Category — BT

…but they are getting closer.

Big Aish is hitting the Islamic thing again, and even I admit, they deserve some credit for their positive direction. They appear to be expanding into domestic concerns, not just Israel specifically and global Jihad generally.

Lori Averick writes,

Lest you be tempted to think that Boston is a rare phenomenon, take a look at the stealth-like nature of other developments occurring across the United States…

Last month in Florida, the Florida Security Council, a counter terrorism group, filed suit against the Delray Beach Marriott for a corporate breach of contract. In April, The FSC was the sponsor of a Free Speech Summit honoring the controversial Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. Four days before the well planned summit, the Marriot sent an email canceling the event. The email claimed “new security concerns” had prompted this cancellation.

Aish hasn’t yet moved into direct discussions about immigration…but referencing Wilders makes it clear that this is on their mind. I hope they find the guts to go there, and mobilize their readership and adherents. I think there is hope that Aish may find the strength and the courage to do something useful.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

What’s wrong with the following assessment?

Mr. Cohen writes,

Anyone who denies that THE JEWISH WEEK is an Orthodox-bashing publication is simply not reading it carefully.

I spoke with my Orthodox friends about THE JEWISH WEEK, and we agreed they are Orthodox-bashers.

I am quite sure that the Beyond BT readership will be rushing to point out the flaw in his logic.

In the meantime, I might finally finish my MA in history.

An inordinate amount of time on this blog is spent railing against Kiruvniks who convince middle class Jews from secular and liberal backgrounds to become ghetto-penguins. But this is really selling the Dark Light short. After all, they also set confused Modern Orthodox young people on the path for underachivement and fundamentalism. And when that happens, it warms their dark hearts.

Rabbi Ullman writes,

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Rivka Karasik, a woman I know casually though the usual heretical circuits, is featured in this week’s NY Times “One in 8 Million” series. At a tender age, Rivka decided that the Chabad lifestyle was not for her, and neither was traditional Judaism generally.

We went out one evening a few years back, and I felt Rivka looked down on those of us who had actually elected to go through a baal teshuvah phase, but that may have been my own hypersensitivity. I myself kind of look down on the baal teshuvahs who came and left a bit. We really should have been focusing on other things during that time. It is people like Rivka who had no choice, and who truly sacrifice when they leave haredism. Our own parents are hardly disappointed when we leave ultra-Orthodoxy, and neither is our extended family. In fact, it’s a big simcha, and rightly so. But an FFB chassidic person doesn’t just leave everything. They leave everyone. And Rivka is not the daughter of BTs. She had to leave everyone except the small band of dissidents she walked out with.

I think of my maternal great-grandparents who left traditional Judaism because it was oppressive, and realize how lucky I truly am. If I met my great-grandmother today, I would thank her for leaving halachic Judaism, a system codified by a man so ambitious and willing to manipulatively play on the superstition of the masses that he claimed his work on Kabbalah was dictated by an angel. That is the man who codified Jewish law. He is revered by all Orthodox Jews. How dare you consider them backwards people!

And this is the grand, rational monotheistic faith the frummies demand we “return” to. This is why when a secular Jew and an ultra-Orthodox Jew come to a bridge that can only allow one person to pass, the ultra-Orthodox Jew must allow the secular Jew to cross first. For the secular Jew’s cart is always cleansed, an inventory taken, the contents updated. But the ultra-Orthodox Jew’s cart is filled with all sorts of ooky-spooky tsatchkes that he mistakes for treasures. The ultra-Orthodox Jew is a rat-packer. He can throw nothing away no matter how bad the stench.

I have often noticed that the children of BTs are much friendlier to Jews from secular backgrounds than FFBs. This is true not only within the frum world, but also if they go “off the derech.”

Off The Derech is a child of BTs. He warmly reminisces about the time his parents had their true status revealed in full by a rosh yeshiva.

