It seems that many people come to Torah because they believe it’s true or because they think it will lead to a better lifestyle that will make them happier.
Which was the driving factor in your return to observance?
What was the driving factor in the majority of BTs you’ve spoke to about the subject?
Which reason leads to the most disappointment or disillusionment?
What are some of the obstacles with either reason.
Shira,
Yes, I was very lucky to have met the well-mannered first!! Like many BTs I experienced a real shock when I encountered many frum Jews who were less than my ideal. It didn’t shake me from my observance, though, because by then my belief was backed up by Torah study and an understanding of why it was true, not just nice and good. But what really got me down was not discovering the few who had really bad middos or did bad things, but the many/majority who were just plain mediocre. I became frum in Yerushalayim and I believe that those Jews represent the best of what we as a people have to offer. It was a shock to see Torah Jews just be so-so when I compared them to what they could be.
I still believe, though, that even here in golus, Torah Jews as a whole live a much more elevated life than those who do not have Torah. Who can replicate things like our bikur cholims, gemachs, etc.?
But you are quite correct. I remember one guy I knew who became frum for various social reasons. He found Torah study stimulating, but he did not learn so much. So when the society treated him not-so-nice (in his eyes) he left frumkeit. Social reasons are not good enough for the entire foundation of belief. But it can be an entree, that is what I was saying.
Shira asked, “Have you not encountered frum people who are unhappy and with bad middot?” This should cause us to think a bit about what “frum” means. Is it supposed to mean:
1. conforming to Torah standards totally?
2. conforming to Torah standards in public?
A person who acts out bad middot and unhappiness habitually would not fall into either category above, but maybe into
3. conforming selectively to Torah standards in public
I’d be hard-pressed to call 3. frum whatsoever.
“For example, I immediately perceived that the frum people I met had much higher middos and lead lives of greater harmony and happiness; I was compelled by my social insights to discover the truths of Torah that produced such people. ”
If your foundation for the truth of torah came about through the percieved happiness and middot of the people you encountered… what would happen to your beliefs if you encountered the opposite now? Have you not encountered frum people who are unhappy and with bad middot?
I think most people becoming frum will experience both the inklings that the Torah is emes, and that living a life of Torah will lead to a happier existence. Which idea is a stronger motivator for any particular person would depend on the way that person thinks. For example, I immediately perceived that the frum people I met had much higher middos and lead lives of greater harmony and happiness; I was compelled by my social insights to discover the truths of Torah that produced such people. It couldn’t be coincidental, and I didn’t believe anything but a true way of life could have created such a society large-scale.
My husband, on the other hand, wanted to hear only logical evidence — for the existence of G-d, that the Torah was given to the Jewish people by G-d, etc., before he even wanted to experience one Shabbos, because his logical mind did not want to be “swayed” by a pleasurable experience that might not have been derived from a true source. I guess it depends on how much one trusts his experiential intuitions to guide him or her to the truth. This may break down on male/female lines (women having more binah, or accurate intuition) but probably there is a lot of cross-over.
I was not clear enough. I don’t mean ideal in the sense that polygamy is “ideal” and monogamy is b’dieved. Not ideal as in preferable. Just ideal as in completely in synch with Hashem’s will for the world and not something that was a “hora’as sha’ah” meaning, merely tolerated by the Torah because of the societal context. I would actually want to suggest that the fact that the Torah tells of Gan Eden having one man with one wife, kind of implies that this is perfect harmony. But not that polygamy is therefore unethical or a moral problem.
Wasn’t Yaakov Avinu’s original intention to marry one wife only?
Michoel– I know this is off topic, but your statement surprised me –“I strongly object to the etzem practive of polygamy, as performed by Yaakov Avinu, being characterized as anything less then Ribbono Shel Olam’s ideal.”
Why would you object to such a characterization?
I honestly don’t know the answer to that question.
I strongly object to the etzem practive of polygamy, as performed by Yaakov Avinu, being characterized as anything less then Ribbono Shel Olam’s ideal.
From Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s translation of Genesis:
29:30 [Jacob] thus also married Rachel, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. He worked for [Laban] another seven years.
29:31 God saw that Leah was unloved, and He opened her womb. Rachel remained barren.
29:32 Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben. ‘God has seen my troubles,’ she said. ‘Now my husband will love me.’
29:33 She became pregnant again and had a son. ‘God has heard (shama) that I was unloved,’ she said, ‘and He also gave me this son.’ She named the child Simeon (Shim’on).
29:34 She became pregnant again and had a son. ‘Now my husband will become attached (lavah) to me,’ she said, ‘because I have given him three sons.’ [Jacob] therefore named the child Levi.
29:35 She became pregnant again and had a son. She said, ‘This time let me praise (odeh) God,’ and named the child Judah (Yehudah). She then stopped having children.
This is your ideal? Not for me, thanks.
Judy, are there more Orthodox spouses being battered, or just more publicity because victims are willing to press charges, etc.
