AAQ – excellent post!
mensch1 – thank you. I too had aa Ah Ha experience but it was some smaller ones combined. One of the “last straws” was probably when most of my high school class stopped keeping much of anything by the end of high school, except those who had “frummed out” in their Israel year, and the handful of sincere, devoted and serious Mizrachi-niks (who, by the way, have a solid frum family of grandchildren 30 years later, B”H). I figured something was up and when I looked into it more, I realized that the self serve buffet style of observance (do you keep kol isha? are you gonna cover your hair? do you wear pants? are you shomer negiah?) was a paradox in itself. If it’s optional, why do it at all? But we were told that mitzvos were mandatory just that how you observed them seemed to be optional. This was probably very much connected to AAQ’s above post as opposed to an actual hashkofa. the modern schools at that time were there to rescue the immigrants children/grandchildren who were prepared to just toss it all to avoid the persecution of Europe.