wow: Every time I read your posts I feel like I should tell you that you are a really good mother and he knows it too. Keep strong! He doesn’t seem like a bad kid. He will straighten out!
aries: Everything you have to say is brilliant but especially with the above…
hocked: I’ve always been thinker, always overanalyzing into everything, usually outsmarting my teachers. What turned me off to Judaism was pretty much as aries said. (I come from a really yeshivish background and was not shomer mitzvot for a couple years as a teenager) NOT to say anything bad about the yeshivish community as they definitely do a lot of good and there is definitely a lot of truth in it, but where I came from everyone seemed to out frum each other. There were definite situations that would turn me off when I saw a clear disregard of the halacha because the person was so midakdek in their mishugas chumra. They were so afraid of anyone breaking halacha that they would pile chumras everywhere to protect the halacha til they forgot what halacha they were trying to protect. They say the MO pick and choose halacha, but I saw them (still do see them) picking and choosing also, but the halachot the MO keep look more secular and the halachot the yeshivish community appear more yeshivish. Neither have God especially at the forefront. They also taught with so many mefurshim they forgot the pshat and everything could be challenged and disproved.
There’s a lot more to it but suffice it to say that I left the system with obscene anger for having been duped my whole life to believe all the hypocrisy. I hated everything Jewish until I went to Israel and for whatever reason I decided to try to have people teach me Torah from its source. I recognized the Torah for what it is, brilliant and perfect. There is nothing that makes me happier than when I know I am fulfilling the Torah properly. There is no freedom in the world greater than being a proper Torah Jew. Instead, the system is so afraid of losing people that they make the Torah lose its appeal; they make Torah not livable. I feel such a thrill when I daven, it’s better than any drug, I promise. If you had actually been taught Torah for what it is, you would actually know (not just ‘believe’) that Torah is absolute truth. Torah is perfect! Torah doesn’t need any of our human enhancements. Torah is inherently awesome the way it is.