I believe that one of the biggest problems baalei-teshuvah face nowadays is the divorce issue. The divorce rate in the Orthodox Jewish community has soared and with it have come a whole host of new problems, such as “agunot,” women trapped in marriages unable to obtain Gittin (religious divorces). I personally wonder why the community has not instituted the “Get T’nai” or conditional divorce, for all husbands to sign at the time of the chuppah, agreeing that if a secular divorce is obtained, the wife will be granted a Get. Even if such an arrangement could not be done for Kohanim, still it has the potential to end the Agunah problem within a generation. Nowadays the only people a trapped woman can turn to for help are her own father and brothers. I admire the efforts of ORA (Organization for the Release of Agunot) but wonder why more cannot be done to prevent this situation from happening in the first place.
I also feel disappointed by the unfortunate rise of domestic violence within the Orthodox Jewish community. True, I did not expect Orthodox Jews to be angels, but I did expect them to be decent human beings. There was always this feeling that Jewish men treated their wives better, as in the old saying, “Jewish men make the best husbands.” I don’t know if a battered spouse would agree with that assessment.
Ultimately, it comes down to the wise observance of Chazal: “It’s easier to learn all of Shas than to uproot one negative character trait.” Someone who has anger management problems, and therefore beats up his wife out of the need to have a punching bag for his frustrations, is not going to stop this behavior just because he dons a black hat and tzitzis. Ideally, he should stop beating his wife, just like he stopped eating pork and driving on Saturday. But as Chazal noted, these bad traits that lead to domestic violence are harder to get rid of than learning the entire Talmud Bavli.
Just to clarify my previous comment and maybe pre-empt some scorn… I fully agree that the way polygamy IS PRACTICED in many societies is unethical, morally reprehensible etc. I strongly object to the etzem practive of polygamy, as performed by Yaakov Avinu, being characterized as anything less then Ribbono Shel Olam’s ideal. And that, in theory, could be true in our times as well.
Charlie writes: “Much of the ethics in Orthodox Judaism ARE man-made. We don’t have polygamy any more, nor do we have pligeshim. Women can no longer be divorced without their consent. We violate the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew.”
With the exception of divorcing a woman against her will, I don’t think these are strong examples of man-made ‘ethics’. And the example of divorce baal karcha was certainly informed by pre-existing Torah values and halachos.
This topic has come up before and, if I remember correctly, I was happy that I do not use my full name by the end of it! If we lived in a small town in the North of Eretz Yisroel 2,500 years ago, and 2/3 of the marriagable young men had been killed in war. And our 35 year old daughter was now at home with no chance of winning a husband for herself alone, we might well feel the “ethical” imperative was for us to encourage her to become the second wife to a man that could take care of her. There is nothing un-ethical about polygamy. It might be not nice to the first wife, but I don’t call that a problem of ethics.
I became frum because I felt it was emes and I actually thought, initially, that it would make me LESS happy. But that I needed to become frum despite that.
The Torah…is the best way maintain sanity in an insane world where materialism and hedonism
is accepted as the appropriate pursuit for life.
Well put, Charlie. That was the primary reason I chose to become Orthodox during the chaotic 60’s, when my 16 year old self felt any
existing stability was ripped out from underneath. Whereas “over there”, I was attracted to the sanity that Torah and a frum community would supply me. Several decades later (you do the math), I’ve learned that I cannot depend on a community to hold me up, but the Torah can and does, though I sometimes allow my lesser self to be dragged down by community norms.
It should be axiomatic to a Jew that a really thorough, complete knowledge of Torah would include all spiritual truth. An inability to trace a genuine spiritual truth to a Torah source would indicate only our own incomplete understanding.
The kind of happiness we value most is simchah shel mitzvah, Jews have found such happiness under very trying circumstances. See, for example, the book “Those Who Never Yielded” by Moshe Prager, now out of print but available used (and also online at Google Books).
To continue with my previous comment. I don’t get the “Truth or Happiness” question. Yes, the Torah is all about spiritual truth. But as I pointed out, a lot of what we do and don’t do isn’t from the Torah even indirectly. And there are spiritual truths that can be found outside Torah sources.
And “Happiness?” I can’t believe that it is even a consideration. Given the travails of the Jewish people throughout the millenium, how can we say that “Happiness” is a reason to be a Jew or to follow Jewish practice?
So why do I practice Judaism? It is the highest level of service to my Creator and to my fellow humans. Acceptance of being Commanded is the ultimate surrender of ones self. The Torah, including the halachot that were mandated by the rabbis and the minhagim that have arisen over the centuries is the best way maintain sanity in an insane world where materialism and hedonism is accepted as the appropriate pursuit for life.
Tzivia,
Much of the ethics in Orthodox Judaism ARE man-made. We don’t have polygamy any more, nor do we have pligeshim. Women can no longer be divorced without their consent. We violate the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew.
