LeebaW
I thank you very much for your post. I think your post and what it brought up is something so important that has been a very large and painful part of my life for very long. But not only in my life. Everywhere, Israel America, Modern, Charedi, there is a slow yet definite breaking down that is happening and I will get to that soon.
I grew up in a very charedi family and for various reasons had the need to rebel. Overall i would most resonate with what someone mentioned here regarding “finding myself”. The thing is that again for various reasons that wasn’t so easy for me. My family moved around alot making it hard for me to have a group of friends to rebel with. Furthermore i was on the one hand very much connected to the emotional side of Judaism in my early teens. IT would be hard to explain but I’m sure some will understand, on the one hand a deep feeling that Judaism and Torah makes life meaningful as opposed to the world “out there”, on the other hand a very deep seeded feeling that I just wasn’t really expressing myself and I was being someone because that what is expected. Obviously, most of this is somewhat typical but here is where i come to my main point, which again i thank leeba for bringing up.
When I was younger, i saw as my role models the kids who went off and eventually came back on giving them a nice blend of “cool” and living the truth. I never imagined that it wouldn’t be the same for me, all this I think more on a subconscious level of thinking.
What happens though sometimes is: especially for deeper thinkers and people who just didn’t have the right people at the right time, is you start to have deeper questions about life, Judaism and yourself. After many many years I can say that the truth is that some of this type of questioning just doesn’t have simple answers if at all. I would definitely say that your typical Rebbe in Yeshiva and even in Yeshivos that deal with these types of kids is not equipped to handle these types of dilemmas.
Sometimes life can bring you to a place where your questioning of reality is so intense that Judaism and sometimes belief n God period becomes so foreign to you that 99% of the answers given will not help you.
I personally have been very attracted to Breslov. One of R Nachman’s main teachings is that a person must believe that every single thought, action, experience including sins that has happened to him until this very moment was all god’s exact plan for him/her! Only now his specific mission is to do Teshuva in a specific way meant for him. This if internalized gives a very individualistic approach to religion. It also deals with ” God would want me to be a certain way when others just sat in
Yeshiva and it worked for them?”
Another idea and I don’t know if this will help you Leeba or if you care at all, just thought i would share: Anybody who has been through this kind of hell of mind will realize that there is no real way to “prove”, because it all depends on the definition of proof etc.. etc.. Whatever…. In R Nachman’s world: EMuna is above Mind/Emotion etc……. It is a choice to throw out all knowledge that you have accumulated from a very confusing postmodern world and choose to know one thing only: that you were born to a tradition and that being close to that tradition is who you really are at core. R Nachman foresaw this generation as having the most confusion and it’s no wonder that so many people are finding themselves attracted to his teachings.
To summarize, my main point is that people do not realize how much of a problem we have in our world of people who are losing their belief system. Whether or not it starts from emotional problems (which i believe that it does) people in a crumbling society where there is much confusion are becoming more and more confused philosophically to a point where intellectually and personally there is no way back or its at least very hard to get if there is any will at all. And all talk about how they really want to go back and it’s all pride is sometimes taken to be typical Jewish propaganda which the OTD individual hates so much to begin with.
We need to start really caring about the people. the person, the individual, because sometimes they will find themselves in a place where there is no way back. Oh and we need to really daven. And be happy 🙂