My opinion on the "Orthopraxy" conversation

is this a bigger problem than we thought?

Recently, the Frum Bloggosphere has been in uproar.

It all started with a writer that goes by the pseudonym

Exit98

(A reference to the exit on the highway that leads to Lakewood).

Exit98

writes in his substack,

The Lakewood Skeptic

about his experience being in the closet OTD in Lakewood. He is a great writer and really captures the angst of living in a religious community that you don’t believe in but pretend to. A few days ago, he wrote a post that set the Jewish Substack world on fire. In it, he writes about a secret meeting of the OTD community; a pizza party in a backyard. He describes the various attendees as being well learned, and one still serving in a rabbinical position.

Exit98

has some other extremely sad posts but this one really got everyone riled up. The notion that there is such a big subculture of OTD in the closet is a scary thought for the Jewish community. The fact that some of its members are well learned only makes it more disturbing.

Is it possible that one can live in the frum community, be successful in the yeshiva system and still end up this way?

My friend

Ash

wrote a post on this issue and brought up a great points. He pointed to the beauty of Jewish culture and posits that the members of this community do not feel a connection with it, thereby making Judaism seem like a random set of onerous rules.

My understanding of Ash’s view is that he is advocating for a shift in how we teach Yiddishkeit. Instead of it being focused only on halacha it should also focus on the rich cultural tapestry that Yiddishkeit and the diverse ways of connecting to it.

Next, the esteemed

Happy

from

Irrationalist Modoxism

wrote a post with his perspective. There are too many points for me to summarize so I suggest you read the post.

Another great blogger,

Yitz

wrote a post that diagnosed the source of the issue as “Communities that prioritize appearance over authenticity, that value conformity over genuine connection to faith, are setting themselves up for a crisis”. He posits that the issue is our lack of intellectual openness to questions, pressure to conform and an overall focus on the externality of action as opposed to inner connection and understanding.

Genuine Judaism

and

Ben Torah

also have written posts on the subject.

I suggest that everyone should read these articles and the comments on them to get a real sense of the issue and the plethora of opinions around it.

Some think that this OTD community is small, thereby making its existence tragic but not a growing problem. They point out that throughout history there were people that left the fold and no matter how perfect the system is there will always be those that leave.

Others think this a growing problem that needs to be looked at seriously.

(this a basic summary of the topic. If you feel that I missed something or misrepresented your view, comment and I will edit accordingly)

Here are my thoughts on the issue:

I don’t have data on how big this problem is and how fast it’s growing. Anecdotally, I have heard from many people in the mental health field that this is a growing problem, with one big psychologist saying that this will soon outpace the amount of teens going OTD. ( Meaning that adult OTD is on the rise and teen OTD is falling).

Another point is the sheer size of the /exjew subreddit. Admittedly, there is no way to know how many of those 11k members are actually OTD or just lurkers.

All of that being said, I personally think it is a growing issue from my personal experience in the mental health world and personally knowing people that went OTD later in life.
But even if you disagree with me, I think discussion about this topic is important because, there are valuable lessons that can be learned from extremes that relevant to the less extremes. An example would be this; If suddenly 9,000 Toyota 2024 Camrys suddenly lose an axle , although being a statically small number compared to how many are sold, it should be a clue that even the complete Toyotas might have a weakness in the axle.
The patterns that I am picking up in the closet OTD community are similar to what I am seeing the broader frum world, albeit on a lower scale.

I think the issue is a lack of personal connection to Judaism.

I lift weights. It is very hard. Go deadlift 550 lbs and get back to me.

But I love it.

The results and the satisfaction that I derive from it make a seemingly hard activity enjoyable. The difference between finding something onerous as opposed to hard but satisfying is how much satisfaction and meaning you derive from that activity.
This is true in the sports world and is the reason why the second you make a game out of a chore you can convert it from being annoying to fun.

I think that most jews today don’t have a personal connection to God and the Torah.
Their Judaism does not incorporate their natures, strengths, weaknesses and personal journey in life.
This makes the many mitzvos and obligations onerous.

This point is similar to Ash and Yitz in the sense that I agree with them that lack of connection is the cause for this phenomena. However while Ash focuses on the connection to the culture and Yitz is focusing on the intellectual aspect of it, I am focusing on the personal connection to it.

We are all different with different proclivities and natures. What works for one person won’t work for others.

As I wrote this post and this post, we need a “system” for many reasons but we can’t rely on it as a map for our personal meaning and self-actualization because a system by its very nature is one-size-fits-nobody solution.

