On the Phenomenon of Leaving the Religious Path (Column 36)

With God's help

A few days ago, the following article was published on the Srugim website, dealing with the phenomenon of leaving the religious path in the Religious Zionist community. The authors discuss the scope of the phenomenon (I do not know whether there are reliable studies on the matter), society's and educators' disregard of it, and above all the inability to cope with it. Since I have been dealing with this issue for quite a few years and encountering the same phenomena, I thought this was the time and place to address this painful topic in a more direct and broader way.

Leaving the Religious Path

The historical description that follows is a generalization based not on studies or systematic examination, but on impression. There is no doubt that these processes have many nuances, but my purpose here is only to provide background. Even a reader who does not agree with this description can continue reading what follows.

The phenomenon of abandoning the religious world and religious commitment is not new, but over time it changes in form and scope. In certain periods in the past (the 1950s and 1960s), this meant a major abandonment rooted in lack of identification or knowledge, education that was not sufficiently Torah-centered (old Mizrachi types), a search for the easy life, or simply going with the flow (after encountering outside currents, in the army or elsewhere).[1] Those who left abandoned the society in which they had grown up, and often felt alienated and estranged from it. Before long they became secular in every respect. In a later period, some of them developed openly hostile feelings, and one indication of this was the abandonment of nationalist and right-wing views. This was a substantive abandonment, accompanied by estrangement from the past, but in most cases it was not based on questions and difficulties in faith. Later still, when I was in high school (in the 1970s), young people occupied themselves with objections, Torah and science, philosophical proofs for belief in God, and the like. Intellect and rational consideration reigned supreme. In recent years this phenomenon has taken on a new form, and it seems to me that it has two contradictory faces: a turn toward existential feeling, and reliance on knowledge and critical arguments. In the following sections I will elaborate.

The New Leavers

A few years ago I saw a play by the actor-rabbi Hagai Luber, after which a discussion was held on the phenomenon of leaving the religious path. In the discussion he said that as part of his work as an instructor at Midreshet Ofra, he was witnessing a very rapid change in the character of the activity. A few years ago, he said, we would all sit around the campfire with groups of teenagers who had come to the midrasha, and there was tension in the air. Would I succeed in proving to them that there is a God—whereupon everyone would become scrupulous about every commandment, major and minor alike, go to yeshivot, and dedicate their lives to Torah—or not, in which case everyone would of course leave the yeshivot and ulpanot, and already the coming Sabbath they would all go together to the beach instead of the synagogue? A few years later, they sit around the same campfire and the instructor (=Luber) declares that there is a God. Everyone nods in agreement. He then claims that He was revealed at Mount Sinai and gave the Torah. The nodding continues here as well. He next states decisively that divine commands are binding and that everyone is obligated to obey them. To his astonishment, the nodding does not stop. At this point he gets stuck and asks the teenagers in the group: so what is the problem? Where are we stuck? Here he receives the typical answer, delivered with Olympian calm, something like: "It doesn't suit us right now" (we don't connect to it). He feels helpless, because his arsenal of arguments is of no use here. He may prove with signs and wonders that there is a God who gave the Torah and that it is binding, and it will not change a thing. This generation bluntly ignores logical considerations. It places little trust in them, and prefers feeling and existential sensations to them.

On the other hand, I constantly meet people (mostly young people) who come with hard and piercing questions, some about the existence of God, others about the giving of the Torah and biblical criticism, about the chosenness of Israel, about the principles of faith, and much more. A considerable number of these people are very educated and intelligent, full of knowledge in many and varied fields (evolution, brain research, history and archaeology, biblical criticism, and more), and the questions troubling them are sharp and not simple. In the internet age, anyone can be exposed to storehouses of knowledge and to various critical arguments, some of them presented persuasively and grounded in facts, and it is very difficult to ignore them.

I myself have met, and still meet, dozens and hundreds of such people. Some contact me by email, by phone, or come for meetings. Many have physically come all the way to Yeruham (and today to the university or my home) in order to speak. I conduct a great many email correspondences (some of them appear on this site) on various topics, a significant portion of them revolving around the various critical arguments.[2] Those who approach me are of different ages. It begins with children at the end of elementary school and in junior high (a few), continues with high-school students and students in yeshiva high schools, continues with students in hesder yeshivot and Haredi yeshivot, and afterward with kollel students and university students. Some are family people, and some are even grandparents. By now I have also had a few rabbis from yeshivot come to me (Haredi and non-Haredi alike). The remarks here are based mainly on the insights I have gained from these meetings and conversations.

