The second post has gone up at ShulPolitics.Com titled Who’s The Boss? – Shul Types and Authority. It discusses the five shul types:
1) Yeshiva Minyanim
2) Shtiebels and Rabbi-centric Shuls
3) Chabad Shuls
4) Beis Medrash/Independent Minyans
5) Democratic Shuls

Go give it a read and correct any misconceptions in the comments there.

You’re back; good.

Which Shul types make sense for BTs as they go through the BT life-cycle
1) Stage one – years 1-7 – getting your feet wet
2) Stage two – years 8-15 – understanding more and getting involved
3) Stage three – years 16- 40+ – almost indistinguishable from an FFB

If you were giving advice to someone who knows very little about Torah Judaism and is over 30, but seriously wants to develop their spiritual side what advice would you give them:

a) Call Partners in Torah for a one-on-one learning partner
b) Contact the nearest Aish branch
c) Find the nearest Chabad
d) Take a look at these books (name the books)
e) Learn to pray
f) Browse the web for Torah information (list any particular sites)
g) Attend classes on Judaism
h) Other (please specify)

Last week’s AJOP weekly email contained the following:

Results of the First Study on Teens at Risk and Baalei Teshuva to be Released at AJOP Convention

Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education in partnership with the Association for Jewish Outreach Programs (AJOP) has conducted a groundbreaking study comparing adolescents who grew up in families who are newly observant, to adolescents born into families whose parents have been observant from birth. Conducted under the direction of world-renowned psychologist Dr. David Pelcovitz, this study was the first to look at this segment of the Jewish community.

I think that possible results might include:
a) A disproportionally high percentage of Kids at Risk have BT parents
b) Lack of parenting experience is a major cause
c) Not setting appropriate goals for children is another cause
d) More post BT mentoring and instruction by outreach professionals is needed
e) The many wonderful BT parents out there will be acknowledged

What do you think the results will include?

Do you think the recommendations for more post BT mentoring will bear edible fruit?

Do you think this will result in a further degrading of BTs in the Frum public’s eyes?

As yesterday’s post pointed out inspiration serves as a motivator but strengthening your Avodas Hashem (service of Hashem) is the real goal.

What are you working on this Elul

a) Improving kavannah during Shomenah Esrai
b) Saying Tehillim more often
c) Learning with more depth
d) Spending more hours per week learning
e) Starting another seder of learning
f) Refraining from Loshon Hara and Onoas Devorim
g) Being happy with my lot
h) Working on my anger
i) Wasting less time
j) Thinking more about Hashem during the day
k) other

How are you getting extra inspiration for the Yomim Noraim?

a) Davening in a different shul.
b) Learning a new sefer.
c) Being more careful in certain halachos.
d) Davening more slowly.
e) Thinking about our crazy times and that now is the time for some real Teshuva
f) Other

By Charlie Hall

Late last week I was invited to give a research presentation to a prestigious conference. But the time for the presentation was to be on Shabat, so I turned the invitation down immediately. Incredibly, in 16 years, this is the first time that this has happened — I’ve withdrawn presentations that were scheduled for Shabat but never before have I been *invited* to give a presentation on Shabat. I was sorry for the non-Jew who invited me that I was not able to come to the conference panel he was organizing but I was proud to be able to declare myself as a Jew who does not break Shabat for work.

I put “given up” in quotes in the title because we of course understand that the real reward for mitzvah observance is not material. I have been blessed in that for the past ten years I have worked for a Jewish institution and am in a profession whose major professional conferences are not on Shabat. Observance has thus been very easy for me. But most of us have had to say “no” on occasion to things that were it not on Shabat we would certainly have done. And there are many career paths for which Shabat is much more difficult than it has been for me.

Please share examples of situations where you found that you had to make the choice in favor of Shabat observance, and how that affected your life.

The school year and it’s accompanying challenges begins this week and next.

How would you rate the school’s overall effect on your children’s relationship to G-d and Torah?
a) Positive
b) Neutral
c) Negative

What best describes your approach to schooling
a) Try to help my children fit into the system
b) Develop good relationship’s with the teachers so they can address my children’s special need
c) Try to contain the damage caused by the limitation of the system

What piece of advice would you give to the schools?

