Top Ten Things Not to Say to a Kofer

ora_43

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 3:11 am

marina wrote:

Ora, thank you for your thoughtful post. I agree those comments are obnoxious.

Part of my post's point was not to merely write up the unkind statements people make, but to explain why a frum person's well-meaning comment may be taken poorly. Your best example of that is your fifth one, it was pretty good and true to life. I probably come across that way all the time, lol.

OK, so while I was trying to sleep I thought of 3 more that I think are more in line with what you were saying.

6. "I just don't have an emotional need to believe."

Similar to 5 - puts me in the position of the one who's too scared to face the truth.

The reality, for me, is that belief brings both emotional comforts and emotional challenges, as did/would believing something else (whether that be another religion, or no religion).

7. "Oh, so you think that... "

(Generally not said out of either concern or condescension, just stated as fact)

When you were frum, you thought that the world was 5,000-something years old, that evolution was just a silly theory, and that G-d was basically the big vending machine in the sky (insert prayers, receive blessings).

I am currently frum. That doesn't mean that I believe any of those things.

8. "OK, but you're not, like, super-frum frum."

I haven't heard this often, but it always stands out. The person saying it means it as a compliment - oh, but you're not like those frummies, the ones who wear thick tights and don't talk to men and would never admit to having read something by Jane Austen, let alone watched the latest superhero movie. You're an education-having, tax-paying frummie. And so articulate!

What it comes across as, is someone who happily eats trief on Yom Kippur saying that you're not really frum. That part is funny - what can be annoying is the clear implication that "frum" means all kinds of bad things (frum = frumpy, frum = uneducated, etc.)

Which makes me think of a ninth:

9. "OK, but it's different for you - you weren't raised with it."

Said to BTs/geirim.

Yes, it is different for me. And unless you were a BT/ger yourself, your experience choosing not to be frum isn't going to be like your children's experience being raised that way. Or for that matter, like my experience. But that doesn't make your experience living in that community less valid - and ditto for me.

Isramom8

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 5:24 am

Having been involved with a varied community during the past 15 years with my DH as the director of a community kollel and living in a mixed city, we've seen it all. People become more attached to frumkeit, people become less attached to frumkeit. Sometimes people leave the derech and sometimes people get onto the derech.

Often it's the same people.

People are people. They experience the process of life. We have to meet people where they are. Not only because a positive relationship is the only chance of influence we have, but also because as humans, and Jews, humans deserve respect for their human struggles.

I have a friend who announced one day that she wasn't frum anymore. When I continued to speak to her normally, she reiterated awkwardly that she had said that she wasn't frum anymore. Didn't I hear? Didn't I want to abandon her? That's what she actually expected.

Well, we don't do that deliberately. Sure, people can drift away when their interests are no longer shared ones.

Someone said sympathetically to one of our adult kids, "It must be hard to stop talking to a friend who went off the derech." Our child smiled and said, "I don't!"

mimivan

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 6:35 am

So sad, marina (the OP) that some of these things were said to me when I left my husband even though I was still observant. I was told that leaving any Jewish marriage automatically made me a kofer and it was prophesied that I would soon give up lighting Shabbos candles. It's on sukkos that I remember, a recent single mother, when I was a guest in someone's sukka and he decided to give the dvar Torah "A woman who leaves her husband leaves G-d. She will eventually abandon yiddishkeit entirely." it has been difficult for me to accept invitations for Sukkos since then, because he made it relevant for Sukkos, "Men never leave their sukkah all though the chag, even though it is a temporary dwelling. A woman who leaves the permanent dwelling of a marriage is a heretic...she pretends it is a temporary dwelling."

Well, as my Rebbe said, positive prophecies are promises that have to be fulfilled. Negative prophecies dont' need to come to fruition. Wink

amother

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 8:29 am

ora_43 wrote:

bamamama wrote:

I think what she's saying is that expressing your sadness to an OTD person (about their being OTD) is condescending. I'm sorry but I have to agree even though I know you're coming from a place of love. To an OTD person, a life without Torah and mitzvot is just fine. The best thing you can say is to let them know that your friendship is not dependent upon the person's religious beliefs. Unless, of course, it is.

