“bechira2”
I think you said very well. Living in Lakewood for over 15 years I can say two things A. this place has changed drastically- for the worse, in my opinion. B. There are tremendous pressures of “society” in Lakewood, likely worse than in NY, where I grew up like most of today’s Lakewood residents. There is absolutely no middle ground, some commenters have written that it has changed. Yes, it changed that there are all types of people. However, if someone so much as puts on a colored shirt, it’s practically worse than the gimmel aveiros! The narrow-mindedness is insane. Many kids can’t handle the pressures and buckle. Although I personally feel there is a higher rate of OTD teens here I don’t know that I’m necessarily right. As others have said, no one has posted real figures. I do think that teens “go off” worse here though and quicker. A boy in BP may retain some sort of chassidishe dress and still go to the worst places whereas in Lakewood, from what I’ve seen, they drop the frum look almost immediately- in 8th-9th grade and it is truly hard to tell them apart from a Goy unfortunately. One thing is almost universally accepted- out of town communities raise children who are PROUD to be frum- even if they may not learn for 20 years after their chasuna. When living OOT, kids learn that frumkeit is not a “given”, that there are others who do not keep the Torah, as a result, they don’t just daven 3 times a day because that’s what I was “taught to do” but because they WANT to daven! Same goes for everything else in yiddishkeit. Some NY’ers etc may not like what I’m writing but go look in any MAINSTREAM (I don’t mean the little hick town somewhere out in Montana….) OOT community, kids come out stronger because of exposure to diversity, instead of weaker. That is one reason I am getting out of Lakewood and moving to one of those “crazy” oot places.