is too huge, and time is too short to waste on other people's mistaken ideologies.
P.S.
Why I Have Not Posted For So Long
Some of you may have noticed that I have not written much in the past few months. The goal of my series “A Ben Torah’s guide to Going OTD” was to provide helpful advice for those leaving. Getting into the project, I did not realize the scope of the challenge awaiting me.
For some people, leaving is easy. They pick themselves up, announce their disbelief to their family, and begin the next chapter in their life. If they are married, their spouses and children join them. If they are single, their family and friends quickly accept their new reality. They get scholarships at good colleges, get PhDs, become award-winning artists/researchers/writers/actors, drink lots of expensive Starbucks, integrate seamlessly into the non-Jewish world, build their own quaint Friends-esq Chevra, and post beautiful Instagram pictures of their perfect OTD life.
But, for most of us, leaving the frum community has the same effect of setting fire to our entire life. Many of us have no education or job training outside the frum world. Our spouses threaten that the moment we step out of line, they will lawyer up and ensure we never see our children again. Some of us get divorced and face a neverending nightmare or custody battles and vindictive and uncooperative ex-spouses. The community rallies around our ex, abandoning us and bulldozing over the needs of our children.
Many of us cry ourselves to sleep every night. We are blamed for ruining our family why simultaneously forced to fight to maintain some vestige of permanence in our children's lives.
We are often broke, forced to embarrass ourselves, begging for help. Our destination is compounded by our lack of a support system. We are often friendless, forced to face the world with no support and little prospects of success. Many OTD people experience homelessness, difficulty feeding themselves, and above all, unremitting, soul-destroying, anguished loneliness. As we try to pick up the shattered remains of our life - we are Alone.
While on my OTD journey, I naively intuited that OTD people could avoid much of the pain that many of us experience when going OTD if we did not sabotage ourselves. If only people going OTD would make the right, strategic decisions at critical junctures and embrace the right mindsets, much of the angst of going OTD could be avoided. I was wrong. While writing my guide, I have spoken to many people, and the hard truth is that so many people do everything right – and still have their lives utterly ruined.
For many people going OTD, the reality is that they will experience an ocean of suffering. Loneliness, anxiety, parental and familial alienation, poverty, and misery. For most of us, all that we can do in the face of this maelstrom is is cling to whatever coping mechanisms we can find (healthy or unhealthy) and wait for the searing pain to dissolve into a dull ache that occasionally spikes when we are excluded from the family vacation, our ex announces their engagement to a uber-frum person; our custody agreement is violated, our parents leave us a tone-deaf Rosh Hashana WhatsApp post, or we are subject to any of the countless microaggressions that the frum community feels justified in inflicting on its OTD members.
I am still writing my guide, but it takes me time, and the experience has been transformative. When interacting with OTD people, I found that many people want empathy and acceptance. But more than a listening ear and accepting heart, people want advice. My life is coming apart at the seams; what in the blazes am I supposed to do to keep it all together?
Writing this guide has taught me that for so many of us, there are simply NO GOOD ANSWERS. Impossible choices pervade the OTD experience, and no matter how well adjusted, mature, and emotionally healthy a person is, going OTD involves unavoidably painful decisions. These decisions, no matter how expertly navigated, will bear bitter and harsh consequences.
I wanted to share this update with you all to let you know that (a) I am sorry that I have not posted in a while, and (b) I am still writing, but writing something genuinely helpful takes time and involves a learning process. I am most of the way there, and I hope to publish my guide as a short book sometime shortly.