My parents have always been proud of their decision to go BT, and I don’t blame them. (It’s not their fault their rabbis lied to them.) They were instilled with a sense of pride about their BT status, and while I’m sure they knew many in the frum world discriminated against them, they overall felt they belonged. One day, my parents were called in for a meeting with my high school rosh yeshiva. All I know is it didn’t go well. When I got home, I saw my father sitting, ashen-faced, in his study, with my mother not looking a lot happier. They didn’t give me too many details, but from what I understood, they were grossly disrespected by the rosh yeshiva, and it came as a major shock to them. I guess the fact that the same rosh yeshiva kissed up to them majorly at my bar mitzva a year before, and the fact that they were trained to have an immense amount of pride in their newfound BT status may have had something to do with it. Something about this rosh yeshiva’s behavior shocked them, and awoke them to the reality that maybe they weren’t quite as highly-regarded as the kiruv places would have you believe.

Offthed issued a warning to the general frum world about Kiruv. He warned that by insisting that the Torah and the mesorah is “true” by measurable and empirical standards, this implicitly allows for foreign ideologies to compete in the marketplace of ideas. This is hardly a natural place of strength for ultra-Orthodoxy.

Remember the key point I mentioned in the beginning: Kiruv operates by selling truth, whereas the FFB world works by selling gornisht. Methinks the majority of them wonder what the hell could have gotten into the head of this poor BT to make them switch. It was funny for me, as a kid, reading kiruv books such as “The Kiruv Files” and always being surprised. At the reasons people had for going BT, at the method of argumentation, at the things BT’s would say, or the kiruv workers to them. Kiruv is dangerous because it holds the frum world, even the FFB world, to a much higher standard of truth than religion has normally been accustomed to. It raises the stakes in an already precarious game. Sure, it might net you some wonderful, loaded enthusiasts, but is it worth it for all those you’ll lose when they, pardon the French, realize it’s all boolsheet?

I don’t expect the Kiruv world to take heed, but I would strongly suggest that the mainstream ultra-Orthodox world take notice. Because your children will be the spiritual collateral damage. You see, lies and socio-economic destruction are not for free. One day, many BTs wake up. Or their children do. And we are armed with a knowledge of Orthodoxy, a Haskallah that is refueled through education, and a burning resentment to expose your lies, sleights of hand, absurdity, and supremacism.

None of this would be happening to the same extent if Big Kiruv just left people alone. None of this would happen if Big Kiruv just didn’t lie. But Big Kiruv would have a lot less of a platform to recruit with if they didn’t lie.

This isn’t just a concern for critics of Kiruv. This cost of the lies is disturbing even those who want to promote Orthodoxy.

The Cheerer noted,

I don’t want to have a kid who becomes frum then shuns it (as happens usually when people are tricked) because those people usually become the kiruv movements worst enemies (see DK, SJ and many others). Then the fight is not just against secular culture but people who “survived kiruv” and that’s not the battle we want to fight.

That isn’t a fight that any realistic person would want in today’s Internet age. But that is the fight you will have. And it will wreak havoc far beyond the baal teshuvah segment of the frum world.

Tales will continue about how this one became frum, and how that one became frum (pshhhhh….can you imagine?), and how it’s the biggest return in Jewish history since the bais hamikdash was destroyed.

But you will increasingly hemorrhage numbers. Far beyond those who are reeled in. Because you can’t let people in without the baggage of lies that you gave them to carry. Such baggage are Pandora’s boxes. And we will help them open them. One by one. And the entire frum community will risk exposure.

If I were a committed FFB, I would fear and resent Big Kiruv.

Big Aish is ultra-Orthodox. Don’t you ever forget it.

Why would a young man forgo his education for yeshiva? Because sleazebags like Big Aish convince him that “other points of view” are tantamount to a “prison.”

On my first night back at home, I made a rather blunt statement at the dinner table. “I’ve changed my mind about my future plans. I won’t be going to that university anymore. Instead, I’d like to go back to Israel for another year of yeshiva next year.”
[...]
…people can be slaves in many different ways. A person’s desires can have full reign over him. A person may succumb to other modes of thought or points of view, may be trapped into doing the things that society feels are right, even though he feels something else is best for him. We can be trapped in many ways, without even realizing it, without even seeing the prison bars that surround us.

