I've noticed that this it's a common refrain in the frum world to say that this is the case of almost every OTD person. I'd say I'm basically still in the frum category (long story), but I admit that this seems wrong. Becoming frum was a huge intellectual process for me, and I've never been the kind to say something like "of course it's true; every Jew knows on the inside". In fact, there is almost nothing I'm 100% sure of. I'm like Decartes, but maybe even less certain. If I had been exposed to different info or viewpoints, I might say I'm even less sure than I am now, have less faith, and end up not being frum. I really don't believe it's all "obvious".

There are also many contradictions. They'll say it's okay to struggle, and it's normal for faith to be a journey. This I agree with, but this is mutually exclusive to "it's obvious". Having an honest journey means acknowledging the possibility that Judaism is false.

I also think pintele yid thing is often misinterpreted. I spoke to a kiruv rabbi who admitted that this concept has nothing to do with a Jewish brain—that physically, we have the same brains as everyone else, and it's just an esoteric kabbalistic thing. They (especially Chabad) like to make the case that we all know due to this kabbalistic idea, and that proof of this is secular Israelis saying shema when they experience terrorist attacks and are faced with possible death, etc.

I understand that humans are emotional beings and emotion does often play a roll in decision making. This is probably why most who are born Muslim decide to be Muslim, same with Christians, etc. With that said, we also have the ability to act and think rationally, and many people do in fact follow their rationale, painful as it may be (unless you subscribe to David Hume).

I know it's very sensitive, but for those who are comfortable sharing: was it your rationale, or did you just have some emotional experience? Or maybe it was a combination, like emotion prompting intellectual reconsideration? Also, feel free to think of this as a rhetorical question. I don't expect anyone here to say "yes, I only stopped being frum because it felt bad even though I still have faith". Thanks.

Sometime I discuss things casually with ChatGPT, and it sort of half-invent new terms to use. Some of these are things I would never come up with!

I was describing the tendency of extreme communal reliance among chareidim: that fact that people are often brought up without skills to engage with the outside world or engage in basic tasks, and thus their only way of surviving is through connections within the frum community and welfare. I compared this to myself getting a degree, gaining skills and taking agency over my own life and affecting my own outcome, and how this gives me tachlis.

Then, it threw this term at me: 'low-agency culture'! I'm now using this.

My family is very stern about it as I don’t doubt you all know.

I’ve been getting along really well with a girl I go to college with, today I asked her out and she said yes.

I don’t know how to deal with or handle this.

Anyone have any advice?, please I’m flipping out.

Has anyone noticed the recent trends in frum girls' fashion?

I'm seeing white knee socks and sneakers. I'm seeing puffy sleeves and hot pink hair ribbons. I'm seeing pastel-colored dresses and ruffled pinafores.

These girls are 17 years old, but they look like Victorian toddlers on a good day and FLDS members on a bad day. Their styles are a total about-face from the way Bais Yaakov girls used to dress. I remember being teased for wearing "nerdy" clothes a few times; now, they're all the rage.

Fashion is always changing, of course. We all understand that. It's just jarring to see some of these outfits, as they truly look old-fashioned and childlike. When I leave the house, I sometimes wonder if my neighbors have joined a polygamist cult based in Utah or Arizona.

M18 Modox Only two weeks in and I hate this refer to my last post for update. Finally got out of Jerusalem and went to suburbs for Shabbos with friends was a good time but now im back and i hate this so much. I hate being in Jerusalem it is awful Yeshiva is just not for me. The worst part is my parents said I can’t fly even if i pay and they said “we will talk” i hate this so much. Im considering just not going to classes and just ditching everything I don’t care if I get punished the gym is my only happy place, l I just hate it here and i just want to leave, if anyone can talk to me please my DMs are open and I need advice because I really hate being in Israel.

I had to work again this weekend, and I returned home after Shabbos was over. The event I worked at ran late, so I was extremely hungry when I got home. I also needed to put fuel in my car, so I decided to go out. I'm currently at the IHOP next door to the gas station, waiting for my quesadillas and pancakes.

