There It Is Again- The Ba'alei Teshuvah Mythos At Work

I was just reading yet another Jewish blog from somewhere in the Orthodox world, talking about kiruv (the act of bringing secular [or variants thereof] Jews closer to Orthodoxy). His argument is that few BTs (ba'alei Teshuvah- "masters of return", aka the used-to-be-secular folks) get into observance for intellectual reasons, but more for emotional reasons. So far, this seems ok to me: spirituality seems to be the key, and that rarely is purely emotional or intellectual- I'm surprised that that wasn't a factor that said blogger considered at all, honestly. But what got me was that the reason that orthodox/observant Judaism apparently appeasl to BTs is that most of them come from broken homes, or other emotionally lacking backgrounds. (Amusingly, this seems to be the favorite reason given for Orthodox kids dropping the observant lifestyle too.) This seems to be a pretty low evaluation of people who change their religious outlook- that something's wrong with their life, and a change in religious behavior/outlook is just the easiest way to get out of dealing with that situation/compensating for it. (This seems to come with the accompaniment that they can't/won't actually deal with the issue itself.) It seems like a wild over-simplification, and unfair and exclusionary, not to mention rather insulting.

The situation as these people lay it out ignores people like me completely (even ignoring the fact that they seem to have no space for the halakhically observant egalitarian/liberal community in their image of the Jewish community spectrum). I have a perfectly happy family life, and have simply been interested in Judaism in whatever forms I could get it since I was a pipsqueak. Sometimes people just have a sense of self, after all.

There It Is Again- The Ba'alei Teshuvah Mythos At Work

I was just reading yet another Jewish blog from somewhere in the Orthodox world, talking about kiruv (the act of bringing secular [or variants thereof] Jews closer to Orthodoxy). His argument is that few BTs (ba'alei Teshuvah- "masters of return", aka the used-to-be-secular folks) get into observance for intellectual reasons, but more for emotional reasons. So far, this seems ok to me: spirituality seems to be the key, and that rarely is purely emotional or intellectual- I'm surprised that that wasn't a factor that said blogger considered at all, honestly. But what got me was that the reason that orthodox/observant Judaism apparently appeasl to BTs is that most of them come from broken homes, or other emotionally lacking backgrounds. (Amusingly, this seems to be the favorite reason given for Orthodox kids dropping the observant lifestyle too.) This seems to be a pretty low evaluation of people who change their religious outlook- that something's wrong with their life, and a change in religious behavior/outlook is just the easiest way to get out of dealing with that situation/compensating for it. (This seems to come with the accompaniment that they can't/won't actually deal with the issue itself.) It seems like a wild over-simplification, and unfair and exclusionary, not to mention rather insulting.

The situation as these people lay it out ignores people like me completely (even ignoring the fact that they seem to have no space for the halakhically observant egalitarian/liberal community in their image of the Jewish community spectrum). I have a perfectly happy family life, and have simply been interested in Judaism in whatever forms I could get it since I was a pipsqueak. Sometimes people just have a sense of self, after all.