Dear Heshy,
I follow you on facebook fairly regularly and noticed your post on what you hate about baalei teshuva. Now before all of your fans jump me for being offended by something you wrote, I read your site and facebook page regularly and find most of what you say to be true and funny, but this is the first time I’ve been truly offended by something you have posted. What’s with the hate? What did the BT community ever do to you? Aren’t you married to someone who didn’t grow up frum? Aren’t you yourself skeptical about frumkeit and constantly on a path that doesn’t make you the regular run of the mill FFB?
I’m also saddened that you chose to foster hatred and sinat chinam on erev shavuot. Just because we were searching for something that our former secular lifestyles couldn’t offer us, doesn’t make us crazy or less Jews than you. Sure, it’s funny to offer jabs at our slow pace of learning the way of the frum community. We can’t exactly unlearn our bacon flavoring, proper grammar usage, and table manners over night. It takes years to develop a palate for tasteless, mostly brown, foods. It takes years to learn how to dress like an 18th century Polish peasant. It takes years for us to speak like we’re trying to transliterate Yiddish to English.
Do you think we enjoy looking like fools when we daven? Do you think it’s easy for us to throw away our entire music collection, only to be told later on that secular music is technically kosher? You act as if we are doing this stuff on purpose. How are we supposed to just join a community and know exactly what to do? I have news for you, we want to be just like you. We envy FFB’s, but you’re not making it any easier by fostering the discrimination that we receive from them.
I would love to have the proper hand motions when learning, the proper bowing technique for modiim, and the proper enunciation of my Hebrew. It’s not easy being a baal teshuva, it’s a scary FFB dominated world out there and most of the time Frum Satire serves as our guide. I cannot tell you how many kiruv rabbis and rebetzins read your blog for insight into how to teach us better, how to help us integrate. My friends and I all read you on a regular basis, but I couldn’t let your post slip by as just another jab at us.
I saw that you mentioned something about the FFB Master Race as a joke, but it’s no joke. I’m not sure if you realize this, but you’re one of the only FFB’s that understands the BT community, yet most of the time we become too frum to read your blog and then some us tend to bash it. Yes, I admit that there are folks within the BT community who feel it their right to give unsolicited mussar. I would never dream of giving someone mussar, it’s offensive to tell someone other than yourself how to go about in their yiras shamayim or avodat Hashem.
I really wondered if you would post this and to convince you to put it up as a form of teshuva for causing sinat chinam on erev shavuot, I figured I would give you a list of things that are good about BT’s. I know you like to look at the evil and bad, but for once we will reveal the good.
I know you FFB’s like to think that you’re better, yes, there are lots of sources as to why we’re better, but in the end you rarely see BT’s running any of the major Jewish organizations or yeshivas. It’s like we BT’s should rise up and demand rights, but instead we hope that someday we will be considered on a level equal to that of FFB’s. I should note that you may fail to see the value we add to your community, but we have brought fashion, music and good food to the frum community. Without us you would probably be stuck in your 18th century garb, eating kishke, while listening to that smooth jazz obsession that the frum community is still stuck on.
Thanks,
If you post this, please do so anonymously.
Kudos to writer and kudos to Heshy for publishing – though personally I thought the BT shtick was so BT’s wouldn’t feel left out, the only ones you weren’t writing about.
Obviously something struck a nerve.
Great post 🙂
Don’t take it so personally. I come from a BT family and married a BT, and don’t find anything offensive about these “jabs”. I’m guessing you haven’t been practising for too long, the gung ho attitude typically wears off after 15-20 years.
And while some twisted FFB’s think they are the top of the food chain, most realize that it makes absolutely no difference. Every group has it’s righteous and it’s a-holes.
Yea, after about 10 years you realize Orthodox Judiasm doesn’t know what its talking about either and you stop caring what other’s think.
FFB’s are the people whom natural selection chose as being the best at being frum. That’s why we’re so much better at all the stuff you mention.
I think they are more the product of inbreeding by the looks of them and level of intelligence.
Thank us converts for freshening up the genetic pool while you’re at it!
Yes, while BTs and converts have much in common, they are different regarding genes. The question is, do FFBs want the genetic pool freshened? Is that necessarily a positive contribution? Some might say that converts water down, rather than freshen, the genetic pool.
Does anyone with a degree in biology say converts water down the gene pool?
“Some might say…” doesn’t refer to people with degrees in biology, it refers to people who might question the wisdom of “freshening up the genetic pool. ” Jews have survived for many centuries with their original genetic pool, more or less, intact. And, in any case, people with degrees in biology probably believe in evolution – how much do they really know?
