Within the past few weeks, I wrote two long articles on my Nefesh blog on the Footsteps topic. I will summarize one part here.
Footsteps is an organization ostensibly geared to helping a growing number of young adults who are disenchanted with their current lifestyle and place in Judaism. This is most likely related to emotional pain, mental illness, backgrounds of trauma, LGBT related struggles, as well as theological questions. Footsteps seeks to work with this community by assisting them in various ways including educational, financial, and providing social support.
I would like to focus on the psychological harm that the Footsteps membership may be exposed to (presumably encouraged by the staff and the broader Footsteps culture. Is the break-off-ties approach practiced, advocated, or subtly encouraged by Footsteps psychologically healthy? Understandably, this is sometimes necessary as a last resort. However, this is commonplace within Footsteps culture. Breaking off the shackles of G-d as well as families and communities of origin are too often a major part of achieving the path of self-determination advocated for the Footsteps culture. Does this indeed bring happiness and fulfillment or perhaps it creates even greater hardship and emotional pain than before?
To shed light on this question, I wish to quote directly from the writings of Footsteps participants, primarily from two board members Shulem Deen and Leah Vincent. I have read both of their books as well as several other books of this genre written by Footsteps members. First, some background information to their stories based on my own brief summaries of their specific trajectories from frum to Footsteps life.
Deen was raised in a moderate Chassidic home in Boro Park. After his father’s premature death and experiencing loneliness and isolation, he chanced upon the Tish of the Skverer Rebbe and was enamored by the vibrancy and belongingness he experienced. He soon became a full-fledged Skverer chossid and adopted its fervent (and extreme) approach in thought and practice. Following his marriage and increasing exposure to more open-minded thinking, he began experiencing gradual rejection from the community. At one point, he bolted to the other extreme and left observant Judaism totally, estranging himself from his children in the process.
Vincent grew up as one of 11 children of an out-of-town yeshivish prominent family whose father was a respected Rabbi. During her adolescence, she was drawn to the broader world around her including the opposite sex as well as a different and appealing value system. While her family may differ with her narrative, she experienced rejection from her father and family. She found herself in deep pain and alone. She abandoned Orthodoxy and embarked on an emotional and moral free fall, culminating in self-mutilation and prostitution. She eventually went on to receive a secular education in Brooklyn College and Harvard University, married, and began raising a family.
It is not for me to condone or judge their behavior (I’ll leave that to G-d), but I do find some of their writings to be intellectually honest and real. Hence, I would like to quote from some of their writings to address the possible psychological implications of the cutting-off-ties approach. I will begin with quotes from an article by Deen:
“We must acknowledge that the journey away from ultra-Orthodoxy is so fraught that some simply don’t make it. There can no longer be any doubt: Members of our ex-haredi community are at an elevated risk for suicide.
I have known many ex-Haredim who over the years, as they tried to build their lives, felt in their isolation the ground beneath them shaking, felt the vertigo inherent in the transition from a restriction-filled life to one of self-determination”.
“It is also in this sense that ex-haredi Jews are homeless. We have chosen exile – temporarily, we hope, until we build our own foundations, our own supports, our own homes. But not all of us manage. I think of the list of names, of friends and acquaintances now gone, with the latest one freshly tacked on: Alex Deutch. Ruchy Nove. Deb Tambor. Joey Diangelo. Jacob Ausch. Faigy Mayer. Gone by their own hands. Gone, too, are their demons, and their dreams. How many others are in the shadows, with needs that aren’t being met”?
Sadly, he concludes by advocating even stronger for a Footsteps based approach, ignoring the fact that one can never fully compensate for one’s family, community, and G-d of origin. Compromise, reconciliation, and conflict resolution is what he should be arguing for. And, yes, even finding religious practice may be a part of this as he himself acknowledges in another article.