In recent years, leaving the religious path has also been accompanied by a social process that allows those who leave to remain part of the society in which they grew up. Many of them remain on excellent terms with their former friends, of course with their families as well, and in effect departure is no longer bound up with such a great crisis. It seems to me that one indication of this is that many of them remain committed to a nationalist right-wing outlook. The estrangement is mainly from faith, and not necessarily from the atmosphere and values around it. People who leave religion remain in touch with their yeshiva teachers, appear at alumni gatherings of yeshivot, and are welcomed there. Once, this would not even have occurred to anyone. The alienation that accompanies departure has been greatly reduced, and so it is no wonder that the phenomenon is growing. More and more people allow themselves to leave, since the social restraints and psychological obstacles have been greatly reduced.[3]

The Attitude Toward Questions

Those who encounter people with such difficulties are mainly educators and rabbis in educational institutions and yeshivot. We encounter adults less often (and therefore become aware of the difficulties only after they have already made decisions and taken the step of leaving). Sometimes community rabbis are exposed to members of the community who experience such difficulties.

In conservative societies and institutions there is no legitimacy for raising the questions and difficulties. People in such societies keep the difficulties in their gut, and if they raise them at all, the response is that this is heresy and one is forbidden to think such things ("Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes").[4] They are told that these are not questions but answers (you are looking for an easy life and to flee a difficult commitment). It is argued against them: "Are you really wiser than Rabbi Judah HaNasi, Maimonides, Rabbi Akiva Eiger, or Rabbi Elyashiv/Shapira?"[5] And so on and so forth.

What happens in more open societies and institutions? There there is legitimacy to raise the questions, but there too no answers are received. At rabbinic conferences one can hear comments that the young people who raise these difficulties are not looking for answers. They are looking for warmth and love, and therefore if we invite them to a Sabbath meal, sit with them around a late-night campfire, and go on an exciting hike, the problems will disappear. Our alienated world, in which the network replaces interpersonal connection and in which personal expression and autonomy are foundational values, gives rise to distress and difficulties that express themselves in questions and heresy. Therefore the solution is to grant a great deal of warmth, concern, and love, and then everything will work out. Thus the perplexed young person receives not answers but warmth and love. The conclusion is that in the more open society the questions do indeed arise, but there too there are no answers. Sometimes it is explained to him that faith is a subjective matter and one must connect to it emotionally, not dwell on intellectual questions and difficulties. Those who are more meticulous quote Rabbi Shagar on postmodernism, which gives legitimacy to the "circle of differences," and the subtext is: even an intellectual absurdity like religious faith is permitted and legitimate in our generation. You need not feel inferior to the secular people and the smart scientists. And anyway, faith ultimately provides an important response to our distress, so what is wrong with that?! We are all looking for that, are we not? The more straightforward educators are at least willing to admit that there are no answers, but God surely knows all, and if He Himself tells us that everything is all right, then we should ignore the difficulties and carry on (as the saying goes: "Sit and learn; it will be fine").

Such "answers" in fact leave the wavering person with the feeling that this is opium for the masses; that is, faith is at most a psychological technique (a kind of medical tablet for easing distress), and not a logical, plausible, and binding system that can be defended. Someone who was really looking for warmth and love may receive them and his difficulties may disappear. But someone who is truly wavering remains with his doubts. Instead of answering his difficulties, the "answers" he receives only deepen them.

Results

As a result of this situation, several groups emerge among graduates of religious education: 1. Those who are not willing to touch the difficulties (whether this stems from the piety of "Do not stray" or from fear of the consequences). 2. Those who have encountered the difficulties but are not intellectually honest enough or brave enough, and therefore ignore the difficulties and remain members—more or less loyal ones—of religious society (with feelings of inferiority and insecurity inside them). 3. Those who are brave and honest enough to draw the conclusions and leave.

