You learn from mentors about how to live what and how to learn and how to raise a family and what a Shabbos and Yom Tov table looks like When you see non compliance with Halacha ( and many BTs have seen it) you have to just do what you know Halacha requires and not pass judgment regardless of what Halacha has requires from all of us as individuals and as a community
This is a breath of fresh air. Having grown up orthodox (yeshiva-world), I find that it is always the baalei teshuva such as yourself who have such clear and honest views on our community. The frum world findsit quite hard to critique itself (as you will probably see in the comments). There is an entire rabbit hole to go down of if Halacha as we know it today is even binding or was ever meant to be binding, speak to one of your rabbis about it.
I suppose whatever path we choose, it's all a great experiment in finding and making meaning of things that are inherently chaotic and without any particular meaning. If we had cabbages between our ears it wouldn't seem so complicated.
Sometimes it works in reverse. We can take something heavily laden with meaning and reverse engineer it back to to its primitive and meaningless elements...and find peace there. A lump of clay can hold more promise than a gilded porcelain vase.
A religious community makes sense because it gets everyone on the same page, sort of. But people with vivid imaginations will always wander off the path because imagination doesn't want to be confined. The orthodox life appeals to my mind, but the "free and easy wandering" of the old Daoists appeals to my imagination. It says something about our modern world that we can cherry pick our way through an unlimited number of paths to a meaningful life.
The wine thing you talked about must be a minhag, or what we call a custom. Probably something Chassidic. Different communities have diverse customs usually related to geography, for example, many Sfardim eat rice on Pesach, while Ashkenazim don’t.
But bentching after eating bread!? That is straight from the Torah. “V’ochalta v’savata”. That’s what we cal D’Oraita , not a Rabbinic commandment. So people who don’t bentch!? I really do not think these people should be your mentors. And btw, we don’t learn Halacha from children. All of the Orthodox people that I know try very hard to bentch, unless they forget every now and then. And if they for some reason don’t bentch, they wouldn’t say to you, “Do as I do.” They would be embarrassed if you called them on it.
So yes, as a Baal Tshuva for 38 years, and as a mother and grandmother of many Orthodox (and not so Orthodox) children and grandchildren, I can say that one can always grow and take on more mitzvos, but please don’t glorify or take as an example those who are not doing the basics as a Torah Jew.
You learn from mentors about how to live what and how to learn and how to raise a family and what a Shabbos and Yom Tov table looks like When you see non compliance with Halacha ( and many BTs have seen it) you have to just do what you know Halacha requires and not pass judgment regardless of what Halacha has requires from all of us as individuals and as a community
What you might have benefited from was a community with like minded role models who could serve as mentors
This is a breath of fresh air. Having grown up orthodox (yeshiva-world), I find that it is always the baalei teshuva such as yourself who have such clear and honest views on our community. The frum world findsit quite hard to critique itself (as you will probably see in the comments). There is an entire rabbit hole to go down of if Halacha as we know it today is even binding or was ever meant to be binding, speak to one of your rabbis about it.
I suppose whatever path we choose, it's all a great experiment in finding and making meaning of things that are inherently chaotic and without any particular meaning. If we had cabbages between our ears it wouldn't seem so complicated.
Sometimes it works in reverse. We can take something heavily laden with meaning and reverse engineer it back to to its primitive and meaningless elements...and find peace there. A lump of clay can hold more promise than a gilded porcelain vase.
A religious community makes sense because it gets everyone on the same page, sort of. But people with vivid imaginations will always wander off the path because imagination doesn't want to be confined. The orthodox life appeals to my mind, but the "free and easy wandering" of the old Daoists appeals to my imagination. It says something about our modern world that we can cherry pick our way through an unlimited number of paths to a meaningful life.
I appreciate your thoughtful essays.
The wine thing you talked about must be a minhag, or what we call a custom. Probably something Chassidic. Different communities have diverse customs usually related to geography, for example, many Sfardim eat rice on Pesach, while Ashkenazim don’t.
But bentching after eating bread!? That is straight from the Torah. “V’ochalta v’savata”. That’s what we cal D’Oraita , not a Rabbinic commandment. So people who don’t bentch!? I really do not think these people should be your mentors. And btw, we don’t learn Halacha from children. All of the Orthodox people that I know try very hard to bentch, unless they forget every now and then. And if they for some reason don’t bentch, they wouldn’t say to you, “Do as I do.” They would be embarrassed if you called them on it.
So yes, as a Baal Tshuva for 38 years, and as a mother and grandmother of many Orthodox (and not so Orthodox) children and grandchildren, I can say that one can always grow and take on more mitzvos, but please don’t glorify or take as an example those who are not doing the basics as a Torah Jew.