To me that's setting the bar for "condescending" too low. Just about everybody has some belief or cause they'd like to see more people getting involved with, and would hate to see people leave. Vegan animal rights activists would be hurt if a fellow activist decides he doesn't care about animals after all and starts eating hamburgers. If I were living in America, and decided to vote Republican, I would have to never, ever mention that fact around certain relatives. Etc.

Judaism isn't (just) a set of personal beliefs, it's a cause. Yeah, I'm sorry that certain friends of mine decided not to be part of this cause anymore. And they think I should have fewer kids, stop eating animal flesh, etc.

As long as it all stays (almost entirely) unspoken, I think that's OK. (From what I understood, fromthedepths wasn't talking about openly saying she's unhappy about her friends' choices, she was just admitting that the unhappiness is there.)

Condescending is when people cross over to insinuating that you made your choice due to either lack of intellect or emotional damage.

I am the OTD poster with the really long post on page 3, and I 100% agree with Ora.

I see nothing wrong with someone thinking that her choice is better than someone else's choice. Pretty much everyone has some subject that they have strong opinions about, and regarding that subject do not view all other opinions as equal.

Being condescending is belittling someone else's choices.

Butterfly

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 8:31 am

mimivan wrote:

Mimivan, your post made me cringe!! This guy who gave you this horrible lecture was utterly rude!!
Those comments he suggested are totally false and are not documented anywhere AFAIK.
He made it all up and sadly you took it seriously and personally.

The Torah allows divorce! (through beit din, of course)
In fact it is one of the mitzvohs of the Torah.
Since when does a mitzvoh of the Torah lead to kofros?!

It is documented though that the shchina cries during the occurrence of a divorce (at beit din /Jewish court) because Hashem has tzar (sympathetic). After all, it is a painful time for everyone involved at the time, unfortunately!

That has nothing to do with kofros, and the mitzvah still stands!!

amother

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 8:39 am

Same Amother from page three again.

To the person who reported me,

I would like to say that it is okay with me if my account is deleted at this point. I understand.

However, just so everyone can sleep at night, I will reiterate that I almost never log on. When I do, it is typically to look for something that I cannot find easily elsewhere. For example, I once searched the birth control forums to find out the effects of a certain BC option on niddah, since that is information I needed and couldn't get elsewhere. I am now applying to PhD programs all over the country so it would be nice to search for the experiences of people living in different cities so I can find schools for my kids that would be tolerant enough to accept a family as weird as mine.

I will emphasize that I have never shared private information posted by anyone here anywhere else. I have never posted anything on Facebook or elsewhere mocking this site, and have pretty consistently defended it when others have mocked it. Despite what you may have heard about us OTD kofrim, I actually have morals and principles and respect others' right to privacy.

PinkFridge

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 9:02 am

First I want to say that Marina's post was totally devarim hayotzim min halev. IMO.

Second, I think some people (not necessarily posters, just those one runs into) blur the lines between some OTD people, especially kids, and adults. So many kids go OTD because of lack of success in school with endorsement coming from other circles, hypocrisy they've seen or experienced, and the like. This is why some OTD kids don't just drop out of Yiddishkeit but society. But OTD adults, and I'm sure some who go OTD as kids, are coming from a different place. They're leading upright and productive lives - some might even be lawyers! - and may have a degree of inner peace the dropouts are desperate for.

Again, hope no one feels patronized, but I don't think it's out of line to say I think of you all, us all, when I say Sim Shalom, that we should all have inner peace.

mimivan

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 9:03 am

Butterfly wrote:

mimivan wrote:

thank you for your sympathy. I invite you to come to the Jerusalem rabbinical courts....they spew the same mentality. why try to hypnotize divorced women to go off the derech? You'd think they'd try to strengthen and heal, but sadly not.

PinkFridge

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 9:06 am

5*Mom wrote:

amother wrote:

Same Amother from page three again.

To the person who reported me,

I would like to say that it is okay with me if my account is deleted at this point. I understand. ...

amother, I am sorry your post was reported. I think you provided an invaluable dimension to this discussion and I would certainly not like to see your account deleted; it would be our loss. Another unfortunate case of imamother tunnel vision.