It is worth paying attention to the meaning of these processes. In the end, many of the educated and intelligent, the honest and the brave, leave. Who remains religious? Those who were not sufficiently educated, or not sufficiently honest, or not sufficiently brave. Among those who remain there are quite a few who are full of inferiority feelings and insecurity, for they are well aware that this is a system that suffers from difficulties and that there are no answers to them. They really understand that they are here only because of lack of honesty or lack of courage, that is, because of their shortcomings. The others outside, who in many cases were the most talented and courageous in the class, were better than they were and drew the conclusions. This further reinforces the unwillingness to confront difficulties and be exposed to them, and the insecurity. I do not know what such a parent can say to a child who comes with such difficulties and displays more courage and honesty than his parents.

A Current Analogy

A few days ago I heard a radio interview with a journalist (if I am not mistaken, Hami Shalev) who was asked, once again, about the failure of the polls regarding the U.S. presidential election. How is it possible that all the polls failed? Do New York and Washington pollsters and journalists live in a bubble and not know the field (cf. 'the State of Tel Aviv')? This argument, which is repeated again and again, was answered in the negative. After all, the polls do not examine the residents of New York or Washington, but rather a sample of citizens from all the states. Therefore familiarity with the field is of no importance. But this is a mistake. There are many polls, and the journalist or editor must decide which of them to publish. In the worst case, if he is not honest and has an agenda, he decides not to publish the polls that do not suit him. But even in the better case, when the editor is honest, he still has to decide which of the many (contradictory) polls seems plausible to him and which does not. A poll that shows Trump winning seems unreliable to him, and therefore he will prefer to publish the poll that shows Hillary winning. He does this out of considerations of credibility, but those considerations are biased.

That same journalist made another interesting point, similar to the previous one. When a pollster asks blue-collar trade-union people in Pennsylvania for their opinion, he will never receive an answer supporting Trump. After all, the unions are Democratic, and support for Republicans—and certainly for Trump—is utterly beyond the pale. And so the polls show Hillary winning easily. But at the ballot box, behind the curtain, a person votes according to his own view and understanding. There no one sees, and that same union man puts Trump's slip into the ballot box. That is how results so different from the polls are obtained.

For the information of all our self-assured journalists who explain to us morning and night that we have balanced media, the very discrepancy between the polling results and the election results points to a lack of balance. My impression is that the direction of the error is generally to the left, and that indicates the direction of the bias, as I explained above.

These two explanations reflect one thing: the pressure and bias of the media and opinion-makers themselves cause the results to be skewed. The social pressures against those who express "illegitimate" positions create a distorted picture, and in addition also cause a reaction in the public, which is pushed into the arms of the position opposed to that of the elites (much has been said about the vote in the U.S. as an expression of disgust with and rebellion against the regime of political correctness).

If we return to the analogy, then in religious society as well, when it is forbidden to ask questions, when the difficulties are not presented and not addressed, they continue to ferment inside, and outside they burst forth with greater force. At the same time, if the difficulties are swept under the rug, they cannot be treated (for we are in denial, and in fact do not know about them). One can point to four results of the pressure that does not allow people to ask and to challenge the tradition and the accepted dogmas within it: 1. The picture presented to us is mistaken. We are living in a fantasy. 2. The disregard does not allow us to contend with the other position, because we do not know it and are unfamiliar with its reasons. 3. The difficulties grow to demonic proportions, and the young doubter is sure there is an atom bomb here even if it is only a local, small, and not very significant difficulty. 4. The pressure itself causes a reaction against the elites (the rabbis) and the adoption of opposing worldviews. Here too, as in the political analogy (political correctness), anti-establishment protest feeds off establishment pressure.

The conclusion is that there is a vital need to bring the difficulties to the surface and to deal with them—both in order to allow discussion and to become acquainted with the situation, and in order to air them out so that those who are wavering will not lose proportion and will be able to cope with them.

Why Are Answers Really Not Given?

So if there are so many advantages, why does society really forbid the raising of difficulties, or at least fail to provide responses to them? To tell the truth, in many cases educators and rabbis have no answers because the students are much smarter and more educated than they are. Students today are expert internet learners who have already heard and seen everything. Educators and rabbis stand helpless in the face of these questions because they do not really know them, or at least not in their sharper formulations and more crushing arguments. They know caricatures of the difficulties and deal with those. They do not have the time or the skill to delve into these materials and problems, and to engage in orderly and systematic analysis of them. If they themselves were honest and brave enough, like their students, they would have to draw the inevitable conclusions—but they are no longer at that stage of life. After all, they too are graduates of that same process (otherwise what are they doing here?!), so how can they answer difficulties that they themselves have not confronted.

