soliek

no actually you know what? i was my hands of all this israeli rubbish. let them drown in their pashkvelim i dont care anymore.

Amen v’chen l’mar

“peacefully protest”

peaceful protest doesnt include swearing and shouting insults which is completely out of line with halacha especially since any objective observer would attest to the fact that what theyre protesting is the lack of adherence to a chumrah, not halacha

🙂

im just telling you what i see here, and what i see here (and many other places too btw) are people with preconceptions.

yitayningwut: we’re talking at each other. my post is mitzad the people talking, not the people listening. to someone listening, they should file it away as a possibility they might encounter and nothing more. so the discussion i suppose can be productive in that regard. however, for the people spouting this rubbish, they should be aware that they are hurting their chances of helping people by having such preconceptions.

unless your problem is the following: if people stop having preconceptions how will there ever be discussion. which is of course a ridiculous way of thinking. there is always something to discuss. i can sit here and discuss different cases ive seen, but i would never state that the cause of OTD is one reason or another. and yet i talk plenty about OTD…wonder of wonders, isnt it?

“My point is that it’s worth everyone spouting their boich svaros because while it might not help much in the quest of bringing people back, it does have an impact on the way people think, and causes them to think more about their behavior in the future, thus avoiding the issue to begin with.”

for people who take the time to actually consider what is being said, absolutely. when i see things people post, stories of how and why people go of the derech, i file it away for future reference so in the event that i ever happen across someone who is off the derech or messed for that reason i will be properly equipped to handle it.

the main thing i was addressing were threads like that other OTD thread in the CR where the OP sounds like that IS the definitive reason why kids go off the derech (please leave that discussion for that thread). but its not just that user, we get so many threads here about problems in the community and abuse and learning disability etc etc etc being THE reason why kids are going off the derech…i dont think the people writing those threads take the time to consider any other possibilities.

if you were talking to them in real life you would probably point that out to them and they would say “of course i know that its not the reason” but then continue vehemently telling you exactly why their reason is the reason.

so what i said in my OP is pashut, or should be, and people know it, but they dont remember it when they need to. im lightyears from the holy ramchal, but its kind of like what he says in his akdama about being something that people know but havent internalized. the idea that it is not important to pin down THE reason, rather be ready for ANY reason is a very important idea and one that we all should be constantly aware of because thats how you help people. not by trying to shoehorn them into your idea of what they must be, but by being able to adapt to their situation and accommodate their needs.

im not saying that one cant voice his opinion, but to get hung up on one exclusive of any other reasons IS counterproductive

“I read the OP’s title and started laughing. Only Soliek would ask “does it really matter?”. ..LOL!”

perhaps it was a poor choice of words lol but it had the desired effect 😛

well i was going at it more from the kiruv rechokim POV rather than the kiruv krovim POV

midwesterner…you clearly have never read anything i’ve written (other than my posts here on the forum)

lol that too aussie 😛

basically what i did yesterday was a few writing exercises. i wrote four words, skateboard, meter, melon, pen (or whatever) on a piece of paper and asked the guy to tell me what it meant. so he spun some tale about those four objects and i told him “well, you couldnt do much with those four nouns on their own, but once you added verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, and punctuation, it made perfect sense and told an interesting story”

so then i did another related word exercise where you take five objects in the room, write them down on paper, and write three sentences which include all five objects. so he did that, and then i did it, and the point was to show him how a random assortment of words with nor order, rhyme, or reason is worthless, but when structured–when you understand the rules and structure to writing and how sentences are constructed–you are given infinite possibilities. the freedom perceived when disregarding grammar is actually limiting because there is very little you can express without understanding language, structure, and grammar, but once you “confine” yourself within specific grammatical boundaries, there is no end to what you can say.

and then i kind of drew the parallel to the real world, that a life without structure, without guidelines, may seem free when in actuality it is severely limiting because you don’t know and cannot know what to do with yourself. but add some structure, add some guidelines, and there is no telling what you can accomplish in life.

the next exercise was reading Jabberwocky by Lewis Carrol. the idea being that Jabberwocky is meaningless, but because of its structure, the meaning is implied by the context. thus it is the structure which gives it meaning, not simply the juxtaposition of random words. and then i had him swap all the meaningless words in Jabberwocky with actual words and had him read it again, and then we did that again, and the point came across that by understanding structure you can express absolutely anything.

then, just for fun and because it follows a similar idea, we did some mad libs 😀

it was all mamash siyata d’shmaya because i had no idea what i was doing and i had been planning to do GED prep, but we got sidetracked and i had to wing it 😛 baruch hashem it worked out very well 😀

“Soliek i wouldn’t know i didn’t read your entire post i just read the title and reacted to that.”

really?!

i get the feeling that adams didnt read my post either…

and aries, there are far fewer reasons why a person might break a leg than why they might go off the derech

“Electricity (You cant read Prizus without electricity)”

thats not true