Rebecca Ross shared a guest post on her blog written by a person whose goes by the pseudonym, Mark. Mark shares his experience of having a good friend gradually cut off contact with him upon becoming orthodox. Mark and his friend Jake went on a Birthright trip sponsored by a non-orthodox organization, and Jake had enjoyed the trip so much that he started shopping around for other similar Israel trips, since Birthright only allows you to go once. Jake found that opportunity through an orthodox rabbi who offered a complete Israel trip package for $500. What Mark and Jake didn’t know, was that the rabbi required participants to begin keeping a full Shabbos with frum families before allowing them to go on the trip. This requirement was not divulged in the beginning, although the rabbi did invite the boys to have Friday night dinner with his family, after which they were free to leave.
In the beginning, Mark joined Jake at the rabbi’s house for Friday night dinner, and then they would leave after the meal to go out to bars and clubs. Eventually, Mark would leave, but Jake would stay behind to sleep over at various family homes in the orthodox community. Jake also began attending religious classes at the rabbi’s school, where he was paid a $400 stipend to attend. Jake had initially only been interested in a cheap way to go back to Israel for some fun, but had slowly become indoctrinated by a kiruv professional who hooked young adults in with the promise of the trip, and gradually encouraged them to take on more mitzvot like Shabbos, kosher, and religious clothing before they would be allowed to go.
After Mark’s experience with Jake, he began to see a similar pattern in grooming that happened to other young people who also got involved with religious kiruv workers. The relationships started out simple and undemanding, but slowly suggestions that bordered on demands influenced the targets to abandon their former way of life, including their non-religious family and friends. Towards the end of the post, Mark talks about how he recently attended Jake’s wedding. The guest list and mood were divided between two camps – Jake’s new religious friends were ecstatic and smiling throughout the wedding – and Jake’s family and old friends were somber and wondering when Jake would finally wake up and go back to being their son, grandson, and friend again. Mark said it was the unhappiest wedding he’d ever seen, at least on one side of the room.
Mark brought up a good point that the frum community spends a lot of energy and tears over people who leave the community, called “going off the derech.” There are constant efforts and new organizations cropping up to prevent “people at risk” from leaving. However, there is no acknowledgment that going off the derech works the other way too. Just as there are orthodox people lamenting the loss of loved ones who have left the community, so too there are non-orthodox people crying over loved ones who left them behind to enter a teeming sea of black and white that quickly closes ranks behind them until they are as indistinguishable to their own kin as one wave is to another in the ocean.
Mark’s story rang a bell because a few months ago I ran into an old friend of mine from college. After exchanging pleasantries, she asked “What happened to you? You just fell off the face of the earth!” You see, she and our other friends from college have all stayed in touch. Some are scattered around the country, but they still make time to have in person reunions, and those who live close by still see each other fairly regularly. I’m the one dropped out. I’m also the only one who became orthodox.
My story is different from Mark’s friend because I was never involved in a formal program, or rather, I dabbled in a few programs, but was mainly anchored by my boyfriend’s/husband’s hashkafic guidance. When I started college and decided to seek out a Jewish communal space in the form of Hillel, like Jake, I didn’t set out to become religious. I enjoyed learning about Judaism, but meeting other Jewish peers and having fun was my primary purpose. When my non-religious friends and I learned more about traditional observance, it was absorbed in an academic way. It was interesting, but had little to do with my own life. It’s kind of like how I feel now about the chumrot or cultural practices of other orthodox groups different from my own – it’s interesting to learn about how other people, say, keep Pesach, but learning about their practices isn’t going to change my own.
When I started dating my husband, I had the best of both worlds. When I was with my non-religious family and friends, I lived life as I always had. When I was with my boyfriend, I had an insider’s pass to the orthodox world. Friday nights were girl’s night out, and Saturday nights were date night. I had a place to spend Jewish holidays, a shul to attend, and a multitude of classes on any given night of the week at the synagogues in my husband’s orthodox neighborhood. Any Jewish topic I wanted to learn about (from an orthodox perspective) was now within my reach. Although I only lived a few miles away from the heart of the orthodox community, I hadn’t even known that any of these resources existed. I hadn’t even known that there were special kosher restaurants – much less that Chicago had some! I quickly got to know all of the kosher venues (and quickly grew tired of them – going from a selection of thousands to a selection of maybe eight was a rough adjustment). However, anytime I wanted to go to a treif place I could go during my time with family and friends. With my boyfriend, I stuck to the kosher stores, kind of like my family does with me now.
When someone curious about orthodoxy first meets people in the community, they are praised and encouraged. I was made to feel really good about the interest I showed and the efforts I was putting into taking classes, reading books, participating in Shabbos and Yom Tov festivities, and learning about mitzvot. I can’t really recall when it was that my teachers and orthodox peers gradually started making it clear that being orthodox isn’t a choice, but the way that every Jew is supposed to live. It wasn’t enough to learn about the Torah and orthodox practices like one would study a textbook for an exam.
As a Jew, learning about mitzvot isn’t supposed to be like a sociological study of some remote tribe in the Amazon Rainforest. Every Jew must learn about the Torah with the idea that the commandments are incumbent upon each and every one of us. Even if we were raised in ignorance of our obligation, nevertheless, we are still obligated and accountable for our negligence. Of course, someone raised without Torah knowledge is like a child captive, and is less accountable for transgressions than one who was raised with proper instruction. However, the more we learn, the greater our obligation in the performance of the mitzvot. Pleading ignorance stops working as an excuse once you become educated.