What piece of advice would you give to parents?

There seems to be three major paths of reaching out to our non-Observant co-religionists

a) Teach Torah
b) Give inspiring and fun Jewish experiences
c) Convince about the beauty, truth and utility of observance

Which was path(s) that brought you closer?

Which paths are effective for what types of people?

What Type of Shul Do You Prefer and Why?

a) Shtiebel
b) Beis Medrash
c) Membership driven with boards and elections
d) Very Large

A friend from Beyond BT once emailed us that she likes the three weeks, because the shiurim and the divrei Torah are focused on improving our relationships with other people (Bein Adam L’Chavero).

Some specific mitzvos on the Weekly Work Ons list during this period are:
– Reducing speaking Loshon Hora
– Being careful not to hurt people with our speech (Onas Devorim)
– Judging people favorable

In our Shul we read a selection from “Positive Word Power” from the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation after davening a few times each week.

What have you found helpful to work on in this period?

Are there any seforim that you recommend?

What techniques have you used to reduce speaking Loshon Hora?

What motivation techniques have you tried?

Dear Beyond BT

Just wondering if someone can give me advice –

i am 50 years old and started trying to be a BT over 30 years ago. i still cannot understand Hebrew very well (yes i know some elementary basics, but cannot really translate). I live in Jerusalem.

Any ideas what i can do to try and breakthrough?

Thanks so much
Yisroel

The conventional wisdom says that when you converse with a non-observant person, you should avoid indicating that you think it would benefit the person to become Torah Observant over time.

What if this wasn’t the conventional wisdom and you could discuss the benefits of Torah Observance to non-frum people, what would you say?

What do you plan to do this summer?

a) Relax
b) Vacation
c) Visit family
d) Rejuvenate
e) Read/learn more
f) Same as the rest of the year
g) Write a post for Beyond BT
h) Other

Two posts this week focused on different aspects of finding yourself within Judaism?

Has Torah helped you find yourself?

Has Torah helped you define your roles?

Do you think having the ability to choose your path within Judaism helped your self-definition process?

The Ramchal in his “Essay on Fundamentals” says that G-d did not desire to write the Torah so clearly that it would not need any explanation. Quite to the contrary, He wrote in it many undefined concepts, so no man could possibly know its true meaning without being given an explanation. This explanation must come from a tradition emanating from G-d Himself, Who is the Author of the Torah.

Ramchal mentions there are three ways in which the Written Torah is modified by the Oral Tradition
– Concepts which are mentioned in a general manner, but whose details are explained in the Oral Tradition
– Concepts which are fully explained in the Written Torah, but can be interpreted in different ways
– Where the words in the written Torah have one meaning, while the Oral Tradition explains it in a very different manner

When teaching beginners Torah, it is sometimes hard to convince them about the importance of the Oral Torah’s centrality in understanding the written Torah. They need to be taught that you can’t understand individual Posukim without an explanation.

What challenges did you need to overcome to accept the Oral Tradition as the ultimate source of explanation?

How would you help others come to that understanding?

Hi,

I would like to just post a simple question to pose to the BT blogosphere:

What is a young, single BT girl to do on a long Shabbos afternoon?

I live in a small, heimish Jewish community where most girls are either married, or single and living with family.

There is usually about one class held per week, but afterwards I’m left without anything to do. Shall I start a chavrusa?

I feel bad bothering families and hanging out until Shabbos is over, so I need something to do rather than being an uninvited guest in some peoples’ homes when they would rather be napping on Shabbos afternoon. I do like taking their kids to the park while the parents nap.

I cannot sit in my apartment all day and do nothing!

Your ideas, please.

Thanks,

Devorah K. =)

By Charnie

Many of you might recall that line from the song “Get Me to the Church on Time” from the show and movie “My Fair Lady”. Allow me to clarify what’s going on here. I’m not getting married, B”H I’ve been married for over 20 years. But two good friends of mine from way before I became frum have daughters whose weddings are on Shabbos. Finally, I had thought I’d be able to celebrate simchas with some of my pre-BT friends children marrying Jews, B”H, but Shabbos weddings seems to be the newest way that the secular community is disengaging themselves from Judaism.

