Follow Up on Being a Baal Tshuvah, “Sherman March� Style

Frum With Questions did not like my recent post, and suggests that,

“You have to trust the Rabbis that they know their students situations well enough that they know what’s best for them.�

Actually, you don’t. What FWQ is advocating is a blank check. For war on your *previous* life “before you were frum.� Any group or institution that advocates this should be marginalized and stigmatized by the general Jewish community. This includes implicit marginalization through the isolated settings of many of the yeshivas, as well as mandating halachic stringency and separation from the secular world which can translate into divisive forces separating the BT from family and friends. Now, it would seem that I am castigating the Charedi recruiting world in its entirety. But while I have no qualms about doing that, I’m actually not doing so here.

For instance, Beyond BT, the group blog for established Baal Tshuvahs, published an excellent post called “www.beyondbt.com/?p=547 “>My Brother’s Big Fat Secular Wedding.â€? In it, Aryeh Leib Ecker notes that,

“We had asked our rabbi if we were even allowed to attend, and he told us since there is an assumption that Jewish weddings on the whole are at least kosher style that we were permitted to go but that, of course, we shouldn’t eat anything. I was relieved since I knew that telling my family, my mother in particular, that we wouldn’t be able to make it would be the start of World War Three.�

A look at the comments illuminates that in fact, this is not the viewpoint of all Charedi BTs, and remember, these are the BTs that use the Internet. But it is important to note that the editors of Beyond BT are not Modern Orthodox, but are Left-Wing Yeshivish. That is to say, Charedi. And still, they published this piece, and defended Ecker to the hardliners. It seems unlikely such a post would be published on the likes of Cross-Currents, or on Big Aish or Dark Light’s websites, because it could be interpreted as implicitly allowing for a Baal Tshuvah to attend a non-kosher family wedding without first checking with his rabbi because of an existing opinion. Of course, everyone should “check with your Spiritual Guide,� but still…the opinion is out there.

If a BT wants to ask his rabbi about such matters, by all means. But if your rabbi says no on important issues like this, and you’re not comfortable with what that means for your relationships with friends and family members, get a new rabbi. I don’t advocate Charedism for BTs, but you can be Charedi without being a fundamentalist.

And that may be one of BeyondBt’s implicit messages.