Would love to host kiruv guests

amother

Daisy

Sun, Mar 17 2024, 12:28 am

A few tips:

Do not discuss tzniut or homozxuality when doing kiruv. These are too offensive to people who grew up with secular education.

In general, start with positive mitzas and not negative ones. Even though in Judaism it is more important to not transgress negative ones than to do positive ones, most secular people won't see any offense in the positive mitzvahs but are likely to take offense at the negative ones. Hopefully taking on the positive mitzvahs will prepare their neshama that they can later keep the negative ones.

Especially if we are taking about very young people, have a poker face for when they express their secular views, no matter how appalling they are, do not show that you are appalled, disgusted or angry, because they will feel you are disgusted at them not their views, and this will turn them away.

*You may have to choose your type of guests, or rotate the type. If Jeremy is a politically conservative, Reform Jew who wants to serve in the IDF, it may not be good to have him at the same table as Eric who is politically liberal and has been brainwashed to believe that the IDF are bad guys. If inviting all types creates a big discord and isn't fun for anybody, you can choose to focus more on Jeremy's type or more on Eric's type, or to have certain days for one and other days for the other. ** Not always political, you could have a quiet, serious girl who is bothered by loud immature and inappropriate boys, etc.

amother

Celeste

Sun, Mar 17 2024, 12:56 am

My advice is just to be realistic as to if this is something for your family to take on.

As someone who has hosted some non shomer shabbos guests (not for kiruv purposes specifically and not in Lakewood, either) one girl that I am a bit friendly with, told me about her experience with being hosted in Lakewood during one of those Rutgers kiruv shabbatons. Not that her hosts were rude or anything, they went out of their way to be nice, but they just weren't relatable and didn't know how to relate to the college girls they were hosting, and it was a very uncomfortable experience for them. I don't think the hosts realized, but the girls just came away with a feeling of discomfort about Orthodox Jews. They wanted to be respectful and neither of them used their phones the entire shabbos but they assumed they couldn't use toilet paper and weren't sure if they could flush the toilet and were too embarrassed to ask, among other things. They spent the whole shabbos counting thr minutes. I don't think the hosts meant to be intimidating or unapproachable, they just seemed so "ultra" Orthodox and didn't really know how to talk to these non frum girls, so they were uncomfortable the whole time.

Since then, however, this girl has come across more Orthodox Jews and has attended a lot of kiruv events here in our oot community and she now probably wouldn't be fazed by a shabbos in Lakewood even though she's not (yet?) frum. For a first experience, it was just too intense for her.

(Actually what I found most interesting about her story was her description of the Saturday night melave malka. You know how the Hamodia or maybe it's the Yated, often has pictures from "Rutgers X" kiruv shabbaton Melava malkas or activities and you assume it's just college guys there because that's all you see in the photos? She said no, the girls are there, too! They just asked the girls to step out of the photo frame while they are taking the photos that will be published in the frum magazines. I think that was a bit of a turn off, to her, too....)