Sociologists confirm that feeling alienated from society is not merely discomfiting, but a condition of crisis. Emile Durkheim, the pioneering French sociologist, wrote of anomie, a condition in which individuals feel alienated from the norms and values of the surrounding population, the feeling of rootlessness leading to depression and even suicide. Durkheim argued that this is even more common in modernity, with its swing toward secularism and away from the religious structures that contributed to cohesive societies in the past. Evolutionary psychologists can likely point to how this helped our ancestors survive. To me, there is the simple, observable fact that humans long for community, and one of the most apparent sources of community is in shared religious belief and practice”.
Moving on to thoughts from Leah Vincent, I freely quote from parts of her article relevant to my point.
“According to Footsteps, an organization providing support to those leaving insular Jewish communities, as many as 80% of its members have contemplated suicide. Speaking for myself, I can say that I am a confident and happy woman. I am delighted with my supportive community, I adore the family I have made, and I relish my meaningful work and pleasures. Despite all of that, I still have moments when it seems like every cell in my body is vibrating with hurt, aching for a rest with no awakening. In these moments, to choose to continue to live another day seems a Herculean task. For all I have learned and gained in the 15 years since I took my first steps out of ultra-Orthodoxy, I still, shockingly often, ache for death”.
“Some ultra-Orthodox may say that this pain is my tormented soul calling me back to God. I don’t disagree. But the calls are a noxious tick tock, and the thing they label “soul” in me is a dirty bomb, begging for my destruction”.
“Some will point to my confession of struggle as proof that we are broken people. And I will respond: You are right; we are often broken. The terror we have ingested, frequently reinforced and nurtured by the threats and punishments of former family and friends, destroys us from within”.
“I do not know if those of us who struggle after leaving can ever escape the dichotomous choice of falling prey to doom or racing after success with destruction panting at our heels. I do not know if the whole dynamic can be rejected for a peaceful life that turns away from this insistence that the heretic cannot thrive in peace. I only know that I am afraid for my friends, and I have been afraid for myself, and that my defense against my fear is to speak out and name the fear”.
In addition to Vincent’s emotionally jarring and well-written article quoted above, the comments following it are equally revealing and I quote some:
S Barton:
The OTD community has to look itself in the mirror to see if they aren’t plagued with some of the severe accusations the Orthodox community is blamed for, by them.
Speaking to some of the ex OJ’s who told me that whenever they chose some sort of return to religiousness, as observing a bit of Shabbat, adhering to some laws they were brought up with, and so on, they were subjected to humiliation, shame, vitriol and some bullying of “hey you’re caving in to pressure” or look he/she is becoming a BT. What bothered me tho most is that instead of practicing freedom which includes freedom of religion as well, they are breathing down the necks of those that dare leave them.
boruch:
Wow Leah. What a searingly honest piece.
This is the very first article written by a member of the otd community, that isn’t afraid to look the devil in the eye, and say it as it is. No otd’er has ever had the courage to admit honestly about the unbeleavable hardships they face constantly, let alone be willing to share it on a public venue. The legitimate fear of scorn and ridicule when admitting such, is just too heavy a load to bear for the otherwise fragile and tormented soul. Yet without honestly facing all our skeletons, the community is doomed. To me, your article heralds a new era for the community.
Eitan:
There is what to be said about the community shutting its doors on those that leave, but maybe if those that leave take an impartial step back and look at why their are so unhappy, it is not necessarily the “ridiculous” prophecies of the leaders and parents in the orthodox community that cause it. Maybe, just maybe, the feeling felt by those who left the community is not pain b/c of ridicule, but because the prophecy was true. And not because the parents forced it that way, but b/c it is. Those that leave a life of meaning, of moral values, and a mesorah passed on through 2,000 years of Torah study, for a life of futility and fleeting pleasure, yes they will find despair and contemplate suicide. Look at the life of many non-Jews, it includes unrestricted immoralities such as parties, drinking and drugs, and affairs, crime, and divorce. Now look at the average Orthodox Jewish household and tell me it’s the same….and now you wonder why you are less happy and contemplating suicide after you left the faith.
Chaim Neuhoff, PhD