The warmth and love that replace answers are our comfort zone. A warm attitude from an adult to an adolescent is an obvious and convenient outlet. It is much easier to give warmth and love—which young people really do lack today—than to answer hard questions that require depth, familiarity with the difficulties and with the wide variety of factual, scientific, and philosophical materials, especially if all this entails exposing the young people (and also the rabbis and instructors) to "dangerous" areas. We may discover that we have no answers. It is easier for us to attribute the questions to urges and to the desire to evade commitment and live an easy life, since that does not obligate us ourselves to confront them. It is important to understand that the more gifted among these young people sense very well that this is evasion and inability. I have heard this more than once from those who approach me.

One more unpleasant and generalizing remark must be added here. Many of the educators and yeshiva teachers in the educational institutions are not the sharpest and most incisive people we have. Not even on the Torah level, but certainly not on the intellectual and educational level. They are not necessarily the elite among the smart and educated graduates of religious education, and perhaps for good reason. Many of them come to education after years of study in yeshiva during which they did not reach sufficient achievements or personal fulfillment, and then turned to education on various levels. It is certainly possible that many of them have ideals and that they are good people, but it seems to me that their intellectual and educational profile is not very high. By contrast, among the students there are all types. This gap is rooted in compulsory education. All young people are legally obligated to sit on the school bench, but certainly not all adults are educators. I noted that an average educator was usually somewhere around the middle of his class as a student, and suddenly he finds himself dealing with students of every type. Some of them belong to the top deciles in talent and education, and certainly in their command of the internet and of the information found there. They also have more time than their busy teacher to develop expertise and occupy themselves with the various subjects. It is no wonder that educators cannot cope with the strongest among their students. This is exactly how we lose them and remain with the mediocre ones, those with whom the educators can cope.

I know it is unpleasant to speak about this, and it is not really politically correct to rank people's intelligence and education, certainly not that of educators and rabbis. It is of course also not true of everyone. Even so, paraphrasing Justice Brandeis's well-known remark, I feel that sunlight is the best remedy for all our ailments. There is no escaping courageous and direct engagement with these issues if one wants to analyze and improve the situation. I have already described above the ills of political correctness.

Training and Consultation

The obvious solution would be to send the luminaries of the generation into education. But that is of course not practical for several reasons. First, not everyone will want to. Second, not everyone is suited to be an educator. Third, there are other areas besides education that require talent, and it is not worthwhile to neglect them.

An obvious solution is to recognize that most yeshiva teachers are not really capable of coping with these difficulties. They must undergo training and receive guidance. The difficult cases among wavering students should be referred to people who know the relevant fields and can discuss the problems and assist in analysis and in drawing conclusions. I do not mean to say that any of us has a toolbox with schoolbook solutions to every difficulty. There are very good and very strong difficulties, and certainly there is no single sage who has full solutions to all the problems in his bag. But open discussion can stimulate public discourse and thus gather the different strengths and areas of expertise in order to clarify the problems and deal with the difficulties together.

What Should One Do with Difficulties?

It seems to me that in addition to all this, it is important that educators themselves nevertheless try to enter into a real and honest discussion of these difficulties, despite all the impediments. I would suggest that they accompany the student in his wavering and help him see the matters and their significance in proportion. If there is a difficulty that one does not know how to deal with, it can be brought to the surface and one can seek advice.

More generally, an adult knows that not every difficulty brings the whole system crashing down. Some difficulties can be left for future inquiry. Others can be solved if one relinquishes or changes a principle in our tradition and faith that is not really necessary. It is better to give it up or change it than to insist on the sanctity of every detail. This is so for two main reasons, one substantive and one tactical:

• Because those details are not correct, and it is important to correct them. There are quite a few principles on which we were raised, and they are really not binding, do not necessarily come from an authoritative source, and in fact are probably not true. Discussion of the difficulties is a good opportunity that has come our way to confront them and refresh the system on which we were raised. The God in whom we believe is in fact sometimes not the right one. The "heretics" are right (as in Rabbi Kook's well-known passage about a faith that is akin to heresy, and Maimonides' parable of the elephant in Moreh Nevukhim).
• On the tactical plane, this insistence leads us, at the price of preserving a marginal detail, to lose everything (the abandonment of all religious commitment).