I have a degree in Biology but this basic stuff that even the most ignorant should know. It really depends on the genetic diversity within a population. For example, about 1 in 300 people in the general population are estimated to have a faulty gene that can lead to Tay-Sachs. That rate is much higher, about 1 in 30, for Ashkenazi Jews. Accordingly, genes from converts may enhance physical diversity in the FFB population but not necessarily the spiritual one. I sense the greater FFB community is more interested in spiritual cohesiveness and exclusivity than physical diversity. Of course, what do I know…I’m neither BT or FBB.
Great anonymous post and credit to Heshy for posting it!
this discussion is starting to get crude. the human body is the image of god. period.
capitalize the G
Couldn’t find the questionable post, but I applaud this response. Usually Heshy’s critiques of BTs is over our fanstical enthusiasm. I’m a long-time reader of this blog, for one reason: to break the tension of being a struggling & sincere BT who (most of the time) feels overtaxed and under-valued by the jewish establishment; to sit back, blow off a little steam, and read about some other folks with good enough sense to occasionally just throw up their hands and say “F this S”. As a BT of going on 10 years, my children (3 within the next few years) are reaching the age where they’ve outgrown the local religious educational resources, and we’re frantically researching sending the first to yeshiva, perhaps ahead of a family move to a larger community, and I have serious concerns about what awaits us. And by that, I mean attitudes. Having become one of the most frum families at our little local Chabad outpost, I imagine that we’ll very soon become quite little fish in a very big pond. Widespread current good reputation and respect for our standards of household kashrus (food-wise and other) will likely give way to suspicion in a more mature community. Frequently davening for the amud will likely give way to, “Aaaww! that’s so cute! Now please sit down before you hurt yourself. Some of us have places to be this year.” Despite Heshy’s frequent assertions that Moshe Rabbeinu wore and mandated a Borsalino and Capota, I don’t see them in my future, although this year’s sefira-beard may be permanent. In researching schools, I’ve encountered true indignation at my hopeless inability to pay $60K tuitions (ie, x4) via cash. Evidently, the attitude is, “Let me get this straight: for the past 30 years, you haven’t been studying gemara, and you havent been amassing truly offensive quantities of cash… what kind of Jew are you? It’s one or the other, don’t you know!” Evidently, teaching part-time at the kollel enables one to support a family of 12, and pay full tuition for the 8 oldest. Who knew? It’s hard to proceed in faith and and cheerily work toward a goal of a laying a solid Jewish upbringing and schooling for your kids when along the way, people are taking (often unspoken) jabs at such irrelevant things as those mentioned above: shuckling style (N/S vs E/W), preferred haircovering (tichel’s cheap and easy, and when the $250 mezuzah-checking bill comes due simultaneously with needing new tefillin for the bar mitzvah boy, family move closer to shul, and pesach all at once, anything helps), gartel width… A blue striped Tallis, which Admittedly I should know better than to be caught dead in.
FFBs: Lay off BTs. We are, after all, your own creation: we didn’t wake up one morning and try to frum it up without answering someone’s call. We didn’t decide to freak out about these things until they were brought to our attention. We think and act and behave as you’ve shown us. Don’t like? Go find a mirror and chew out our teacher. Kiruv is about winning back orphaned yids to a life of Torah and mitzvot, not amassing donations and endowments for pop-Kabbalah luncheons. BTs are the poster children for kiruv, not an annoyance.
Interesting and well-said, however, I have a few comments. (FTR, I’m not FFB):
1 – not every FFB feels strongly about kiruv. Those who do, often have other motives besides “winning back orphaned yids”. Like, making money (yes, kiruv can be a business) or bringing Mashiach for their own personal benefit.
2 – If the beard is staying this year, in a year or two, trust me, the Borsalino is a strong possibility.
3 – tuition (or begging for a scholarship) is your own problem. It’s a misconception of many BTs that the frum world is proud of them for having Jewish kids and will help them bankroll their darlings’ education. It ain’t necessarily so. Like any other financial undertaking, supporting your family is your own responsibility, unless you are willing to liquidate a lot of your assets and receive charity.
But I’m sure you know this already!
This is great Heshy. I was looking up Frum Improv and found your site. I didn’t know you were so funny.
I love the irony of how we are all BTs, right? Especially after Shavuout when we all just accepted our commitments all over again. Well… nice to see you on the web!! Keep on rockin~
B”H
Heshy. Just stop with the Ayn Hara before it becomes Loshon Hara, if not already. Dude! Issue an edict for people to refrain for player hating loshon on BT’s, Gerim, Widows, and Orphans. You ever know if you came from either one of those.
B’ahava,
Rabbi Akido
PS Heshy, You my guy that makes me laugh out of a depression. 😉