This is one of the most crucial, yet painful, stages in a baal teshuva’s development: the realization that in the world of Torah he cannot follow his own hunches in deciding what is right and what is wrong. The average baal/baalas teshuva grew up in a culture where there were no, or precious few, moral absolutes. Very often, society places pleasure and gratification as the only criteria for choices in life…He may very likely find that compared to the past, he is having a much harder time making decisions, because he no longer can think only in terms of what he thinks is appropriate, but rather what is really right, through the eyes of the Torah.

Even questions which would seem to call for a purely subjective evaluation are not left up to the inclinations and preferences of the individual. – Rabbi Kokis, former Ohr Somayach, Monsey Mashgiach

One of the tragic things about the baal teshuvah who comes to the Dark Light is that he knows nothing. Nothing at all. Everything must be relearned.

Fortunately, Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, the co-founder and Rosh Yeshiva of Ohr Somayach International, is here to teach you lowlife non-haredim how to do things right. According to the mesorah. In-line with the daas Toyrah.

For all of you Bnai Niddah out there, this is how to properly handle a wrong number.

Khello? Khelloooo?

Question: No one is very pleased when he drops whatever he is doing at home in order to answer the telephone only to discover that the caller dialed the wrong number. But what is the right thing to do as a reaction to such a disturbance?

Answer: The first thing to keep in mind is that the caller cannot be held responsible for causing you an inconvenience through a human error. The understanding must be reflected in the tone of your response.

You may even be of help to the caller by asking him or her which number they are trying to reach. The difference between that number and yours may be in a single digit and you are likely to recognize to whom it belongs as a result of previous mistaken calls or because it is the number of a neighbor you know.

In any event be as gentle as possible despite your irritation and don’t hang up before politely saying, “Sorry, wrong number.”

Pshhh…me camocha, Rabbi Weinbach. Without you, the BT world would truly be orphans.

Yakov Lowinger wrote a flawed post (I am being very kind) on Beyond BT, which Lowinger apparently just found thanks to “hashgacha pratis.”

This is truly amazing, as The Kvetcher post on him is buried under two whole other links when you search his name on Google.

Oh, my, what an inspiring hashgacha pratis story.

You want a real hasgacha pratis story? This is a real hashgacha pratis story.

A gentleman named Peleg Strauss has surfaced on Beyond BT, and though he remains frum, Strauss is strangely not happy with his home in Orthodoxy, and believe it or not, believes that there is considerable corruption in that society.

Who would have ever guessed!

Strauss asserts,

We once had a friend over for a meal, a FFB, and, in response to a comment I made about the Godolim, about how I automatically don’t swallow everything they say, she hit it squarely on the head. She said that because I was a BT, I never learned to subjugate myself to authority. She is so right. And I think that is one of the struggles I have, and perhaps a few more BTs also have. When you are weaned on democracy and free-thought, it is next to impossible to unlearn it. That’s one problem, and as far as I am concerned, that shouldn’t be solved. I don’t think it is EVER a good idea to automatically, blindly,accept anything anyone says. If it doesn’t seem to make sense, if it somehow ’smells’ wrong, I’m going to be cautious about it. And my thinking is not without basis.
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In a discussion on those BTs who stop striving and concentrating on spiritual growth, Mark Frankel of Beyond BT asks,

The pressure for constant growth can be difficult, there seems to be four options:

1) Deal with the pressure, after all that’s what live in this world is about

2) Lower the bar and go for lower levels of growth until the pressure is manageable

3) Try to remain in a holding/coasting pattern

4) Drop your observance level until you can cope with the pressure of observance

In the short term, do you (readers and commentors) feel that any of the options can be viable depending on the situation.

For the long term, do you (readers and commentors) feel that any of the options are viable.

I think we need to model the “Teshuvah Revolution” as much as possible on the true Godol Hador of Teshuvah: Pol Pot.

The Teshuvah Revolution at its most extreme has elements unique to Cambodia in the 70s, without the killing fields or prisons, obviously. But there is what to learn from Pol Pot’s “hashkafa.” Just as it was always a time of revolution for Pol Pot, so too it must always be a time of teshuvah for the haredi-baal teshuvah, a time of continuous revolution and nullification of corruptive western influences.

Instead of “Pol Pot Time,” it is Gedoylim Time.