The Taivos Canard Installment 3: The Taivos Canard in Practice

 

If to be frum is be normal and healthy, and conversely to go OTD is to be broken, then it follows that leaving frumkeit is not a reasoned, reasonable decision. People don't leave because they conclude that Judaism isn't true, because they don't find frum life fulfilling, or because of problems in the frum community. People leave because they are delinquents, weak-willed hedonistic cretins who wickedly throw off the ol haTorah so that they can wallow in their taivos, in all of the material pleasures the world outside the frum community has to offer.

Perhaps the most strident example of the Taivos Canard in an authoritative source is R' Elchonon Wasserman in Kovetz Maamarim. He says that anyone who isn't an idiot can see that God must have created the world, and so the only way one would come to deny God is if he is blinded by his desires.[1] In a comment thread on Yeshiva World News, a popular frum news site, community members echo this view of those who go OTD. One commenter writes:

 

It is NEVER an "informed" position to go "OFF THE DERECH" … they know in their hearts it IS THE BEST, it is just a reminder … Any reasoning person would not think leaving Torah and mitzvos to be in any way justifiable - therefore the one who does has not thought “reasoned” but has taken an emotional step.[2]

 

Another commenter tries to be understanding, but expresses the same conviction that something must have blinded those who go OTD to the truth and beauty of Orthodoxy. He also imagines that those who leave know they are wrong, and are rebelling. He cannot seem to wrap his head around the idea that someone might have come to the conclusion that being frum was not for them.

 

While I can't imagine the pain and suffering you must have gone through, and which must have helped drive you to make the decision you did, …I still do not understand how you can be "at peace" where you are if that involves any sort of intentional neglect of halacha.

How does one who was religious and understands laws of this system, even if deprived of its beauty, consider one's self to legitimately be "not religious any more" as if such a thing were possible?

I understand if a teen or even an adult rebels out of pain, CH"V, and I do sympathize even if I believe there has to be a better way than dropping one's faith practices. But even in this case they still understand that their abandonment of mitzvos is simply their rebellion, not an alternate valid path…[3]

 

The sentiment the second commenter expresses is the kinder version of the Canard. Rather than attributing leaving frumkeit to uncontrolled desire, he attributes it to trauma, to some pain which has blinded the person who has left to the truth and beauty of Orthodox Judaism. As we’ve seen, this is the dominant form of the Canard today.

In an unsolicited email sent to someone who had gone OTD, a want-to-be kiruv activist also assumes that the person left because of some trauma.

 

I heard your story, and I am intrigued. It seems that "something" happened to you that was so powerful, that it made you decide (or someone convinced you) that it is no longer possible for you to live your life as before. Now you need to change your lifestyle 180 degrees. I don't know everything, but there is a 90+percent chance that it is not as life altering as you think. The world is full of billions of people. Among them are many that experienced whatever you did, and for many the experience was much worse, but they continued living their lives, and prayed to G-d for forgiveness, or closure. I'm not saying it wasn't traumatic, but I am saying that from here it looks like you are being way too hard on yourself. I wonder why you passed judgment on yourself, and why you and decided to walk away from 3000 years of Judaism.[4]

 

Is the Canard true? Is it true that the only reason that people go OTD is because they are broken delinquents? We will briefly review the arguments here, and then explore each in detail in its own article.

The meaner version, the accusation that people convince themselves that Judaism isn't true so that they can wallow in their taivos, is at odds with reality. People don't leave frumkeit because they are enticed by the outside world. They leave because they find being frum intolerable.[5] 

For many people, especially teens, staying frum is easier than going OTD.[7] Would someone really give up the love of their family, their friends, their community, and in some cases, even their children in order to eat cheeseburgers and drive on Shabbos? For teens, going OTD can destroy their relationship with their parents, the people they are dependent upon for everything. In the worst cases, it can mean being thrown out of their home. If anything, the ulterior motives that might blind people to the truth are on the side of staying frum.  

Perhaps the assumption is that those who go OTD are just terrible people who don't care about any of that. My experience interacting with people who have left Orthodoxy has not shown this to be the case. People agonize over the costs of leaving frumkeit. Losing relationships with family and friends is traumatic, and OTD parents who are denied a relationship with their children are devastated.

