No Such Thing as an FFB?
July 7, 2008 BeyondBT, Kiruv, NCSY, Touro, Yeshiva Univeristy
Yakov Lowinger is concerned about those who leave because of a “BRE” (bad religious experience) and he claims there is “no such thing as an FFB” on Beyond BT.
Oh, really?
Among the reasons Lowinger feels this title is a bad idea is because unlike the “exalted status” of a ba’al teshuvah (no, he isn’t kidding, but yeah, it’s still pretty funny), the term FFB in contrast,
enjoys no comparable prestige, highlights no distinguishing feature of those so categorized except accident of birth, and therefore tells us nothing about those who supposedly bear this title.
From a western secular perspective, he is right. But from a Frumville perspective, he is wrong. And Lowinger is writing from Frumville. Do Cohens and Levites not enjoy prestige merely because of the “accident of their birth?” Of course they do! So too, an FFB descends from holy yidden, and the baal teshuvah (nebach) descends from people who drive on shabbos and know not the difference between hadar and “the real ‘m’hudar” and did God knows what “before they became frum.”
Lowinger writes,
The term FFB just gives frustrated ex-frum people something to bandy around, some identifier that we all supposedly understand and relate to and toward which we can direct our complaints.
No. This term is used much more by people who are frum, and caught on with the ba’al teshuvahs themselves as a reaction to being designated as b’nai niddah baal teshuvahs.
Lowinger writes,
And as for those bitter acheir’s out there, it’s not too late either. I hope there’s something here for all to take to heart.
Not really, no. But overall, this post is not any worse than any of the other essays we read as to why baal teshuvahs should become/stay frum in a community that doesn’t really want them in the first place, and doesn’t have a clue as to how to absorb them properly when they join.
Why does even a RWMO organization like NCSY send our youth to a third tier school like Touro which services an English as a second language crowd and still NCSY has the gall to boast about this recruitment? Why do NCSY and Yeshiva University have the audacity to recruit our young men directly from our public schools and then, once at Yeshiva College, force the BTs, and only the BTs, to attend morning prayers by grading them?
Probably because in their own minds, if you actually elected to join their communities, you are probably a dumbass to begin with.
Do not kid yourselves. The frummies look down on those who join their community. Their contempt towards the baal teshuvah says nothing about the baal teshuvahs. But it does say something about the wisdom of joining these communities.
Take their contempt as a warning sign coming from some residue of brotherly love and run like hell and never look back. If you look back, you risk being turned into the salt of the earth they walk on.
They will walk all over you like you are an illegal employee at a glatt kosher meat packing factory.
9 comments
DK, this girl Alleycat has made an attempt to take me on in my blog. Second to last post.
She mentioned you in a lame joke, idk if she posts here, but you may find the thread interesting, its on the second to most recent post on my blog.
You are so hateful, DK! I like the hyperbole though.
no one is ffb…unless u know someone who was born with a long skirt or a cirumcision and tzitzis
danny,
The haredi would tell you (privately) that in fact, the neshama of a secular Jew is corrupt and tainted because his/her mother did not go to the mikvah, and this flaw will last for all generations to all of eternity.
However, the soul of the FFB — provided his ancestors have been frum since Sinai — is pure and lofty.
So I think it would be best — under these circumstances — for the baal teshuvah to crawl on his belly and elbows so that he may properly kiss the holy feet of the FFB.
Also, and I think we can all agree on this: because of the unfortunate spiritual weakness of the baal teshuvah, both in terms of where he comes from physically and his unfortunate creation (through sex WITHOUT A MIKVAH), how about we try to convince them not to go to a regular college but rather put them on the safer road to underachievement?
The gulf between the writings and the behavior of today strains reality nearly to breaking…
Funny I should come across this cleverly disguised piece of hate speech in a totally unrelated search, but such is the nature of hashgacha pratis. In my original post that you conveniently swiss-cheese over here to make your convoluted diatribe, I deal with the issue of shortcomings regarding the frum perspective of ba’alei teshuvah. Perhaps that is why you chose to address my argument here, a random blog I happen to come across a year later, than in the original — where your misrepresentation would have been obvious to all?
Again, respect between the BT community and those of us coming from the “frummy perspective” is a two-way street. In the real world, far from the out-of-context selections of misquoted hyperbole that this blog traffics in, this is happening. Come visit us sometime.
YL,
I linked directly to you piece so my readers and corroborate the context, and soundly rejected your not so clever but popular attempt to deny heredity mandated classes in traditional Judaism, one that continues in various forms to this day.
And as the adminstrators at BeyondBT will confirm, I am hardly a stranger to that blog.
“but such is the nature of hashgacha pratis”
such is the nature of Google searches.
As you like. This is the last time I will check this sorry litterbox of juvenile hatred, but I do again invite you to notice that in the real world, real efforts can be made and are being made to address certain of the problems you are rightfully concerned about. And nobody is denying that certain hereditary privileges in Judaism exist — that is a classic straw man argument. Yes we all agree that cohanim and levi’im exist, therefore we have to accept every instance you purport of caste-based hierarchies in Judaism? Sorry but I’m not that dumb.
[...] Yakov Lowinger wrote a flawed post (I am being very kind) on Beyond BT, which Lowinger apparently just found thanks to “hashgacha pratis.” [...]
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