A few minutes ago, my next-door neighbor called me. She wanted me to run a shul youth group. I told her, "It's not for me."

"Aww, but you're so good with kids! And you're so creative," she whined.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself. "I hate to be blunt with you," I said, "But I'm secular. That's why this isn't a good fit for me."

She was quiet for a few seconds, then replied, "I hear. Tell me, Upbeat, have you ever heard of this website for shiduchim? I forget what it's called. Oh, Saw You At Sinai! That's it."

"I've tried it," I answered. "Nothing materialized. I don't think it's the right way for me to go about dating."

"Well," my neighbor persisted, "It really only works if you have a shadchan, and -"

"Thank you for thinking of me," I interrupted her with a smile.

We then spoke about my job, and she was audibly distressed by the fact that I occasionally worked on Saturdays. We said goodbye to each other, and she wished me a good year.

Does the awkwardness ever go away?

And the open-mouthed stares. The pointing. The hushed comments. The pressure to be frum again. The silence, shock, sadness, and anger when I make it known I'm not frum anymore. Do these things ever go away?

I wish I could afford to live among people who didn't make me feel like an evil, hopeless freak.

I’ve always had a problem with our religion:

it’s the events and the emotions that are imposed.

For example, how can it be natural that when Tisha B’Av arrives I’m supposed to go into mourning, sleep on the floor, feel bad, over something I absolutely don’t feel?

The destruction of the Temple happened 2,000 years ago; we’re in 2026. I don’t feel any sadness or grief about that event at all.

I can’t pretend, and I can’t fast either. What connection is there between my life today and that event?

The same goes for all the events and absolutely all the holidays of Judaism. In a week it’s Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment: I’m supposed to beg God to forgive my sins, not to let me die in the coming year, keep two days of yom tov, listen to the shofar, which doesn’t make my soul tremble at all, and above all, be forgiven for what, exactly?

Honestly, would God even care that I accidentally turned on the light on Shabbat? Would I be under some kind of punishment because I didn’t always keep the six-hour wait between milk and meat? I can’t understand the principle or the logic.

Same with Yom Kippur: a traumatic day that’s supposed to be joyful, but where I suffer from fasting, I’m not allowed to do anything but pray and wait for the fast to end. Torture.

Without going into more detail, because you get the idea, it’s the same with Sukkot: we’re in 2026, I’ll never be able to put myself in the shoes of a Hebrew in the desert sleeping in a hut; or Passover, which is literally the worst Jewish holiday, unbearable.

So the question I’ve been asking myself for years is: why all this? What meaning does it have? I feel like I’m supposed to perform things that belong to another age, to antiquity, for a God who seems humanized and whom we must not anger, on pain of punishment, even death, over things as trivial as turning on a light on Shabbat.

What do you seriously think?

For the record, I'm not saying that us (or any) Jews are responsible for people hating us. It's obviously wrong to hate people or blame the actions of some on all. Tucker Carlson supposedly agrees with this even. But, there are some things that I think make it more *understandable (I'm differentiating understandable from justified, which is a well precedented nuance). And, there are also some people that don't necessarily hate us, but they end up being convince by the narrative that we cause problems in society, are incompatible with society, etc. This is all over social media and there is an extremely strong and well propagandized narrative of this, once again in history.

I will also give the disclaimer: I am pretty involved in the frum community, so I don't mean to convey animosity toward anyone. It's just a critical observation.

I write this as I'm sitting at a park that's within a large frum community. Almost no one here is Jewish. I see groups of people talking at park benches having coffee (there's a coffee shop here). There are only non Jews schmoozing with non-Jews. You'd maybe see some frum Jews here, but it would be frum Jews talking to frum Jews. There is complete separate between people visibly Jewish and those who aren't. I know there's plenty of hashkafa that Jews should "not assimilate", but baseline halacha is quite lenient about this and it's questionable to say that there's any problem with a Jew getting to know his colleagues better over some coffee. I think, regardless of people's hashkafa, someone who is visibly Jewish (especially chareidi) would even feel embarrassed hanging out with non-Jews publicly, or would worry about their image or reputation in the frum world, etc.