A 'Thin' and Up-to-Date Theology

I have already written more than once that I am currently engaged in writing a trilogy that attempts to present an up-to-date and as 'thin' as possible picture of Jewish theology. My aim is to create a picture that I am prepared to stand behind and defend, and to clear the screen of all the unnecessary and dubious additions—not to say bizarre ones—that have attached themselves to our tradition over the years. Among other things, there will be some renewed claims there (some of them have already appeared here on the site, which also serves me for that same purpose). Many criticize what I say on two main planes: 1. This is heresy (against the tradition we received). 2. This is harmful (because I expose people to views and arguments that may lead them to leave, whereas beforehand they were not exposed to them at all and were not troubled by them). My answer is that the opposite approach is no less dangerous, and even if in the short term it helps religious survival, in the long term it has heavy and severe costs. The honest and brave people who confront the difficulties each one on his own (or with the help of advisers on various atheist websites) will leave the entire system for no real reason. The God they are leaving is a mistaken God, one that indeed deserves to be left.

In this context I will recount a story that happened to me personally. The journalist Yair Sheleg conducted an interview with me for the Dyukan supplement of Makor Rishon. Among other things, I said there that almost all the detailed rules of Jewish law that have reached us did not come from Sinai. Moses our Teacher, and even the Holy One Himself, as it were, probably never dreamed of them. I of course knew that many are accustomed to think otherwise (its details and its general principles are from Sinai), and I am very familiar with the effect of 'the Torah of laymen,' that is, the coarse religiosity of the ignoramus ('the cruder a person is than his fellow, the more religious he is than his fellow'). But I innocently thought that for those who understand such matters this was a simple statement, even a trivial one. Whoever denies it either never opened a Talmud in his life, or is lying to himself or to me. And behold, a few days after the article was published, criticism of my remarks reached my ears from one of the well-known roshei yeshiva (an open and educated man). He was shocked by the remarks and said that it would be impossible to send students to study in Bar-Ilan's kollel if they would hear such heretical statements there. Ironically, about a week later I received a letter from a student in that same yeshiva who was wavering because of various difficulties (the common ones). I asked him why he did not clarify this with the yeshiva staff (a very good hesder yeshiva, whose staff certainly does not fit what I described above regarding educational staffs in high schools and yeshiva high schools), and he told me that he had no one there to talk to.

That young man had been educated on the view that all the details of Jewish law came down from Sinai, but he reached the conclusion that this is not so. At this point three possibilities stand before him, or really three: 1. To ignore the difficulties. 2. To abandon everything. 3. To examine critically the tradition on which he was raised, to eat its inside and throw away the peel. The approach of that rosh yeshiva compels the young man to choose option 1 or 2, and thus exactly creates the society of religious mediocrity (in terms of talent, courage, or honesty) that I described above. By contrast, the open discussion that I tried to conduct with him enables him to choose option 3.

This approach can first and foremost save that young man's religious commitment, but in a broader view it has implications for religious society as a whole. This approach builds a religious society that also contains people of free thought who are prepared to draw conclusions from it. It allows our tradition to be examined critically and updated; it keeps within religious society also the outstanding element (the best of our young people), whom the accepted approaches in effect force to abandon it. And beyond all that, such a discussion also gives a better feeling and removes the inferiority feelings and insecurity of those who remained in the system out of inertia.

Attempts to Promote a Solution

In light of the above, I came to the conclusion that it is very important to hold workshops for yeshiva teachers and also for young people who are wavering. People should be trained to deal with this, and a cadre should be created of people for whom this is an area of expertise in different fields (philosophy, science, biblical criticism, history and archaeology, and the like). Beyond training sessions, educational staffs should be given materials and addresses to which they can turn with these questions, and when necessary they should also refer wavering young people there.

