Saw this idiocy by chance and wanted to respond:

The more I read about the off the derech (OTD) community, the more I realize that the only folks who truly go off the derech are the ones who simply fade out to nothing. Those folks don’t go to Footsteps, they don’t write anonymous blogs about their angst, and they don’t belong to Facebook groups bragging about how they ate 5 forms of chazer at an all you can eat buffet in China Town, stopped off for a dime bag and a bottle of Henny in an alley behind Duane Reade, and scoured the Craigslist Casual Encounters ads on their mobile phone until they found a willing troupe of midgets from the Coney Island Circus Sideshow wanting to party.

The only people who are truly off the derech are the ones who have let everything go, including griping about the ills of the frum community.

oh man, where to begin?!

1. I think she’s conflating three different things: Being irreligious, developing a secular life, and having moved on emotionally and psychologically from one’s being religious. They’re not the same the thing at all. But being OTD simply means irreligious. Nothing more. So, we could stop right here and say her thesis is wrong. But let’s go on.

2. It’s a process. I consider myself someone who the article author would now classify as OTD, but when I began my journey, definitely fell into some of her stereotypes. For instance, would likely have gone to Footsteps if I knew they were around when I began. I did (/do) write an anonymous blog explaining my issues with judaism, and I did have my moments reveling in the fact that I can now eat pork like a normal person (and without any emotional stomach churning). I don’t really do that anymore, as I feel I have finally gotten over the ordeal, but it took a damn long time. It seems to me the author has no appreciation of how these can be a form of liberation and therapy and helpful for the process.



3. “… scoured the Craigslist Casual Encounters ads on their mobile phone until they found a willing troupe of midgets from the Coney Island Circus Sideshow wanting to party.” I’m not even sure how to react to this. It’s SOOO over the top. In trying to make sense of it, the best I can come up with is that the author now shares judaism decades (centuries?) old outlook on sexuality, and so anyone bragging that they got laid (which is a big deal when you grow up with ortho mores) is a sign that they’re a perverted sexual deviant. But basically, I think that line says more about the author than the people she’s trying to malign.

All that being said, if the author had merely argued that being OTD is ‘fully achieved’ when one truly puts all that behind them, she’d still be wrong, but it wouldn’t be insulting and demonstrate massive ignorance. So let’s keep going.

As I have shared before, I didn’t grow up religious… I became religious to enhance the good life I already had. For myself, if I were to go off the derech, I would literally go off onto my own life. If I chose to leave the community, I would leave without further engagement.



4. Shocking news here: People are different. What you (suppose you) would do is not necessarily the same for someone else. Especially if you are someone who didn’t grow up religious and adopted it for yourself, at your own pace, in your own time. And simply having feelings about the community in which you were raised doesn’t mean you’re not OTD; it just means that you still have feelings about them (whether positive or negative).



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