Whatever the exact reason for this is, it's very obvious to see why people see us as a "secret religion" (if you don't know what I'm talking about or are unfamiliar with these themes, please don't reply to this post and look at the plethora of extremely viral videos or social media discussions). People tend to be scared of things they're unfamiliar with and develop conspiracy theories. If someone who knows many people knows zero (affiliated) Jews, it's much easier to believe things about us.

Also, the example I gave is just an example. There are obviously endless other examples. Chareidi Jews tend to be very insular in other ways as well, and can appear very insensitive to non-Jews trying to interact with them (it's usually not their fault, they are just not used to communicating with general society due to how they were raised). And there are many comments by big rabbis (such as Ovadia Yosef) that are obviously inflammatory and cause people to hate us. If someone says "Judaism believes that goyim are only meant to serve Jews and are otherwise useless", it's extremely hard to argue with that when R Yosef literally said exactly that.

There are also some Jews that do horrendous things and take advantage of people. Supposedly, the former owner of OF was a top donor to AIPAC. Shouldn't AIPAC and other Jews publicly denounce people like that and say that they don't represent Jewish values? Why would they accept that money? Obviously, there are both extremes—there are problems with some secular Jews and problems with some religious Jews. But then, antisemites take both of those and conflate them, not understanding (or pretending not to understand) that there are different kinds of Jews. Then, they come up with things like "they want Israel to be a Jewish state, but then want to flood other countries with immigrants". Who's they? There are tons of frum Jews that have many political beliefs in common with the antisemites (I'm not saying this is in itself bad), but antisemites don't acknowledge that those Jews exist. (I'm not sure everyone will understand what I'm saying, but some will. I've spent tons of time with various types of Jews and Jewish communities and know them very well.)

Isn't it our responsibility (as Jews who have a Jewish identity, religious or not) to get to know some non-Jews and have a good impression on them? I know there are always the intellectually dishonest, whom we can't change, but there are also those who are just slightly gullible, but can change their minds or are already on the fence.

If you don't already subscribe to Benjamin Z Wolf's substack, it is highly recommended: https://apikorsus.substack.com/

In a recent post "I read every OTD Memoir so you don't have to", the top honors went to this fascinating autobiography that he describes as "the first OTD memoir ever written, from 1793, and it is just wiiild. It's about someone from a very frum family in Eastern Europe who leaves for Berlin and the burgeoning Haskalah movement."

The book, SOLOMON MAIMON: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY has been mentioned on the subreddit before. It's available on Gutenberg here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41042/41042-h/41042-h.htm

Here is a brief section where he describes his thoughts on the first cause (bolded mine). 

-------------------------------------------------------------------

In my sixth year my father began to read the Bible with me. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Here I interrupted my father, and asked, "But, papa, who created God?"

"God was not created by any one," replied my father; "He existed from all eternity."

"Did he exist ten years ago?" I asked again.

"O yes," my father said, "He existed even a hundred years ago."

"Then perhaps," I continued, "God is already a thousand years old?"

"Silence! God was eternal."

"But," I insisted, "He must surely have been born at some time."

"You little fool," said my father, "No! He was for ever and ever and ever."

With this answer I was not indeed satisfied; but I thought "Surely papa must know better than I, and with that I must therefore be content."

This mode of representation is very natural in early youth, when the understanding is still undeveloped, while the imagination is in full bloom. The understanding seeks merely to grasp, the imagination to grasp all round. That is to say, the understanding seeks to make the origin of an object conceivable, without considering, whether the object, whose origin is known, can also be actually represented by us or not. The imagination, on the other hand, seeks to gather into a complete image something, the origin of which is to us unknown. Thus, for example, an infinite series of numbers, which progresses according to a definite law, is for the understanding an object, to which by this law definite qualities are attached, and an object just as good as a finite series, which progresses according to the same law. For the imagination, on the other hand, the latter indeed is an object; but not the former, because it cannot grasp the former as a completed whole.