For the first time, I had fear of Hashem. Before the revelation that I was accountable for transgressions I hadn’t even known were transgressions (I always understood the stuff about murder or stealing and the like – but those are common sense ethical mitzvot that fall under the category of – don’t be a criminal!). I never knew that I could go to hell for eating bacon, or wearing a tank top, or going out for Saturday morning brunch. I hadn’t really personalized the new information I had been learning, but I was now being confronted with that mistake from multiple sources. That message caused me to become introspective.
What did I want my life to look like? Knowing what I now knew, how could I go back to my old outlook before I had been introduced to orthodoxy? Wouldn’t I now have a constant sense of guilt and fear desecrating Shabbos or eating treif, whereas only a few months ago I was blissfully unaware of any misdeed? On the flip side, I was told that living a life dictated by Torah principles brought blessings down upon believers. For any rational person, the choice should be simple. If you want a directionless life that’s likely to derail without the guidance of Hashem, don’t be religious. If you want a life guided by the Creator’s blueprint for stability and joy, be religious.
I didn’t think of all of the seeming exceptions to this choice – like my own friends and family members who weren’t religious, but still good and ethical people. Their lives didn’t seem so miserable, and I highly doubted they were cursed. However, I think I chalked it up to the idea of ignorance. Ignorance is the protection a non-religious person has from being accountable. My eyes were no longer closed, and I was now being judged along with all the other believers. Choosing not to be religious – was now a choice; an active rebellion, whereas before being non-religious was simply who I was.
The problem was that I still loved my old world. I wasn’t disenchanted with society (that came in my 40s!), and I had built a support network of family, friends, and mentors, many of whom weren’t religious. I went from having several very close friends to having a few precarious new friendships. I had a routine, which included work and outings on Shabbos, and going out to eat at non-kosher restaurants. I had goals that would be harder to achieve because of the scheduling demands of a frum lifestyle. I had stability, but I was about to demolish the foundation. I suppose I adopted the philosophy that to build a better world, I had to tear down my old one.
It’s kind of like an alcoholic just out of rehab who must separate herself from her regular watering hole and her drinking buddies. There was just too much temptation to go back to my old life, and I needed to cut ties and surround myself with people who were living the life I aspired to emulate. Maybe I was afraid that the people I cared about, and who were probably as worried about me as Mark was about Jake, would talk me out of my determination.
The religious people I met didn’t seem to miss not going out on Shabbos, or wearing jeans, or eating deep dish pepperoni pizza at Gullivers. They didn’t seem to have trouble convincing their bosses to let them leave work early on Friday, or not to assign them a Saturday afternoon shift. They didn’t seem to have issues with midterms falling over Sukkot or Pesach. It was also helpful to talk to other baal teshuvot who were a few steps ahead of me, both for commiseration and tips on how to deal with those new challenges and relations with non-religious family members.
I didn’t handle things any better than Jake’s friend. I didn’t really know who I was anymore – I was undergoing a metamorphosis into a newly religious person – and the transformation was fragile. I definitely burned some bridges along the way, and distanced myself from once close relationships that never grew closer as I found my sea legs. That kind of thing happens when you disappear on someone – just because you might be ready to reengage doesn’t mean they are sitting around waiting for your call. There were definitely human casualties in my journey to frumkeit. I know that other people have handled it better – I have a friend who is still close with many of the non-religious and non-Jewish friends she grew up with.
However, most people I know who have become religious have similar stories to Jake’s and mine. Some are closer with their families than others, but many have long since lost touch with old school friends. While it’s not unusual to lose touch with school friends the farther out you get from graduation, the distinction here is the purposeful withdrawal from friends who might compromise your religious goals. Juxtaposed against those who grew up in the frum community and often keep in touch with their orthodox classmates for a lifetime, people who enjoy these lifelong friendships in the FFB community might be able to see how the absence of those friendships would be a major loss in a person’s life.
It’s true that no one forced me to give up or distance my relationships with my non-religious family and friends, but that is a common byproduct of radically changing your lifestyle from the one you were raised with. It’s the exact same reason why formerly religious people who adopt a non-religious lifestyle sometimes end up severing ties with everyone they used to be close to. While it’s more common in the frum community for the religious family to separate from the one who goes “off the derech,” it can also be the person themselves who makes a break. To remain in their community of origin would lead to the risk that they will be persuaded to come back to a life that they have decided they don’t want anymore.
At my age, I realize that building up and tearing down is constant enterprise throughout a person’s life. Sometimes the demolition is gradual, and sometimes subtle. Sometimes the razing is a choice, and sometimes it isn’t. The problem is that the particular shake up of joining a religious community often comes during a time of youth when a person is least equipped to balance the various relationships in their life gracefully. When you are younger, things are often black and white, all or nothing.
I can’t go back in time, and neither can Jake. I don’t know how old Jake is now, but I wonder if he will regret cutting himself off from his loved ones later in life? I wonder if older baalei teshuvot who lost touch with non-religious loved ones when they were younger end up wishing they hadn’t been so hasty? It’s not a subject most people talk about.
