Hocked, it is so sad that you even the need to ask the question. Yes I truly believe in the Torah and I am very proud to be a Jew. I find that Yiddishkeit and serving Hashem, doing his bidding is beautiful and is the ultimate truth and I have Yiras Shamayim. But I grew up in a different generation.
I am second generation Holocaust survivor. I was taught in a different manner. I was a valued child, when children were a commodity and not taken for granted, especially a “Frum” child in the hot new world of assimilation. Yes we had respect for our teachers, but they in turn as well as the school administration had respect for OUR parents. They were begging parents to send children to Frum schools and NOT to public school. Every child that went to Yeshiva was a “prize”! Every single talmid or talmidah was a win and a hot commodity. No child was thrown away like it is done today without a care. No child or parent is treated as shabbily as they are today. The school functioned with the success of the children in mind, and not with the success of the Administration. Yes every school wanted to be the best and have top notch students, but they also accommodated other levels as long as they worked to meet their own individual potentials and followed the rules. They hired teachers to work within the framework at the level of each class.
If you broke the rules or failed for lack of effort then you were assisted in transferring to another school. No one was thrown out on the street. It was quite different from what kids experience today. We had good reason to trust our teachers at least in the schools that I went to. Our principals were honest upstanding individuals and our board of directors were made of prominent individuals as well as members of the parent body.
It was also not so common for members of the community to be such poor role models in general. It was a big BUSHA to be a called a ganuv, or to be caught cheating on your spouse, or to be called unethical in any way. People were not forgiving at that time and held a person responsible and accountable for their actions. If a person went to jail, no one wanted to mingle with him or be mishadech with his family. Today it is looked upon as if someone went on vacation, or a rite of passage. Look at the world today. When someone is ousted as a molester, the community rallies behind him instead of the victim.
It is no wonder you would ask such a question when it seems like the world has turned upside down. But do you know why this has happened? Because people are NOT close to the Torah. They have devised chumrahs upon chumrahs upon chumrahs till they forgot what the original inyan in the Torah was. They want to out-Torah the Torah! They are no longer connected to the Torah only to the chumrahs they created to protect the Torah and therefor are NOT close to Hashem nor are they involved in the mitzvos they are supposed to be doing. They have forgotten the simplicity of just plain doing the mistzva b’simcha because they made it so complicated and confusing. And then they look for loopholes to outsmart and outfox the Torah because they have to be smarter than the Torah. This is where they get into the worst trouble.
If I cheat in the name of Tzaddaka then it is really a mitzva that I am doing because it is for Tzedaka not for myself, oh but if I am working for the organization and I am supposed to get paid a commission and I cheat to make more money for the organization, as a perk I make more money too. But the intent is not to cheat for myself to make more money, it is to make more tzadaka money so then it must be allowed because it is a mitzvah to collect Tzadakah. So you see how you get into trouble when you look for loopholes to twist the Torah around to make it work for you instead of you working to serve Hashem through Torah and Mitzvos?
When you learn Torah, and practice it even at its simplest form, and follow the guidelines simply, honestly, with joy and simcha, without the complications you enjoy the purist forms of satisfaction and happiness. Your life is less complicated because you trust in Hashem and give your problems over to him as you do his bidding and serve him. What can be more truthful and honest tan that?