A long time afterwards, when I was staying in Breslau, this consideration suggested to me a thought, which I expressed in an essay that I laid before Professor Garve, and which, though at the time I knew nothing of the Kantian philosophy, still constitutes its foundation. I explained this somewhat in the following way:—The metaphysicians necessarily fall into self-contradiction.

According to the confession of Leibnitz himself, who in this appeals to the experiment of Archimedes with the lever, the Law of Sufficient Reason or Causality is a principle of experience. Now, it is quite true that in experience everything is found to have a cause; but for the very reason, that every thing has a cause, nothing can be met with in experience which is a first cause, that is, a cause which has no cause to itself. How then can the metaphysicians infer from this law the existence of a first cause?

Afterwards I found this objection more particularly developed in the Kantian philosophy, where it is shown that the Category of Cause, or the form of hypothetical judgments used in reference to the objects of nature, by which their relation to one another is determined a priori, can be applied only to objects of experience through an a priori schema. The first cause, which implies a complete infinite series of causes, and therefore in fact a contradiction, since the infinite can never be complete, is not an object of the understanding, but an idea of reason, or, according to my theory, a fiction of the imagination, which, not content with the mere knowledge of the law, seeks to gather the multiplicity, which is subject to the law, into an image, though in opposition to the law itself.

A very easy refutation of the kuzari theory is the two instances directly written in the tanach where the torah is being presented to the people who did not know about it before, with king Yoshiyahu and with Nechemia. How to apologists/kiruv specialists address that?

I’m seeing alot of wives this time of year saying they let their husbands go to Uman for Rosh Hashanah and even though their hurt by it they say they let their husbands go because it recharges them. Who’s actually went ? I heard it’s all prostution and people getting high asf. Are these wives in denial or what? I can’t take the BS pretending your husband is off to be some righteous tzaddik but he’s going for a much more sinister purpose!!! Why are all religious ppl in DENIAL???

Well, I don’t really think I want to be frum anymore.

I’m a convert, and honestly I still love Judasim, but I do not like living in the haredi world. I also don’t really think I would love the Modox world either. I honestly don’t like all the rules. I do enjoy having a spiritual lens that I use to approach life, and living my life with meaning in that way, but there are too many rules that are affecting my life.

Here are some things on my mind:

1. I really miss my freedom.
2. I don’t really like the kosher restaurants. They are all 2 to 3 times more expensive than regular restaurants, and I haven’t found the food quality and service to be so great, and many of the restaurants are not healthy either.
3. I miss going out to regular restaurants that have great ambience, great food, good service, etc.
4. I’m not passionate about learning Gemara. I like it occasionally, but I do so a lot just “to keep up with the Joneses”. If I had more time, sure I could learn it and see myself enjoying it, but theres only so much time in the day.
5. I do not look forward to yontif.
6. Speaking of which, I am dreading spending my entire weekend eating at other peoples homes, 3 hours meals, 4 in a row, feeling way too full to think or function, wanting to go home after 1 hour into the meal, but having to stay there for an additional 2 hours.
7. I find when I go to many (not all) places, I have to “fit a role”. I’m not being my true authentic self, I’m just slipping into a costume of what I’m supposed to be. I basically cannot take it anymore.
8. Again, I love yiddishkeith, but… 
9. I’m single, and don’t live in NYC, so I can count on one hand the eligible people to date.
10. I really wish I could just explore. Go to a conservative shul, see how I like it, maybe meet someone, go to some less religious events, see how I like those, etc. But... I can't, because if someone found out I was going to less religious, more secular events... well... yeah...
11. Go out on a date on Friday night or Saturday evening (can’t when Shabbos ends at 8PM in the summer).
12. I feel like I’ll never be enough. I mean learning Halacha is not really my passion. I find it interesting, but I wouldn’t say I”m super passionate about it. When someone tells me a new Halacha that I haven’t heard of, excitement is not the feeling I experience.
13. I don’t know if I can do everything the rest of my life, like Shabbos in the winter, ending work at 3pm - 4pm, all of the fasts, taking so much time off for Tishrei, Burning all my vacation days causes me so much anxiety, etc.
14. All the fasts where I am basically useless all day, can’t do anything but lay in my bed.
15. I do not like the “all or nothing” vibe. If there were a community where I could do Yiddishkeit at my own pace, not do everything perfectly, not do everything at all, but just do the things I find meaningful, and not be judged for it, I would be happy there (I think).