The system is merely a tool that we can use on our own journeys of personal connection to G-d and Judaism.

The problem is that the “system” tells us that the road to personal connection and meaning is predicated on following the system.

The yeshiva system was initially made for the elite few. Contrary to popular perception ,yeshivas in pre WW2 Europe were quite small and represented a very small section of Klal Yisroel. Moishe the cobbler and Yankel the tailor were far more common then Meir the yeshiva bochur. Anyone who learned in yeshiva did so at great self-sacrifice and fully believed in what they were doing.

They had a personal connection and fulfillment in learning.

A similar dynamic was prevalent in Lakewood in the 1950s through the 1980s. the yeshiva bochur was the exception. Most people either worked or went to college.
At a certain point the culture shifted. Instead of yeshiva being for those that chose the path, the path chose them. The new norm was for everyone to go to yeshiva and learn full time

While this brought about a wonderful explosion of torah learning, it meant that people were not choosing to learn, it was automatic.

One can sit all day and learn and maybe feel satisfaction from learning but never actually develop a personal connection to Hashem and Yiddishkeit. He is learning a subject he didn’t choose in a system that he was born into. He talks to G-d three times a day but they are words that are not his.
He has talents and desires and mundane chores to do but they are just obstacles to learning.

This isn’t a call to end yeshivas and learning. It’s a call to evolve our ethos as a community to properly pass down Yiddishkeit in a way that gives room for personal meaning and connection. It is a call to imbue even activities that we consider “Chol” like sleeping, eating , working and driving in insane Lakewood traffic with meaning.
It is call for the institutions to stress that everyone can find a type of learning or avodah that speaks to him.

There will be those that will accuse my ethos of being a new version of Judaism. Here are some sources.

The Gra in Mishlei says that the reason why we had prophets was because every every Jew has his own journey and path to serving God. The Jews of that era would go to the Navi and the Navi would look into their soul and guide them on their own path to God.
Famously, the 12 tribes all had their own paths to serving Hashem.

In Parshas Bereishis, we are taught that Chanoch was considered righteous in Hashem’s eyes, so much so that he died before his time so he wouldn’t have to live in the evil culture of the Dor Hamabul.

If you look in Chazal, one of the explanations of Chanoch’s righteousness was that when he was a shoemaker that was meticulous in crafting the finest shoes for his customers. He felt that his obligation of Yishuv haolam was to make shoes so he treated that obligation like it was holy.
How many of us even realize that part of our mission is to do mundane things and elevate them?
Our Avodah shouldn’t just be confined to the Beis Hamedrash rather we should be constantly in a state of serving Hashem in whatever path he decides we need to walk.
Unfortunately, we are taught to believe that our only connection is that daf yomi shiur we go to at the end of the day.
We don’t realize that we are meant to be a light onto the nations and are representing God even as we politely hold open the door for someone else at the local 7/11.

(Reb Aron Lopiansky expounds on this in “A Ben Torah for Life” but this mindset isn’t taught in yeshivos)

There will be others that will criticize this article by engaging in apologetics. They will try to claim the Yeshiva system already has this and it is the bochurim’s fault for not trying to find personal connection. This is patently false.

I have attended some of the best yeshivas in America and have spoken to many others and their experiences corroborated mine. Every shmuez in yeshiva is about Torah. Growth is measured by Torah. Shavous is about mattan Torah, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is the yemei hadin for torah and Purim is “Kiblu Vikimu”.

Even examples of chesed are “learning with a weaker bochur”.

We are told that yeshiva is a “teivah” that protects us from the outside world but there is zero acknowledgment about a simple fact that most of us will have to leave that “teivah” .
Yeshiva does not prepare you for life, it teaches you how to learn.

Statistically, despite what some rabbeim say, most of will leave yeshiva and go out to work and suddenly find ourselves bereft of the feelings that full day learning can provide.

We will spend most of our lives doing mundane things like spending time with our wives and kids, sitting in traffic and working.

We can put some time everyday towards learning but that isn’t the same as being fully engaged in learning.

To those that say it was never meant to teach you how to live every aspect of life as a connected yid, I say that maybe it should.

Klal Yisroel has evolved to face generational challenges many times in the past.

Chassidus, Mussar and Rav Hirsh’s Torah Im Derech Eretz were all movements that were made to help Yiddishkeit thrive in the cultural environment of that day.

We must do the same.