Dear

I deeply empathize with the pain that permeates your words. You talk about losing something that was very precious. The pure emuna you once felt, how simple and clear everything was, and suddenly the foundations of that emuna were undermined quite quickly (in one year!). Your childhood, with all its simplicity, ended. Oy, how painful this inner turmoil can be! I am not surprised by the harsh words you used, about “crashing,” and “great emotions that are blocked.”

I also detect your yearning for the fire that has gone out and the flavor that has been lost. You feel like a fraud, and dishonest, and may even have difficulty with your gender identity, and all these join the fear that all the boundaries have been breached, and perhaps even that you have fallen into a pit with no way of climbing out.

This fear is even doubled by your diagnosis of OCD. There are OCD sufferers whose obsessive-compulsiveness is actually expressed in being even more stringent concerning halacha, but you feel that it is making your doubts even greater.

Here I must tell you that I am not a therapist, so I can’t address your OCD properly in this answer. My suggestions for you will therefore be more focused and rational (after all, my field of expertise is the exact sciences).

I hope that for your own good you are in therapy, and that these issues are raised there. If you would like help in a broader context, you can write here again and we will try to direct you to an appropriate responder or therapist.

You ended your letter with words that resonated very strongly with me. You wrote, “I need for someone to save me already,” which prompts me to ask how you would like to be saved. Do you want someone to help do tshuva, to convince you that the way you were raised is correct?

Do you want help adapting your behavior and outward appearance to your new perceptions? Do you want to speak with someone who could offer you insights into the issues that caused your emuna to crumble and aroused your skepticism?

Or maybe you only need a place where you can mourn your loss of innocence and express your pain in the changes you feel. Or do you want something else entirely? This is a question you need to answer for yourself. What kind of saving are you hoping for?

Any answer, even if it’s unreasonable that it could be practical, will help you to understand yourself and what you are seeking.

Your feelings are far from simple, your grief, yearning and fear are very deep, but I think that some of your aches are growing pains.

The educational role of your parents and the establishment toward you have ended, and now it’s your turn to take responsibility for yourself, and to choose your worldview. Ultimately, you can come out of this process greater and stronger, as someone who has chosen her path.

In the meantime, let’s talk a little about your eyes having been “opened.” You mentioned that you used to feel connected to Hashem, spiritual and imaginative.

This statement seems to infer that in order to have emuna, a person has to be naïve, daydreamy and irrational. Did your religious education consist of only imagined spirituality, or also in-depth, well-founded and convincing ideas?

I mentioned your letter to the most rational person I know, whom I met during my geology studies, while she was taking her first steps toward a life of emuna.

I told her, “There is a girl who has discovered that there is essentially no proof of the emuna she was raised on.” My friend did not let me continue and cut me off. “Wait. There are proofs. Maybe she didn’t look in the right places, or didn’t look deep enough.”

“Do you really think you can prove the path you have chosen,” I asked her. “It depends on the type and level of proof you want,” she replied. “Judaism has been proven on a level of proof that is on par with any scientific theory that we know. We spend money, build planes, get vaccinations and take medicines based on proofs that are considered sufficiently founded (in scientific terms, this is called, ‘proven for all practical purposes’).”

Following that conversation, I invite you to prepare yourself to continue your clarifications and to think about the following questions: What do you define as a proof? When will you feel that a specific argument is correct and has been proven absolutely?

Let me explain. In order to prove that you are awake, pinching yourself is sufficient. Or maybe not. That is what a skeptic will argue. Perhaps you are dreaming that you feel a pinch.

In another area, is a historical proof supposed to be tangible on the same level as a pinch? Can a claim that a certain thing is very reasonable also be considered a proof?

In other words, the question is whether, in order to believe in a certain thing or to follow a certain path, you need a proof that this is the only way to think about that subject, and there is no room for another direction of thought. Perhaps you will agree to the concept that if a certain argument reaches a high level of probability, or that it is more reasonable than other ideas, it is very convincing.