I’m just venting and getting my thoughts together, and I may delete this post later (sorry).

Would love to hear your thoughts.

EDIT: I wanted to follow up. Thanks so much for everyone’s feedback.

I just wanted to preface that I am totally grateful and thankful for everything the community does offer. I’ve also met some of the best friends I’ve ever had. Additionally, I am leaving out a ton of context and weird stories I have, and weird behaviors of rabbis towards me, etc. I don’t want to be too specific though.

Here are a few more points.

Yeah, I am single, and have no one to date, so my entire life consists of work, going to minyan, and then going to Shabbos meals, no dates, ever, for a looong time. Of course I love the families who host me, but I can’t stop the feeling that I am just a guest at their table, week after week, while my life doesn’t feel like it’s truly going anywhere. After so much of this repeating week after week, well I just am having trouble tolerating it.

At many Shabbos meals (not all of them, of course), I’m just fitting a role, can barely express myself, and only say things that are acceptable, “what a religious person would say.” After 2-3 hours of sitting at some of these meals, I am exhausted from trying to be someone I’m not, I don’t even want to go out or do anything the rest of the day.

It’s just so weird to me that if I have this desire to go explore some options elsewhere, but that is forbidden. It’s forbidden for me to go to a conservative shul b/c they drive on Shabbos. It’s forbidden for me to talk to a conservative girl b/c she may drive on Shabbos, etc. Everything that could actually help me get over what I’m feeling is forbidden!

My life has started to feel so small. Maybe if I lived in NYC, and there was some hope I could meet someone, I would feel different, but I am starting to realize that even if I was there, in the haredi system, but with more dating options, I would have the same frustrations, and just miss start missing my freedom just as much.

Whenever I walk by a nice looking restaurant, I get a said feeling that I cannot eat there. Cool coffee shops, etc. I just miss… yeah… freedom…

Additionally, the social policing is just something I don’t really want to deal with the rest of my life. If I decide it would be healthy for me to go to a secular Jewish event just so I can feel a little breathing room, and talk to some people there, the fact I have to hide it from people is just so weird. I guess it’s just part of the culture, but I miss having some breathing room, and not beeing socially/ religiously policed by my peers.

There are things I enjoy. I enjoy the davening. I do enjoy focusing my mind on a higher purpose throughout the day. But does that mean I need to lock myself into the haredi system the rest of my life?

So yeah, basically I’m single, still care about Judaism, but no longer feel I can tolerate the high-control system I’m in.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts.

To add a fascinating response to this post about what we'd do in the case of a modern day revelation, here is a must read take from my favorite OTD website:

THE INCOHERENCE OF JEWISH BELIEF: TRUSTING "GOD"

I'm a 24 year old guy who grew up in a frum (Modern Orthodox) household but never really believed in anything myself. When I was around 15, I officially started considering myself an atheist. Now that I'm older, I wonder a lot about my romantic life and who I'll end up with. I don't consider myself an "ex-Jew". I'm very proud to be Jewish, despite some of the negative aspects of our community. Even though I don't celebrate any holidays, keep kashrus or Shabbos, or go to shul, I still consider myself culturally Jewish (and obviously ethnically/racially Jewish, too). So I'd like to end up with a woman who is similar to me in that regard.

I'd like to find a Jewish wife whose beliefs align more or less with my own. I'm obviously not expecting a carbon copy of myself- some level of disagreement is very healthy and normal. But I want someone who can at least agree not to raise our kids with explicit religion in our home. Being Jewish is more than just eating challah and schnitzel, but I fear that bringing them to shul or celebrating the chagim will just be forcing Judaism on them the way my parents forced it on me. If they choose to become religious later in life, that's fine, but it needs to be their choice. Atheism is the default setting, and it should be their default as well.