I have tried several times to approach yeshiva teachers and various roshei yeshiva, and I received no response. My feeling is that they are not prepared to admit that neither the yeshiva teachers nor they themselves have the power to deal with these problems. Perhaps they are also afraid of my views, which are radical in their opinion, some of which arise from those same difficulties that I hear and with which I identify. These difficulties require us to conduct a deep examination of our entire worldview. In other words, it is not correct to say that one merely needs to 'answer the questioners.' These questions obligate all of us to reexamine our views and change some of them. Naturally, people are very afraid of this. I assume people are also afraid to put the problems on the table because it will arouse problems even among those who are not wavering (this can be partially solved if one deals only with those who raise questions. But of course it is impossible to hide it completely from the others). The general feeling is one of denial and repression of the problem, exactly as the authors described in the article mentioned above.

As noted, I meet quite a few of these wavering people. I do not know what my success rate is, because most of them do not return to me and I do not know what became of them in the end. I can say that from my experience, in most cases the questioner comes to me at a relatively late stage, after he has already crossed the Rubicon and decided that he does not believe, or at least is in advanced stages of recognizing that. In many cases this is the stage at which educators or parents intervene and send him to me, but in such cases my impression is that the chance that the young man will receive the answers I give with openness is small. The earlier this happens in the process, the greater the chance. This is one more consideration in favor of direct and frontal engagement with the problems and difficulties. Postponing things until the point at which there is no escape from addressing the difficulties significantly reduces the chances of success.

Back to the Two Types of Leavers

Some see those who leave as educational failures. I must add that in my eyes, in a certain sense these are educational successes, and specifically those who remain religious out of inertia are the failures. To the best of my judgment, our educational goal should be not only to educate a commandment-observant person, but to educate a person who chooses to observe out of conviction. A person who acts on the basis of his understanding and reaches the conclusion that this system is incorrect, and therefore abandons his commitment to it—there is educational success in the building of his personality, together with a failure of the system in building and defending itself and us. Above I noted that leaving the religious path in our time is composed of two types of leavers. So clearly not all those who leave are from that elite corps, but I have met quite a few such people, and I am sure there are many more than I have met.

At first glance, it would seem natural to sort those who are wavering into two types. Those who are driven by intellectual honesty and genuine difficulties—one should try to answer their questions and difficulties. By contrast, those who suffer from emotional distress (a search for warmth and love), whose questions are really answers, it would be preferable to ignore the questions and give them warmth and love, as is customary in our circles. I now wish to argue that this is not so, meaning that it is very important to answer the difficulties even if they come from an emotional place, from agendas, or from various distresses (questions that are really answers). This is not only because one can never know when we are dealing with the first type and when with the second. As I will now show, there is also a substantive reason for this.

When a person feels uncomfortable and seeks a way to abandon his religious commitment (to permit himself forbidden sexual conduct), he can simply get up and leave. Many do not do so. They present difficulties and objections, and seek an intellectual anchor for the step they wish to take. It turns out that even if a person's urges lead him to want to leave, he still will not do so if it is clear to him that he is mistaken; that is, if he has no philosophical or intellectual anchor. All of us choose our path on the basis of complex psychological and philosophical considerations, and it is important to us that our desires also have philosophical backing. If the wavering person receives no answers to his questions and difficulties, but only warmth and love, then perhaps we have solved his needs for warmth and belonging, but if the motivation to leave still exists, we have left him with a rational and intellectual anchor for going out and leaving. He has difficulties that received no response, and therefore his basic feeling is that he is right in his decision, and this makes it easier for him to leave. That is, even with regard to a person whose motivation is urge or distress (lack of warmth), answers to the difficulties may prevent his departure. It is not true that warmth and love are the ultimate solutions, at least not by themselves.

Parallel Planes of Discussion

This reminds me of a parable I have already used more than once regarding someone who becomes religious. His secular friends attribute his step to one crisis or another. That is, they look at the matter from the psychological angle. By contrast, his new religious friends explain that he discovered the light and the truth. They analyze it on the philosophical plane. And lo and behold, when a person leaves the religious path, his religious friends explain his step by saying that he wanted to permit himself forbidden sexual conduct. That is, they are now holding the psychological end, whereas his secular friends explain that he understood the nonsense in his previous path, meaning that they have become philosophers. So are secular people philosophers or psychologists? And the religious? And in general, who is right?

