from otd to back on, ask away

WELCOME BACK!! I cannot fathom how this thread got missed. I read those threads intensely to glean what I can so my kids WON’T be OTD. Many of them struggle in school and we see the potential pitfalls. Any advice on one foot or do I need to come up with a question?

Basicly what MorahRach said. What are some things that made you or could make someone OTD? Are there certain personalities that could make someone become OTD living in such a religious environment or living in a more modern one?

And BTW, thanks for willing to share and help others.

My family is really frum and I feel like one of my brothers is starting to go OTD because he hates sitting down in Yeshiva. He is still young and I don’t want to make it sound like a bad thing. I just hope that just because he hates sitting in Yeshiva it doesn’t mean that he has to become less frum or go OTD. Is there any specific way he should be guided?

Just because a boy has no zitzfleish for Yeshivah all day, does not mean he has to go OTD. The RIGHT derech has to be found for him, i.e. an alternative to the Yeshivah environment that he is in presently. Chanoch lanaar al pi darko means exactly that. We don’t come in “one size fits all.” Some kids need a different methodology, a different teaching and learning style, and cannot handle the structure of a typical Yeshivah class. Should they be thrown away because of that? How many neshamos have been lost because of the inability to recognize this?

At what point did you feel like you ‘left’? Did feeling that make you want to return or did it hold you back?

@yeshivish. I could’ve written your post, as I too came from the same exact type modern orthodox background , went completely otd for a number of years, and came back much more Frum than b4, b”H. In my case, I went off partly because I became friendly with people who were experimenting with the other lifestyle, and mostly because I was emotionally neglected at home and was searching for happiness and attention in all the wrong places. What I’m still trying to figure out, so many years later, is why I stayed in the other lifestyle for so long since it really didn’t bring me any happiness or peace of mind, only guilt and pain…

So interesting to her from you, y316. Would you say that you grew up in what we call an “MO” home? More YU than BMG? I find a lot of people try to convince me that more rightwing homes & yeshivas are far more likely to produce kids with OTD issues. Would you agree?

Also interesting to me that you made it sound as if you left more because of the attractions of what was “out there”, than because of digust or discomfort with what you experienced at home & in yeshiva. Is that correct?

What do you think parents can do to keep their kids from leaving to the excitement of what they can find out in the world? Better to shelter them? Expose them? Talk to them? What do you think of all the talk these days about electronic media and keeping kids away from it?

How do you help teens & college kids deal with things you struggled with?

Those are all good reasons to be chareidi. Indeed it does keep people frum to a much much greater extent. MO OTD is a notable percentage of MO teens and young adults. And it occurs to a far far greater extent than it happens with the regular frum.

There aren’t enough jewish neshamos to go around for all the kids that are being born to frum families nowadays. So unless hashem makes more neshamos or starts splitting the ones we have, some kids just get goyishe neshamos, and of course they leave judaism.

Sam: You think he was serious? I seriously doubt it.

Welcome Back!

Thank you so much for sharing your story with other people.

I have a lot of questions but this is one I was thinking about recently.

When you went out into the world were there a lot of things that turned you off about the goyim and what is going on in that lifestyle that caused you to rethink the path that you took or did you not think about it until you saw the better alternative? If so what kind of things were they specifically?

I think Ambp is kidding, although it’s inappropriate for this thread. In reality we were taught that once all neshomos are brought down from shamaim, moshiach will come. (and btw this includes miscarriages) which is another reason to have more children.

In a more literal sense, we unfortunately haven’t yet replaced what we lost during the holocaust, which means there were more jews at a given point in history.

Geez Louise, when did m”s get so serious all of a sudden?

Feif: I went the same way you did, though thanks to some very exceptional people I managed to minimze the “off” part.

Syag: In the MO community I live in, these things are not considered “extra”. As for asking the shul Rabbi, yes, when I have a question, I ask the Rabbi of my shul. He is extremely knowledgeable, has semicha, and I have no problems asking him.

Now, does saying these things are not “extra” mean they don’t happen? No. There are women in the community who don’t cover their hair, or wear pants. However, the Rabbi will never say it’s ok, and he encourages people to dress more appropriately – in private, and not via fire and brimstone speeches like most Beis Yaakovs do these days.

But when it comes to learning, our shul is fantastic! There are shiurim every day, chaburos a few nights per week, and on Shabbos there are numerous shiurim on various topics throughout the entire day.

Are we Zionist? Yes, and proudly so. In our shul, the gabbai used to make a mi sheberach every week for Gilad Shalit. You should have seen him the first week he didn’t have to say it anymore – he had tears streaming down his cheeks! The love that every member of our shul has for Israel is amazing.

Our community also has a kollel that is supported by the community. They learn b’chavrusah with many baal habatim every night.

This is a real MO community.

That sounds a lot like where my brother is now. There is a real kesher to Hashem and His Torah. We didn’t have any of that. Just as an FYI, not to start a tangent (please no) but when I registered my daughter for BY here I did it with baited breath. Just waiting for them to say the wrong thing and send me walking. They never did. No fire and brimstone in this particular school. She learned a lot from role models and soft speech. The fiery ones were a sad minority who did their damage but have been replaced, B”H.

I can now see why you felt an attraction. I wish I had been raised with some of that. B”H my kids are.

Thanks for sharing!

Choppy, I beg to differ regarding the OTD rate of Bais Yaakovs. It may be considerably lower than Syag’s class, but it’s not “very very small.” Unfortunately, I have no numbers, just anecdotal evidence.

yehuda: My anecdotal evidence, from many beis yaakov’s, is not zero — but pretty close to it.

Syag: And those of the girls in your daughters class that did those things, do most of them keep Shabbos when they’re 20 or 25? You indicated most in your class, most of the class completely stopped keeping Shabbos. So even if a few in your daughters class did really wild things, it seems by time they are 25 most are still keeping Shabbos, unlike your class.

Re-characterizing your class from being MO, is like re-characterizing a guy from Lakewood who went bad as not being Chareidi.

Choppy: You’re ignoring a very important semantics difference. You are lumping both the community that Syag described and the one that Feif described as “MO” and therefore saying that “MO” has problems. But you can clearly see the difference, can’t you? Just because a community that is more properly described as Conservadox calls themselves “MO” shouldn’t mean that the “Modern Orthodox” communities who remember the Orthodox part of their name should be lumped with them as problematic. That would be like saying BMG has a lot of Zionists because there are some Zionists in Ner Yisrael. They’re both “Chareidi/Yeshivish”, right? So that’s a fair claim? You can see that’s ridiculous, can’t you?

Popa +1

I don’t understand this assumption that MO have a higher rate of going OTD.

Where does the term “greasy” yeshiva guy come from?

Clearly no community is immune.

IS: And I know no OTD Chareidim, either directly or through my friends. I know of many many frei people who come from MO backgrounds.

You are correct, sorry. Itche is being absurd, not you.

Mod 95: It’s not outrageous. It’s just denial. It’s like the Chalaria’s claim that there are no gay people in Iran.

Choppy: Precisely. You just proved my point. Call it LWMO instead of Conservadox if you want. I don’t care. But you clearly see that there is a big difference in the two. So why are you lumping them together?

Syag: I think that recent revision by 95 was facetious.

Sam2: I hope you’re right. I’m tired of swimming upstream.