You wrote to aries “However I don’t agree with your hashkafas regading how you relate to OTD’s and I think you are very trusting and a bit naive.
Make sure you don’t get burned. “
WIY, the truth is, that maybe aries won’t get burnt because if we don’t expect too much from people then we can’t get burnt. If we expect basic appreciation and manners from people that we help we can get burnt.
I will not get into how my freinds and I helped a friend that went OTD without any alterior motives, we just felt compasionate for her because she was in a very bad situation.
We went out of our way for her, but there was no thank you no appreciation, her basic manners were lacking. So of course, some will say, yeah well she was hurting, blah, blah and she could’t even say thank you, blah blah blah. My freinds and I felt washed out and used and just stopped giving.
So the truth is if you don’t expect too much from people you can’t get burnt. Yes, that sentence was a mistake on my part because some people don’t expect basic appreciation in return for their work.
If you feel that people should act like menchen you get upset when they don’t and take advantage of you.
With trusting I mean that, we can banech these OTD’s till tomorrow. The fact is that while I didn’t take a count of how many OTD kids were actually abused I can tell you that a large number of them were NOT abused. I have seen OTD kids going OTD because they wanted a different experience or other excuses which have nothing to do with being abused. Of course they’re gonna kvetch that they didn’t get enough att., a teacher picked at them, etc.
Life is not black and white. Just because OTD’s come with a boatload of excuses doesn’t mean they are such nebachs. I’ve seen people with harder lives than these OTD kids and they stayed frum.
If anything, it seems like he is being quite successful and he knows exactly how to deal with them.
Everyone measures success differently. I measure success by OTD’s returning to Yiddishkeit.
On the other hand you very likely have zero experience with these kids and technically have no right to argue because you cant discuss what you have no clue about
I know more than I’m going to write about. I have no interest of making a bigger hole in the can and letting out more worms. It serves no purpose.
The only way to have a clue is to have shaychis with the kids, or with those who deal with such kids and hear what they have to say.
How do you know from where I take my strong opinions from?
One thing I can tell you. I have seen what REALLY goes on, not what people claim goes on.
The power of teshuva and doing mitzvas is great, so is the power of evil.
There has been through the ages bigger and better people who couldn’t change the natural world order of bechira.
I am very suspicious of people who imply that all the experience they had with OTD was successful (yes blame that on my childhood/teenage family experience).