The answer is that everyone is right. Every step a person takes can be analyzed and explained on two planes, the psychological and the philosophical. Each naturally focuses on the plane that is convenient for him. When the step runs counter to your worldview, you prefer to interpret it on the psychological plane (because then you do not have to confront the philosophical difficulty that person presents to you). And if the step goes in a direction that seems right to you, then suddenly you become a philosopher and pure intellect. To tell the truth, it seems to me that in both cases there is no reason whatsoever to deal with the psychological plane. It is relevant only to the psychologist who may be asked to help that young man. For us, as other people who speak with him and judge him and his path, what is relevant is only the philosophical plane. That is where the problems lie, and one must examine whether they have substance or not, and discuss them—both in order to help him and in order to help ourselves separate the wheat from the chaff, as above.

Three Goals of the Discussion

The purpose of the discussion here is not only to save the wavering young people from their difficulties. As I explained, it is also about saving religious society, and in a certain sense about saving religiosity itself. Religious society needs the people of type 3 above—the honest, intelligent, and courageous ones—whom it itself, with its own hands, forces to abandon it. It is a great pity that we should lose them. But as I described above, the Torah itself would also come out the better from such a process. Our tradition is in urgent need of a root-and-branch refreshing. The gap between what we really think and what we think we think, or were educated to think, is so great that it creates a severe theological and faith problem. Those who are wavering merely express what is in the hearts of many of us. This whole business is not especially convincing. It seems that we are living by slogans and contradictions, or at least within a very poorly grounded framework. How can authentic religious life be developed amid such dichotomy and tension? We are educated to uphold, and even to defend with empty sophistries, anachronistic principles and concepts. In the absence of any ability to do so, we attack the stick instead of the one holding it: the questioner and the wavering person instead of the questions and the difficulties.

The Urgency

I do not enter here into the question whether this situation requires Haredi withdrawal, meaning whether there is not here a refutation of the modern religious path. It seems to me that the answer to that is absolutely negative for several reasons, but this is not the place to deal with it. Bottom line, this is not happening and apparently also will not happen (and that is a good thing), and therefore, whether that would be correct or not, one must give thought to what should be done in the present situation.

I will now return to the beginning. In light of my experience, my feeling is that our situation is only deteriorating. It seems to me that it is important to gather the relevant people and figures in order to take counsel, for as the authors wrote in the article cited above—and quite rightly—this situation is an existential threat to religious society. It requires great and intensive effort, the creation of relevant literature, training programs, and the establishment of institutions that will provide a response to these difficulties. As someone who has devoted a great deal of time to this over quite a few years, I have a sense of helplessness. I meet wonderful and very impressive people, and it is clear to me that a large part of them is lost, is being lost, or will be lost to us. The helplessness is also because I do not always have answers, certainly not in every field, and also because I do not have the time and ability to do this alone, and above all because there is no public cooperation on the matter. We are all in denial, at least until the problem arises in our own home, and then it is already at a stage where the chance of providing a response is very small.

Educational institutions and yeshivot, and certainly centers such as the Bnei Akiva Yeshivot Center, or the Religious Education Administration in the Ministry of Education (Hemed), and the like, must give serious thought to this problem, because it concerns our very lives.

Also related: The Questions That Make Them Leave Religion

[1] Of course, religiosity too can express going with the flow.

[2] Incidentally, it is interesting to note that those who approach me are almost only men (there are almost no women at all. I am speaking of an unequivocal phenomenon. The number of women does not reach even one percent of those who approach me), and this itself demands explanation (in the past I commented on this here on the site as well. One can see that the number of women here is negligible). The remarks written in this column relate mainly to men (only regarding them do I have experience).

[3] Only in order to prevent misunderstandings: these remarks are not written judgmentally. This is a factual description of the situation. Personally, I am very glad that this is so, because it allows a substantive attitude and clarification of the problems in a straightforward way, and not through pressures and irrelevant considerations. Relationships between people ought to be substantive, and not only a means of advancing agendas, important as they may be. Friendship is a value, and not only a means of promoting ideas.

[4] See on this in Column 6 here on the site.

[5] I remember that the Steipler writes this in his book Chayei Olam as a decisive argument.