I was never really on the derech, but I strongly considered it and often miss the community. Indeed, I lurk here sometimes, listen to Jewish music and drop in on a chabad from time to time. I miss the life and the comfort and peace it brings, which I only had a brief window into and seriously considered at times in my life.
My own personal experience is this: My parents were twice a year jews but sent me to Hebrew Academy and I went there until 12th grade (from Kindergarten). I am now a lawyer who excelled in law school and I also excelled at Gemara at Hebrew Academy since the skill set needed to interpret and argue halacha and american law are very similar.
Early on the rabbis picked up on my skill and tried to convince me to go to YU, etc…
I actually did consider being religious and for a while kept kosher in college (not what you guys would consider kosher, but applying a meikil standard, kosher).
To me, the largest reason I ended up not being religious is my discovery of the scale of issues that I had not known about and that Zev Farber has been chastised for pointing out.
Rambam figured out a long time ago that there were people who were going to question “Zev Farber issues,” some of which I saw as a young adult on my own without looking as you do not need to go to the depths Zev Farber did to search to see obvious questions. And in any case, I imagine that for Zev, that search only began after he noticed things without any search. Indeed, I knew Zev in high school and he struck me as someone who legitimately cared about yidishkeit and wanted to be believe, he was not someone looking for an excuse not to believe.
I am leaving examples out of this post for fear that if I list them, it will get censored, but they exist all over the internet. And I know that there are answers, but without listing issues, suffice it to say some are troubling to me, and became so before I met my now wife.
For whatever reason, todays orthodox community has decided to just ignore the questions. And the chareidi community has banned the internet in hopes that their community wont discover them (except that I discovered enough on my own without the internet and I have only a tiny fraction of knowledge Zev has).
In any case, I believe the burying head in sand tactic is a mistake. I believe Rambam’s approach was better. Acknowledge the questions and try the best to answer them, especially now that anyone with google can find them.
Anyway, my sunday rant. And here is a secret. R’ Fisher if he knew my life story would say I fit neatly into his hypothesis. I married a jewish girl who came from a conservadox Young Israel family, but who does not really believe or want to practice. Had I married someone more religious, perhaps things would have been different. But I do not know.
So I think that R’ Fisher is right and wrong. People no doubt respond to surrounding environment, etc… And I also have no doubt that there are people who will be negatively affected by college. But treating that as the only issue is short sighted and ignores other problems, and of course there can never be solutions to ignored problems.