Do you believe that you have to reach a state in which Judaism is proven to you to be the only truth and that anyone who thinks otherwise is an irredeemable fool? What would happen if you realize that Judaism is very logical, and that common sense and intuition show that it is a reasonable path to follow?

I can promise you that you are not the first, nor the only one to challenge emuna and to ponder these issues. So now I invite you to ask yourself how you will get to the places in which these issues are deliberated with the proper seriousness, in a language that you can connect with and with is suitable for you. You need to think how you will find a place that you can connect to and which will revive your spirituality.

If you expected to be offered a logical-mathematical style proof, the kind that is written in an organized fashion on a page, with a flow chart ending with the thing that has to be proven, then I fear you will be bitterly disappointed.

Nothing in the world can be proven that way. Even the geometric proofs you learned in high school rely on axioms that cannot be proven (the axioms of Euclidian geometry turned out to be mistaken in other geometric systems).

Similarly, the famous movement equations formulated by Isaac Newton, whose principles are still used for building systems with practical applications, such as the Iron Dome anti-missile missile system, and the engineering of rockets and motor vehicles – are not valid for very small or very large masses, or ones that are traveling at very high speeds.

Even science is based on basic assumptions that cannot be proven (such as the (wild!) assumption that human consciousness is a physical-chemical-biological phenomenon that given the necessary tools and time can be measured and fully explained solely by deterministic mechanisms). Pure, universal logic also relies on basic assumptions as “raw material,” that serves for corroborating arguments and drawing conclusions.

Not only is there no body of knowledge that rests solely on foundations that have been proven absolutely, but I think that the type of search and the research method always have to match the nature of the issue being explored.

It’s quite obvious that it is impossible to use an equation or the only human tools we have at our disposal (senses and intellect) to prove the presence of Hashem, who is not subject to the limitations in our system of concepts, and is completely intangible.

This doesn’t mean that He is not present and that it is impossible to be convinced on a high level of certainty that He exists, but the request for a logical-mathematical-scientific style proof is not really compatible with the subject you are trying to prove.

Although my dear friend claims that it is possible to “prove,” or at least to be convinced of the truth of Judaism on a rational level, I can still identify with your feeling that you were not told the whole story.

To this day, I am probably familiar with Judaism only on a superficial level, as a way of life, tradition and folklore, and perhaps as emotional content not anchored rationally and fundamentally.

You were brought up and have matured, and you are discovering that parts of your inner self has not been satisfied. You probably need philosophical persuasion and an in-depth discussion, and could be lacking a deep experience of belonging and connection.

Do not be taken aback. True, the story you were raised on is partial and incomplete, and certainly not perfect. You may even have found some serious inaccuracies. But today, as a mature young woman, you can look at this story differently than as a single unit that is either the absolute truth that you cannot live without, or the biggest conspiracy in history. 

You can separate the components of the story and comprehend that it is made up of several parts. Certain parts are more convincing and other parts less so. Some are presented in a more explained and reasonable manner, and others less so.

Other parts clash with your cultural world and threaten you personally, and still others leave you unmoved. I was happy to see that you were very precise in your wording, “I realized that not everything I was told as a child is right and obvious to me, as a given,” and did not write, “Everything I was told – all of it is wrong.”

So now, when you approach matters, to examine them closely and redesign yourself, you can choose to turn your back on it all, or you can choose to filter and improve and be precise.

The easiest choice is “all or nothing,” and I can really understand you if you feel a need to disconnect from a story that you loved and held onto so much, and now you might feel betrayed by it, or by the people who led you along a life path that is not right enough and convincing in your eyes.

It is completely natural if it is already difficult for you to reconnect, when you don’t have the simplicity and clarity you once had. I will only caution you that any alternative path you choose will only be partially convincing, just like your path until now.