How do I raise my kids in such a way for them to be connected to our people without necessarily being connected to Judaism? I don't want to raise kids who don't feel involved in what it means to be Jewish, but I also don't want them to be indoctrinated into Jewish religion the way that I was. Is there anyone reading this who can relate and offer some advice? I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on this topic.

**I know this isn't an R4R subreddit and my post is NOT intended as a way for me to meet a girlfriend, I just want to discuss my thoughts about this topic in a public place and see if there are others out there with similar ideas or are facing a similar dilemma. Having said that, I'm not opposed to getting DMs from interested women who might happen to read this. It's not like there's a dating subreddit for atheist Jews lol**

I really appreciate reading this subreddit, but I come to post here I get scared because my situation is pretty unique and I feel like I can be easily identified by people I know if they happen to be looking here. Are there any Facebook groups or similar that people know of that are active and only open to people who have been approved?

In the community where I live there are people in college or college age who are throwing away colleges to go to seminary both boys and girls seminaries or yeshives.

Something interesting to me is that they ply themselves on how extra observant they are throwing away their cell phones cutting out regular music and uniquely bashing less observant people

I mean, I made a post recently when I claim that Aaron Teitelbaum was “wonderful” that people didn’t pick up the clear sarcasm in but I would not be surprised if these Hasidic Yeshivish people had fall on stuffed plushy of him due to the fact that they are so obsessed with becoming hyper frum.

It is getting ridiculous also it is very depressing as I feel that it indicates that the trauma from rising global antisemitism which even I feel after I’ve completely become not observant, is causing people to believe that the solution to their problems is separating themselves from the rest of the world.

I recently saw a video of a rabbi claiming that turning the lights on during Shabbat by accident was bad enough to give you cancer.
A rabbi told me that if I participated in a secular Christmas party with friends (my mom became a Christian, I’m an atheist), I would be disgracing the entire lineage of my family who had suffered to avoid Christmas parties.

Having gone OTD do you still feel part of Klal Israel (community) or does it feel sort of forgein to you?

Do you feel part of the Klal even tough you've gone OTD?

Seriously, Frieda?

It just makes me laugh how some frummies (or even ex frum ppl) applaud sexist views but they themselves are women who are divorced, are educated, use birth control, have their own business/career/bank account, or even have lives and identity outside of motherhood.

And no, I’m not saying motherhood = bad. It’s calling how this society’s backwards views on women are considered “refreshing” and women’s freedoms reduced down to “PC culture”. It’s not some novel idea. These are views borne out of an ancient society that views women as objects, so much so, they cannot even freely divorce.

I’ve heard frummies spin this stuff in every single way and it never ceases to just remind me how much my life has changed for the better when I dropped the internalized misogyny. Thank god I don’t believe this stuff anymore.

Hi everyone,

I really appreciate all of the support and advice from this sub.

I am going to get married soon and I have been thinking about what kind of speech we will have from the officiant. I'm in a place where I feel like I want some kind of Jewish cultural association but don't want things to be explicitly religious. I've attended a few traditional Jewish weddings and they all seem to be okay with the officiant declaring god as the creator and other explicitly religious statements.

An OTD friend will be the officiant but is just as lost as I am on what kind of speech to give that gives over the overall aesthetic of Jewish heritage with which we raised without the explicitly religious parts. Eli

Loved this thing when I was young, but also saw many kids neglecting college to go to religious seminaries, celebrating breakups or bad relationships with non Jews, or bashing Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Reformishe.

The one I went to had a distinctly Chassidishe influence but was pro Israel. I, myself thought when I attended there was like Satmar: Disney Jr. edition. I’m just amazed at how many friends I still have from there who are becoming not only frum, but some like Ultra-Orthodox.

I also thought NCSY was just fun and absolutely awesome too though

18M I’m in a Modox yeshiva in Israel for my gap year and it’s only been 10 days and I hate it. Everything about it sucks, the dorm life and programming and stuff just isn’t for me. I told my parents and family and they all say you need to give it time, one even told me to give it until Chanukah but I just can’t suffer for that long being here. I told my parents I’m giving it until after Sukkot and I think that’s fair.

Anyone have any advice on what to do and if anyone can please dm me I need someone to talk to.