I agree. This is Yael's party and we're only invited. If she chooses to grandmother some people in I'm fully behind it.

the world's best mom

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 9:45 am

I may get bashed big time for this, but here's my opinion:

If I firmly believe that there is amazing reward awaiting us in the next world, and I see people giving it up because they don't believe that it exists, I have to be sad for them. They may be making their place in this temporary world more pleasant for themselves, but it is coming at the expense of their life in Olam HaEmes. And I know, you guys will tell me you don't believe there is an Olam HaBah, or you don't believe you will be rewarded there for the Mitzvos you did here. But to me it's like a blind man walking right towards a cliff because he can't see it so he doesn't believe it's there.

That said, I have never said any of the comments posted to anyone who was off the Derech, nor did I plan to.

princessleah

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 9:58 am

I don't get something.
It seems that there is an underlying message here implying that 'intellectual' reasons are valid for going OTD, while 'emotional' ones are not.
While I understand the argument of 'don't judge the religion by its practitioners', I'm not full on board. There was someone in my HS who said his grandparents were not observant because one time a frum Jew was rude to them. That is obviously extreme, and somewhat silly (although in retrospect I doubt that was the whole story).

But what if someone DOES go fully OTD because of emotional reasons? What if the person was abused, and found no support in the community, and decided-- this life is not for me? What if a person just gets fed up with hypocrisy-- is it incumbent upon them to go find people who aren't hypocrites? What if they just don't feel a connection to God and decide it's not worth all the sacrifice?

What is implicit in this thread is that we are still judging the people who go OTD, and weighing whether their reasons are 'legit' or not. Who are we to say? Why is one form considered more OK than another?

BlueRose52

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 10:43 am

princessleah wrote:

The reason for the distinction is because one category of motivations is a subjective one, while the other is (ostensibly) objective, and people give more credence to objective factors than subjective ones.

When someone leaves due to emotional factors or their own negative personal experiences, that doesn't in any way speak to the truth of yiddishkeit and has no bearing on other people who might have different experiences. It's purely a subjective experience. However, when people claim that they have reached conclusions that the Torah is false, it's a statement of objective fact, and is a direct challenge to all Jews who might subscribe to this belief.

I happen to think that for one's own personal choices, emotional factors are just as legitimate a reason to leave as intellectual ones. But one's own personal experiences should not be a basis for invalidating the choices of those who are frum. Meaning, it makes perfect sense to me for a person to say, "I can't stand it here, so I'm leaving." But it doesn't make sense to say, "I can't stand it here, so your way of life is false."

This idea of legitimacy plays out in the two camps quite differently. For frum people, they prefer to view those who leave as doing so for emotional reasons because it's less of a challenge to their own worldview (see my earlier post). But for OTD people, they prefer to see people leaving due to intellectual factors, since it is more validating to them if the whole frum enterprise is shown to be false.

amother

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 11:07 am

the world's best mom wrote:

Amother from page 3 again

What you are saying makes perfect sense to me. If you believe that Torah is true, you will certainly feel that someone who doesn't have it is lacking.

I actually find it somewhat interesting, however, that you chose to focus on olam haba specifically. When I was frum, gaining or losing schar in olam haba never factored into my decision to do mitzvos or not do aveiros. While I believed in olam haba, of course, I rarely thought about it at all. My focus was simply on serving Hashem, who I believed was the ultimate source of everything, to the best of my abilities. I felt that the ability to do actions that actively made the world better somehow, which every mitzvah is supposed to do, was a very important responsibility. I will admit that it was an incredibly powerful feeling to feel that every action that I made, from the most mundane to the most significant, actually mattered. That also motivated me to often go beyond the letter of the law--I didn't view the chumros that I kept as burdens, but rather as opportunities to do more good things. And yes, if someone had asked me then, I would have felt that someone who wasn't frum was missing out on that.

However, keep in mind that now that I am no longer frum, I often feel the same way about people who miss out on things in this world on the basis of something that I don't believe actually exists.

The issue here is that of respecting the decisions that other people make. You are making your decision based on your beliefs, and I am making my decisions based on mine. You can feel that I am missing out on something, and I can feel that you are missing out on something. Just respect that I take my beliefs about the world as seriously as I take yours, so pretending to be frum "just in case" simply isn't an option for me.

amother

Wed, Sep 18 2013, 11:19 am

amother wrote:

the world's best mom wrote:

Sorry, that last line should have been "as seriously as you take yours"