No one has ever “seen the light.” If there were a sweeping proof based on logic that forces itself on every person who is willing to use rational thinking, we would all grasp onto it, but what can we do when, in practice, we humans are lost in a world in which the truth is missing.

We have no choice but to each gather convincing shreds of truth and combine them into the best possible personal creation, in keeping with our limitations. Perhaps this is the opening that is always reserved for the non-believer to disbelieve.

I would like to add a few words on the education you received, and the criticism and derision that you currently feel toward it.

In every society, not only in haredi society, the education of the young generation is done mainly incidentally and as “givens.”

Statements that were not even directed at us, or were said in another context, can influence us deeply and be engraved on our memories much more than many lessons that we learned in an organized format.

For example, when you were a child and came to play with your friend, maybe you heard her mother recommending a young woman for a shidduch, and saying, “She looks wonderful, she is very slim.” At that moment you were inculcated with the concept that slimness and beauty go together, and many convincing statements to the contrary at a later age will have no effect on uprooting that “education” you received.

In addition to the incidental learning, education was taught as “givens.” Doing things “because,” wearing certain clothes just because. We don’t eat other humans just because. Equality is a value just because.

Perhaps something that will help you understand this incidental education track and just how much it is inevitable in any form of education, as open and facilitating as it might be, is another quote from the friend I mentioned above, who just like you is upset about the tendentious education she received, but for her it was secular.

She said, “Secular education ostensibly transmits the message that ‘We provide all options, and you choose.’ But in truth there is a very clear agenda, that puts Hashem as a ‘non-option.’”

“The perception of every religious Jew anywhere as primitive and as having invented Hashem does not offer any mental opening to view a religious person otherwise.

“The more convinced a person is and speaks enthusiastically, the more he is looked upon as if he was brainwashed and deceived. This perspective is not taught deliberately and is not always on the table and transmitted consciously, but this is certainly the attitude.

“Even when Tanach is taught, it is done from a non-believing perspective, by non-believing people who relate to it as nothing more than a collection of legends. One of the results of this is that many Jews search for spirituality in faraway places around the world, and surprisingly it is there that they find the path to Judaism. In Israeli secular education, to consider whether Judaism is correct is as ridiculous as wondering whether Little Red Riding Hood was real. My feeling is that the teachers blocked our ability to see that there is a spiritual reality in the world.”

This means that the story you were told is not some deliberate plot or sequence of events defined by your parents and educators. It is more like a huge collection of your cumulative childhood experiences.

Until now you lived with them in harmony, and nothing was dissonant to you, and now, in a very natural fashion that is typical for your age, you have activated your skepticism and begun to question the givens. Even though this is a normal, healthy process, it entails the hard-to-accept crumbling of the collection of your experiences and the unity that prevailed among them.

To me, skepticism is a wonderful tool that helps us to sort through all those givens and choose what we want to continue holding onto and what not. Still, skepticism must be used cautiously.

Questioning everything and asking, “Who said so?” may seem courageous, but is actually quite an easy thing.

Did you ever consider how much simpler it is to say, “Maybe not,” instead of saying, “I think so”? Casting doubt is to decline to agree to commit; to live in a reality of instability. To attempt to decide what you accept is to take responsibility, to dare to commit in a positive way.

It’s okay in the beginning of the first stage to say, “Maybe not,” to everything, but the wise move is not to stay there, but to proceed to the next stage, of what to accept. Perhaps try to think of things you are convinced are true. Start to tell your story, the story that you will want to tell your children, and it has to be the most honest and precise that you can produce.

Let’s return for a moment to education. Notice that every child the world over receives logical or moral justifications for the practices of his parents or his society. Things are done a certain way because that is how we do them.

For example, you certainly believe that every person can do what he wants as long as he doesn’t hurt himself or others. Yes, that is how we were raised. That is the fashionable moral lesson that we breathe in 2022.

But is it more correct and just than older concepts that teach that there are things that are not appropriate, even if they do not harm anyone else?