What about the softer version of the Canard? Perhaps the fleshpots of the outside world are not enough to offset the painful costs of going OTD, but might some trauma poison a person's perception of frumkeit? There is some truth to this. A traumatic experience can push someone to reevaluate whether being frum works for them. But trauma alone cannot account for people going OTD. There are many people who experience trauma, yet stay frum. Conversely, the number of people who go OTD is too large to be reasonably accounted for by traumatic experiences. Thirty-three percent of children who attend Orthodox schools are not Orthodox as adults.[8] Can a third of all Orthodox children be experiencing trauma severe enough to make them reject the only world they've known? This seems unlikely. And if it were true, what would that say about the frum world?

Even more unlikely is that the non-Orthodoxy of those Jews who were never frum can be explained by taivos or trauma. Ninety percent of all Jews aren't Orthodox.[9] While someone who was not raised Orthodox might be considered a tinok shenishba, and their non-Orthodoxy dismissed as them not knowing any better, all of today's non-Orthodox Jews are descended from people who were religious. It might be argued that the pervasive discrimination against Jews created traumatic associations with Judaism, but most Jews retained their identity as Jews, and a large portion retained Judaism as their religion. It was Orthodoxy that they rejected. Did ninety percent of our great-great-grandparents have traumatic experiences associated with Orthodoxy?  

Another, more dismissive variation of the Taivos Canard is the accusation that people leave frumkeit for solely emotional reasons. While this version doesn't accuse the person going OTD of being a weak-willed hedonist or suggest that trauma has pushed them to leave, it similarly tries to assert that people don't leave because they have a good reason, but because of some ulterior motive. But it is unreasonable to dismiss someone's intellectual reasons for not believing in Orthodoxy because he has emotions, because he is human and not an emotionless computer. It also misunderstands the relevance of emotion to the arguments of the disbeliever. While negative emotions towards Orthodox Judaism might motivate one person to find and examine its flaws, and positive emotions towards Orthodoxy might motivate another person to defend it, the respective motivations of either side have nothing to do with who is correct. The truth is impartial.

There is also the implication that only purely intellectual reasons are a good justification for leaving Orthodoxy. The corollary would be that only purely intellectual reasons are a good justification for becoming or staying frum. Yet people are religious for a host of emotional as well as intellectual reasons. Kiruv workers introduce potential baalei teshuva to Orthodoxy through Shabbos meals precisely because of their emotional impact. People stay frum as much because of the emotional attachment they have to Orthodoxy and to the Orthodox community as because of intellectual arguments. Religious experiences are themselves profoundly emotional. If positive emotional reasons can justifiably motivate people to become and to stay frum, then negative emotional reasons, or the lack of positive ones, can justifiably motivate people to leave.[10]

The Taivos Canard, and its softer siblings, are what allow people like the rav in the story that opened the first article in this series to dismiss questions as "excuses." They deflect arguments against religion not by addressing the arguments, but by attacking the character of the questioner: People who go OTD are swayed by their desires or "rebel" against religion for emotional reasons, and all of their intellectual arguments are just excuses. Their biases blind them to the truth. If they were honest and committed to intellectually exploring religion, as frum people are, they would come to the obvious conclusion that Yiddishkeit is true and being frum is the only proper way to live. It’s the person who left that’s broken and not, chas v’shalom, frumkeit.

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[1] Wasserman, E. An Essay on Faith. In Kovetz Maamarim. Yeshivat Ohr Elchanan.

[2] http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/otd-phenomenom Ellipsis in original.

[3] http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/otd-phenomenom To be fair, there were commenters on the same thread who disputed those points, but it does show that this attitude is present in the frum world.

[4] Posted to Facebook by the recipient of the email, November 30, 2016. Used with the recipient's permission. The recipient assured me that he had never experienced any trauma, and had gone OTD for intellectual reasons. He suspected, due to the generic nature of the email and some portions that looked as though they had been sloppily edited, that this was a standard email that the sender sent to anyone he thought was a kiruv prospect.

[5] Margolese, F. (2005). Off the Derech. Jerusalem, Israel: Devora Publishing Company. P. 37.

[6] Ibid. P. 36.

[7] Ibid. P. 62.

[8] Ibid. P. 23.

[9] Ibid. P. 23.

[10] Ibid. P. 151.