First of all, that doesn’t negate the fact that he is still OTD. As apushatayid pointed out, if he’s off, he’s off. Could be any circumstance why or how.
Second of all– guess what, a Jew who does some mitzvos but not others is still a Jew and still practicing Judaism. Perhaps not perfectly, but he’s still doing it. It boggles my mind how people can have so much hatred in their hearts toward our non-frum brethren that they would go so far as to think that the Torah is all or nothing. It’s not. Once again, Chabad is way ahead of the rest of the frum world on this.
I once heard a beautiful story about a lesbian couple that one of the women had been raised as a Jew and the other as a Catholic. The Catholic Church (obviously) rejected them, they tried out Buddhism, and eventually made their way to Judaism. Their local Chabad rebbetzin welcomed them warmly, with no judgment, and provided them with Shabbos candles every week. Unfortunately, the Jewish woman was diagnosed with cancer and died at a very young age, and her partner wrote a wonderful letter to the rebbetzin thanking her for all of her warmth and support over the years (what a tremendous Kiddush Hashem!)
This rebbetzin was interviewed for a Jewish radio station and the interviewer asked her why she got involved with these women, knowing that they were romantic partners.
The rebbetzin responded, “I’ve never heard of a halacha that says that if someone doesn’t keep one mitzvah, that means that she’s exempt from all the others.”
Bottom line: mitzvah observance and Torah study is precious to Hashem, regardless of the quantity or context. If a person decides not to be Orthodox, that’s not a signal for us to give up on them completely, shun them from the community, and all but spit in their faces. On the contrary, we must meet them at their level, treat them with utmost compassion and respect (but not condescension) and, to the best of our ability, enable them to perform whatever mitzvos they DO want to do.
If Torah observance was all or nothing, literally zero people would be “practicing Judaism” according to you, Joseph. Because literally nobody in the world does it perfectly.