The overwhelming majority of people who share this belief will not know how to justify it or defend it convincingly. In the average secular school there is also no discourse that debates the moral justification of a democratic government.

The students are taught that this is the form of government that exists here. They are taught how to behave in a democratic state, what civil rights are and how things are done in a democratic society, and that democracy is better and fairer. Why? Just because.

Whoever chooses to delve into this subject will learn the philosophy of ethics, with an emphasis on forms of government, and will encounter interesting materials, but general education does not discuss or relate to them. If you had graduated from the secular education system, you may have been astounded at a certain age, to discover how you were instilled with the ‘religion of evolution,’ practically without any proof, verification or debate of it, and even worse, you were not even told that this is a religion, but rather it was marketed as a purely scientific theory.

That’s the way things are. Education always starts from Chapter Two. Chapter One, which contains the basic assumptions and worldviews on which everything is based, is not addressed in the public discourse, and only a few delve into and study it. That is exactly what happens in haredi education too.

It starts with Chapter Two. All the basic assumptions of Judaism, including the musings on their veracity, the attempt to justify them or establish them, the historical development of the philosophical concepts, their various interpretations and forms of expression over the years – all these belong to Chapter One.

These are not taught in Beis Yakov or yeshiva ketana, and are also not discussed at most Shabbat tables.

The precious few who choose to learn these things in-depth and to delve into the hidden passageways of their complexities are invited to do so, and will have to search for the people and the sources of knowledge that can help them. Haredi education, like all education, has a few basic assumptions that are axioms. Anyone who is willing to accept these assumptions can move forward, and anyone who isn’t will have to choose whether to delve into them or get stuck.

For this reason, I believe you can understand your parents or teachers, who told you their familiar and favorite story.

True, perhaps they lack the intellectual or mental capacity to cast doubts or defend it rationally, but they are no different from 99.99% of the other parents anywhere else in the world.

Most parents don’t know how to explain the depth of the worldview and social processes that led to the way of life they lead and instill (sometimes with absolute confidence) in their children.

Most of them are not aware of the values that stand behind their practices and do not recognize the philosophical streams to which they belong.

This is not a unique characteristic of haredi society, and does not detract from the truth of the values on which you were raised. This does leave you room for clarification and in-depth investigation, and you are more than invited to do this in a serious fashion and to invest in understanding the issues that trouble you.

I suggest giving yourself a specific amount of time for an initial clarification of fundamental questions.

During that period, even if there is a discrepancy between your dress code and lifestyle and the way you think, that’s okay. Let this be, so that you can give yourself space for unlimited questions, without being shocked by the possible practical ramifications.

The level at which you currently keep mitzvot is a direct result of your emuna, so it is no wonder that you daven less and have lowered your standards for various mitzvot.

The very fact however, that you are searching and clarifying, attest to your good intentions, and I have no doubt that when you sort things out in your heart, keeping the mitzvot will also be easier for you.

I would just like to stress that even though right now you call this a show, I believe there is great importance in keeping the mitzvot that you are currently able to.

This will give you a sense of an anchor and a connection, and will help you not to sever all the ties, so that if or when you find the answers that are reasonable to you, it will be much easier for you to reconnect.

You wrote that you have already listened to lectures and given up on finding answers in books. I don’t know what style of materials you chose to read, and would still like to recommend the book “Pashut L’Ha’amin” – the guide for the rational believer, by Dr. Moshe Ratt.

He addresses the philosophy of concepts such as Hashem, emuna, rationalism, skepticism and fantasy, in easy language. I don’t think that one book can offer a solution to all the difficulties you mentioned. Your only option is to assemble your personal puzzle from an idea that you heard here and a point to ponder that you read there. No one person or single lecture can provide everything. but I have faith in your desire to reach the truth, and in the promise that one who comes to be purified will be assisted.

I hope you will find the answers that are waiting for you!

Chani R.