And many sages have responded in the affirmative to the question of whether there is an ethic independent of halachah — and this has had great implications for our practice. The Havot Yair objected when women started saying kaddish 400 years ago based not on halachic but on on slippery slope arguments. The Nodeh B’Yehudah couldn’t find a specific issur for Jews to hunt wild animals, but was very emphatic that it is NOT something Jews should be doing. Many (probably the majority) of Orthodox rabbis object to women getting semichah, women’s tefillah groups, and even women’s megillah leinings even though they can’t find any real issur in any of those.
Rov Soloveitchik z’tz’l endorsed co-ed schools and women learning gemara even though objectively both would have seemed to be halachically problematic (and he never published a halachic essay defending his actions).
What seems to have happened is that consensus of the community, not halachic analysis, has determined Orthodox practice in the long run.
Judy,
You are mistaken about the origins of the former welfare system in the US. The Aid to Dependent Children program actually dates to 1935 and was intended primarily to support widows whose late husbands had now worked long enough to qualify for Social Security and that program’s survivors benefits. It was actualy a part of the original Social Security Act.
Its not just happiness or satisfaction. Its self-worth. Our generation is basically filled up with empty people, people with no self-love or self-worth (me included until recently). Kiruv comes around with this lovely painted picture, and feelings of being a ‘good’ person because you did a mitzvah, and oh, there are 613 mitzvahs, 613 more ways that person thinks they’ll get a chance to be ‘good.’
I think the words good and bad, good and evil, are used too much in juxtaposition with mitzvahs. The idea that its the right, or good, thing to do… can be easily confused with a person feel like they are right or good, or not.
That someone might take on Judaism hoping that it will fix their lives might be on such a deep level that they don’t even know it is their true reason. They might think that they truly believe what they are being taught, and not realize at all how their sense of self is involved. When they throw in the towel, it looks like giving up on Judaism, calling the religion a failure… but really, its about themselves feeling like failures. How much can a person try to make it work before they feel like something is wrong with them?
That’s one possibility, anyhow.
“Sometimes people come to believe Torah must be true, because they feel like someone promised it would improve their lives…”
I think this is a very accurate statement. Unfortunately, this belief has been the primary cause of many baalei teshuvah (and converts!) that I know deciding to throw in the towel when their lives didn’t radically improve in happiness and/or satisfaction. In fact, most people will find that things get harder in many ways and are simply not equipped or supported enough when that happens.
Emes leads to Simcha.
When I first discovered Orthodox Judaism in the mid-seventies, I had an issue that is no longer relevant today. Back then, there was a lot of conflict about whether mothers should work outside the home or not, and if they did decide to work outside the home, what types of jobs they should take. One woman told me in all seriousness that a household could have only one income: if the man worked, the woman had to stay home; a woman could only work if her husband was learning full-time. Remember this was more than thirty years ago.
I was very torn up over this, being that I had always set my sights on a career outside the home, and because I knew that there had always been Orthodox Jewish women who had pursued careers even while raising families, so it was not impossible and not asur (forbidden). Also I was unhappy about what I perceived was a great deal of self-serving hypocrisy in these opinions: YOU can’t work, but I can work; my wife can work, but yours can’t; you can hold a female job like teaching, but not a male job like accounting; you need a second income for the yeshiva tuition, but the kids’ yeshiva won’t let you use its daycare facility for staff members (even if you’re willing to pay for the costs of daycare).
Much of this is largely moot, as the frum velt (as well as the outside world) pretty much accepts working mothers as normal nowadays. In fact, in a switcheroo, the mother who stays home with young children is likely to get criticized for not working.
The whole system of welfare payments originated out of the 1950’s belief that juvenile delinquency stemmed from mothers being forced to work outside the home; if mothers were paid to stay home with their kids, society would (supposedly) benefit. By the 1990’s this worldview did a 180 flip-flop, now saying that crime rates went up because kids had no role model of a working adult in the home, therefore all single moms should find daycare and go out to work (“workfare” replacing welfare).
Slight variation on the question:
Sometimes people come to believe Torah must be true, because they feel like someone promised it would improve their lives…
What I mean, is that those two are tied together for many people, I think. Its not usually one or the other reason for becoming observant.
When I was in the 6th grade in public school, I had an outstanding Hebrew School teacher. Every time I heard him speak about Judaism, I felt that I was hearing the truth. There is a difference between a system of ethics that is man made and a system that is made in shamayim itself. What men value can vary from country to country and century to century. Our values are eternal.
It has taken me quite some time to find a synagogue that is a reasonable fit. I want to learn everything I can from the rebbitzen and congregants there, as they keep telling me that we must live by the books and value halacha.
The rebbitzen has been of tremendous help to me, as we are both in aveilus. In addition, she knows where I am coming from, as she works in my son’s former grammar school, and she had him as a student.
I am grateful to my schul and the rebbitzen, as I have a sense of belonging that was missing for years. In addition, I like yeshivishe davening.