This is about one of those couples, who are getting married at 11:30 on a Shabbos morning. We’ll call them “Jane and John”.

When I went to her engagement party, Jane asked me if “I’d help her with the Jewish part of her wedding”, which was a prospect that delighted me. One of the things she asked for was a book, and after much hesitation, I sent her what I consider to be the best book on what a Jewish marriage represents, “Made In Heaven” by Rabbi Areyeh Kaplan zt”l. Although it clearly speaks from the viewpoint of observance, ultimately I felt it got across the point of how significant a Jewish wedding is better than any other book I’d seen. I also included Herman Wouk’s “This is My G-d”, since I think that’s a nice, easy to read introduction to Judaism.

Jane’s background is basically to the left of Reform. But she did go on Birthright while in college, and after that had a Bat Mitzvah and made a firm decision to only date Jewish men. B”H, John is Jewish. They’d already selected a venue where they wanted their wedding to be, and I was able to track down a Rabbi who might be willing to marry them at that place. Since I’d been told originally they were going to get married in June, I went on that premise.

Now I’ve learned that, yes, they are getting married on a morning. At 11:30 on a Shabbos morning, right after Tisha B’av. Jane’s dad (who could care less about religion) tells me that it was the only date that the venue was available.

I’m trying to decide how, if at all, I should pursue things from here, since I did take helping her seriously. My gut feeling is leaning towards trying to communicate to her why someone who calls him or herself a “rabbi”, and yet performs a wedding on a Shabbos morning is probably a charlatan, and they therefore, may not have a “real” Jewish wedding. Perhaps, since they’ve already booked the place, they should go ahead and have a party, to be followed shortly thereafter by a small Jewish marriage ceremony?

She’s a school teacher, doing a masters degree, so she’s quite busy. Of course, as is the norm these days, they’re living together. They were supposed to join us for Purim Seudah, but never showed up. Jane tells me she’s too tired to do anything on the weekend (when I tried to invite her for a Shabbos) and the community they live in has virtually nothing to offer vis a vis Orthodox synagogues or outreach, so I can’t work that angle either.

Just last week I received an invitation for another couple, this time the wedding is a 7 PM on a Saturday night in June. It’s in Manhattan, and by the time I would get there, it would probably be over. It’s very sad because at my daughter’s wedding, the mom asked me to have this daughter in mind under the Chuppah, and called me up enthusiastically some months later to tell me “my blessing had worked”.

The good news is that both of these couples are “marrying in”. The bad news is that these pseudo rabbis will probably perform a ceremony that isn’t even remotely kosher.

I’d love some feedback from the Beyond BT community.

In the introduction to Doubleday edition of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s classic, “The Lonely Man of Faith”, Dr. David Shatz highlights man’s dual nature of conquering, creating, dominating and controlling the world on one hand and his thirst for redemption, self-discipline and submissiveness to G-d on the other.

Man’s task is to integrate this dual nature through Halakha (Torah), as Rabbi Soloveitchik says “the Halakha believes there is only one world, not divisible into secular and hallowed sectors”. Secular society strongly rejects the transcendental and religious society often withdraws from the secular, so the man of faith faces intense loneliness in his quest for integration.

As BTs we’ve lived in both worlds and perhaps because of this, we face additional challenges of integration and loneliness. As we try to establish our roots firmly in the spiritual world of faith, we both reject the world we left and face rejection by those we’ve left, even as we attempt to integrate these two worlds.

Do you think our experiences makes us more lonely?

If our experience has led to better integration, why have we failed to positively influence our fellow secular and religious Jews on this path?

What thoughts and actions can we use to make this process better for ourselves?

Integrating into the community is one of the bigger challenges for BTs in larger communities. Included in integration is conformity.

How would you differentiate between integrating and conforming?

In what ways have you conformed?

Do you feel that you are integrated?

How would you determine if a person has integrated into the community?

What are the objective measures of successful integration?

How Would You Describe Your Secular Knowledge Integration Strategy?

a) I discard or ignore most secular knowledge

b) I accept most secular knowledge and only discard that which blatantly contradicts Torah

c) I carefully sift secular knowledge to see if it is truly consistent with Torah

d) Other