I had the pleasure of hosting Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller for lunch and dinner yesterday as she visited Kew Gardens Hills on the tail end of her 2 week US tour. In her “to the heart of the matter” style, she commented that conformity cuts you off from your past, while non-conformity cuts you off from your community. We will G-d willing hear more wisdom from Rebbetzin Heller in the coming months.

Today we’re running another guest contributor piece from Rabbi Yakov Horowitz. As you might know, Rabbi Horowitz serves as Menahel (Dean) of Yeshiva Darchei Noam of Monsey, is the founder and Program Director of Agudath Israel’s Project Y.E.S., which assists at-risk teens and their families, and is one of the leading community advocates for providing the infrastructure necessary to support BTs throughout the entire lifecycle.
Read more Teachers, Friends and Advisors ›

One of the themes we will be emphasizing are the different paths people have taken in developing a relationship with G-d. I was talking to a teacher of mine recently and he expressed the opinion that observant Judaism is maxing out. We need to recognize that if we want more people to share in the beauty of Torah, we have to enlarge the tent. By sharing our experiences we are hoping to make each individual’s path, a little easier and a little less lonely.

Our first Rabbinic contribution comes from Rabbi Alter Klein who elucidates the path of intensive learning. Later today we will be posting the experiences of our first college student contributor, Rachel Adler from the University of Penn who will share her journey to date.

The ideal for a Baal Teshuva, or any Jew, is to try to listen, hear, understand, learn and integrate wisdom from all sources, as the Mishna 4.1 in Avos says, “Who is wise? He who learns from all people…”. Fortunately there is much wisdom out there born of thought and experience, waiting to be shared.

We will be adding some new voices in the coming days from various walks of life, highlighting our heartfelt belief that there are many paths for building a relationshop with G-d and His world.

We’re planning on starting a Thursday post, written by a Rabbi. If you are interested in contributing, please submit your 100-500 word submissions to beyondbt@gmail.com.

And lastly, we’re soliciting contributions from people who have something to share with the Baalei Teshuva constituency. It doesn’t much matter where you have started from as long as you’re heading towards become a better Jew tomorrow than you are today. Please send you 100-500 word submissions and links to beyondbt@gmail.com.

Our hosting service got hit by a DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attack yesterday, which unfortunately resulted in this site (and all others hosted there) being down for about 4 hours yesterday afternoon.

We want to express our appreciation for all the helpful feedback we have received via comments, emails and links to Beyond Teshuva. Please continue to express and share your thoughts so we can continue to improve.
Read more Where We’re Holding ›

A number of years ago, we had Rabbi Yakov Horowitz as a scholar-in-residence at our Shul. He told me at the time that he had an article coming up in the Jewish Observer which should have a positive impact on the Baalei Teshuva constituency. Here is a link to the article called Lifecycle Support for the Ba’al Teshuva Family.
Read more The Issue of Lifecycle Support ›

Just wanted to thank all the people who have linked and have stopped by. The words of encouragement are wonderful. Please leave comments, as nothing warms a bloggers heart more than a comment, a short story or a question.

Let me leave you with this link from the Hyde Park Hevre, a London Chassidic Website which is hosted out of Israel. I brought it to Shul tonight to have it translated and the Hevre likes our blog.

If you give it a close look, you can learn how to say blogger in Yiddish. If anyone can translate the whole piece and leave the translation in the comments, you’ll have a friend for life.

Paul from Bloghead recently wrote:

A new blog for BT’s has made its appearance. It is an interesting read, and I wish the blog much success. The list of contributors is interesting (see the r.h. side coloumn of the blog) – three rabbis, plus Zelig, Rivka, Arye Leib, Mordechai, Melech, Meyer, Dovid and Chava. No Zekes, Rosemarys, Arthurs, Michaels, etc etc. The discussions show great concern about ….. conformity, and integrating into Haredi society.

First let me thank Paul for pointing out a mistake I made. When we started this week, I had a cheshbon (calculation) that we should all use our Hebrew names. I was wrong. Read more Tearing Down Unneccesary Barriers ›

I had mentioned in an email to Gil that this project has Rabbinic backing, which he wrote up as Rabbinic approval which is being speculated about in parts of the blogosphere as Rabbinic supervision.

To start this project, we talked to Rabbi Herschel Welcher, Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz, the Rabbis listed as contributors and others. They all felt that this project is an important one for the Jewish community and encouraged us to pursue it. They are not involved on a day to day basis, nor are they monitoring the posts. When questions come up which we feel require Rabbinic input, we will of course consult them. They are smart, understanding and caring people who toil endless hours for the greater good and we feel fortunate to have them as leaders, teachers and friends.

Many of the people involved in this project are integrated and contributing to the larger observant community in significant ways. Our Rabbeim are wise enough to empower us to serve our community and make our own decisions and mistakes.

We will be discussing the important topic of finding a Rav in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.

We had a very successful opening day, thanks to a link by Gil Student who writes the very popular Hirhurim blog.

I had the pleasure of meeting Gil at a wedding, where I was introduced by my friend and teacher, Rabbi Yakov Haber of YU and Stern fame. The banning of Rabbi Slifkin’s books about Torah and Science had just occurred and talking to Gil helped me get a better handle on Rabbi Slifkin’s perspective and goals in writing his books.

Thanks again to Gil and his readers who took the time to check out the site.

No, we’re not going to start off with existential Jewish philosophy. But we do want to give people an idea of what this blog is about.

We’re here to discuss issues of common interest to Baalei Teshuva and to help Baalei Teshuva from around the world connect and strengthen one another.

This blog and the entire Beyond Teshuva project owes much of its inspiration to the October 2001, “Life After Teshuva” conference held in Passaic, NJ.

We’ll be discussing the scope of the Beyond Teshuva project in the months to come and we’re looking for input from Baalei Teshuva around the world.