I would like to briefly answer M’s comment about whether we are really doing kiruv or just pressing psychological buttons.
Like yichusdik, I came back to teshuva through Aish HaTorah and was very close to R’ Noach’s entire family, while not having much contact to R’ Noach himself, practically living in their house for close to 2 years.
My comment to M is that Aish HaTorah is a very logic-based approach to Torah and there are very reasoned and thought out answers and understandings of Torah and why we keep Torah that he had very carefully thought through during his lifetime and equipped his talmidim with this knowledge while they were learning with him. There is solid, unshakeable emes to Torah, if a person is willing to see it, think through the issues and, if they are willing to make the commitment, become frum through this. If a thinking person had their psychological buttons pressed (as was suggested by M) by reform or hindu or some other “religion”, and the person looked into the depths of that belief system, what would they find? Emes? There isn’t anything to support those religions.
I was first introduced to yiddishkeit through the Discovery program that he started, which provides many glimpses into the Torah and its truth and, while not convincing in and of themselves, spur a thinking person on to learn more in depth to prove or disprove their truths to him/herself. I hope I am being clear. I went to a Discovery seminar and my pintele Yid was awakened. I felt that my life was being changed by the 48 hours or less that I had been sitting there absorbing bits and pieces of emes.
One of the most convincing comments I heard/learned was, what other religion claims that there were 600,000 people present when G-d came and spoke with them and presented them with the 10 commandments. By any other religion, Divine revelation is to the individual (usually the leader) not to the entire population. Nobody can disprove a person who says “G-d appeared to me in my dream last night”. But when a whole population of people claim the same thing, how can such a statement be disproved? If such a statement had no basis, somewhere along the way it would have faded away since most people knew it was basically a lie and had just been made up by a few people or some such story. But it hasn’t and we are still claiming the same thing – not that we heard G-d on Mount Sinai, but that our ancestors were there.
I had the fortune of coming from a family of BTs that had come back through Chabad, but it had not appealed to me and I had not done teshuva until my brain was convinced that it was true. However, because I could see, as someone pointed out above, that there were normal people (my family and many of their friends) who were keeping Torah, then I wasn’t frightened off by what the commitment to keep it would involve.
I may not be the typical story of someone who goes to these kinds of programs in that I became charedi from their program (their ultimate goal obviously), but it is possible and I am sure that the people who run these and other kiruv programs are all hoping that the people they encounter will become the frumest that they are able to, given each person’s circumstances. The sky’s the limits.