Reply To: Why people become OTD (with the focus on the "why")

Lilmod, where did you get the idea that until recently OTD, only happened to some extent. During those times when the larger society imposed fewer religious restrictions, timbers was a greater tendency for Jews to go OTD. During the second Beis Hamikdosh, many Jews became Hellenists. In the early 1800’s the granting by Napoleon of citizenship to Jews was followed by the news leaving the yeshivas. Eastern European jews stayed on the derech because the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs gave them no choice. However, with he unrest in the late 1800s more and more young Jews went OTD and it accelerated after WW1. And I’m not even talking about the tens of thousands of immigration the US who went OTD ( Joseph, how many of them came back? )