Question

I don’t know if it’s appropriate to spread my impressions and thoughts around, and seemingly use this platform for my own personal needs, but I’ll begin. 
I appreciate the originality of the posts written here.
But the main thing is missing. It’s nice to think and arrive at all kinds of interesting conclusions, but you can’t run life—or demand that a person run his life—according to all kinds of obligations.
So apparently you managed to do something tremendous: to explain why one is obligated to keep the Torah and morality and everything else through rational intellectual explanation, without kabbalistic or mystical explanations; everything is understandable, and everyone (Jews) is obligated to keep the Torah of Moses.
But that is only apparently so, because you can’t take an entire life and subordinate it to some kind of logic. Yes, it looks very nice and understandable and rational, but it isn’t real. Because maybe you can explain intellectually why one should serve God, but a human being is more than intellect, and if he doesn’t connect to it, and if he doesn’t want it, he won’t observe it. Not just in a practical sense, but more fundamentally—it is not real to obligate my entire being just because the intellect understood something. So what if it says so? Who decided that it gets to decide? Who made it master over all of life? It can barely explain almost anything about life, and you want it to guide life? Who is it? Who gave it the authority to determine what is good and what should be done? Life is bigger than it.
It’s a little funny that you talk about the phenomenon of people leaving religious life, and you think you can solve the problem through philosophical answers, whether complex or simple. So it’s true that there are many questions about Judaism, and they certainly require answers. But to ignore a person’s life and tell him, “Be quiet, I don’t care what you want; there is a God / morality greater than you, and you need to obey it, and we don’t care what your desires or aspirations in life are; your life is predetermined, you are nothing, we don’t care about you at all, you are subordinate to something else greater than you”—that is an idea doomed to fail from the outset. A person rebels against anyone who wants to enslave him.
In truth, the questions about Judaism (and I’m speaking mainly about the foundations of Judaism, not more particular questions that I’m not dealing with) are questions about life. We have wondrous, fascinating, and incomprehensible lives, and we have lots of questions about them, and we want to receive answers. If the Judaism you develop does not address at all the deeply existential need of a person—how to live life with greatness and joy, with full and rich living; to understand a bit what we are doing here, where all this is going, why we have life at all, and so on and so on, many questions that demand an answer from a person—then this is not Torah. It is just a collection of annoying commandments that one wishes did not exist, and that certainly (first of all in the practical sense) will not cause a person to become religious. Why would he want to remain in a bad place—where he has to ignore himself and serve someone else? Why would anyone want to sacrifice his life for God? But in a more essential sense, the Torah you are trying to impart is truly a killing Torah, not at all “for whoever finds me finds life,” “it is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it,” “it is more precious than pearls,” and many more verses and sayings of the Sages without end about the beauty of Torah, about the life it brings, about its goodness and pleasantness. Even if you can explain (and in my humble opinion you cannot) why there is an obligation to observe the Torah, certainly that is not the Torah those sources are referring to. The Torah you are imparting is unnecessary, oppressive, and certainly not good.
It’s nice to hear from you good questions about Judaism, but your answers so thoroughly fail to make one want to be religious. If God had given your Torah, then surely He would be evil, wanting to harm those who obey His Torah.
I don’t have anything else to propose; I’m still a teenage boy searching for my way, but from your Torah it is certainly clear to me that I have nothing to look for in it as a way of life—at most, maybe once in a while to see what ideas one can take from articles.
I’ll just add that from an outside look, it seems that among the people you like to disparage there is more to seek in their approach. And I mean Chabad and Rabbi Kook (in general, and Har HaMor in particular).
It may be that your Torah does make people happy and they love it—the proof is that here on the site you have your own devoted followers. I have no objection to that; good for them. Still, I think they are missing a lot in this life.
Bottom line, my question is whether you think the Torah is supposed to bring joy and be a life-giving elixir to those who hold fast to it, or whether these are commandments that we, as human beings, have no real interest in?
Forgive the audacity, but it doesn’t seem to me that it bothers you all that much. I’d be glad if you had any reservations or comments on what I wrote.