My theory is that in smaller communities, where everyone knows each other, we don’t need clothing or labels to identify each other. Everyone can be at their own level without proving it to anyone else. It’s a much more ‘real’ way of living and relating. When you have a huge Jewish community, you need your labels and clothing to identify who you are. I could never live like that long-term. It’s so fake and impersonal. I have heard, although there are no real statistics (not that most quoted statistics are not skewed) but that out of town communities have a lower rate of kids going off the derech. This could have something to do with it along with many other factors such as each person being needed and valuable and not seemingly indispensable like in larger communities (which are usually not communities).
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