u/Doooooovid

I'm on my way to Sweden for just a day. A decade ago as a teenager, I randomly decided to learn Swedish on Duolingo up to a pretty decent level. I never spoke it, but I could read a news article and maybe understand half the words, so I was probably competent in very basic interactions/small talk. I haven't touched Swedish since then—only a bit of German/Yiddish, which is obviously different. I forgot even many of the most basic words, but I know they are somewhere in my brain as they look super familiar.

I've been out of the Swedish world for so long. Does anyone know of any resources for picking it back up quickly? I will speed run vocab tonight, but I think some kind of simple/slow Swedish videos, shows, songs, online reading material, etc. could be amazing. I obviously don't expect to speak it conversationally in a day, but it would be a shame to finally come here after a decade and not be able to have at least some very basic interactions just to check the box. Thanks!

For context, I'm only fluent in English and can have very basic German conversations.

Long story, but I live in a different European country and I'm at a stage now where all my friends have graduated university and moved out, or lost contact with me, etc... ok basically I'm lonely atm, and I'm extra motivated to have some level of social interaction on this current trip I'm on to Gothenburg. Furthermore, I often avoid interaction and end up having to push myself to socialize, so this would actually be good practice in being less awkward as well.

Does anyone have any tips? I plan on staying at a hostel, but I'm not sure where else to meet people. Is there a bar culture here? Also, I enjoy meeting other people with similar interests. I'm into hiking (which I plan on) and outdoors in general, chess, philosophy, etc. I'm studying Physics, so that is also something. Are there any clubs or meetups around these interests? What about networking events? I do only have a day here, so maybe that's pushing it. Please don't do a bunch of research for me of what's on, as I'm already doing this myself. But, if you know of anything or have any tips, that is much appreciated.

Additionally, what were the individual stages of going "OTD" (or was it just one instant realization)? Was it purely intellectual? Were any of your doubts prompted by experiences you've had with your community? What kept you on the derech until you went left?

One that came to my mind recently is that the Samaritans also claim to have a continuously-transmitted tradition from Sinai. Yiddishkeit of course claims that they are just outsiders that adopted Jewish customs, started to believe they are Jewish, and then were imported by the Assyrians to replace the Jews. Moreover, they are also, historically, "despised". They have been a heavily oppressed and small religion that maintains its identity, even after its holy sites were destroyed.

If they can be tricked into believing in national revelation, can't Jews also have been? Maybe JhL should have included a chapter addressing the Samaritans.

Anyway, I don't know how good my argument is. I don't know what I don't know. But what are some of yours? Are there any famous ones? What is the most rigorous?

I've been barely active in ham radio for the past several years, but I'm getting back into it in my mid-20's. I have tons of respect for the middle-aged and older hams, many of whom fulfilled their dream after retirement. Nonetheless, I have resolved to meet and interact with more younger hams like myself, for obvious reasons. Additionally, I believe the hobby (although it's so much more than a hobby) will unlikely survive under current circumstances.

My interests are a little niche, i.e. I love building tube radios (I even built a '1929' style type 45 transmitter). I understand that young people likely wouldn't be into this, but I also love working satellites, HF contests, APRS, messing around with VHF, etc. You would think that these areas of amateur radio would provoke interest among younger, more STEM and tech-oriented people, especially given the fast-evolving nature and innovation within the hobby. I could see ham radio opening the door for many a project that would look good on a CV or a Master's thesis.

As a current university student, I've observed that very few fellow STEM students know anything about ham radio. I've even EE students not know what it is at all. This is shocking, and it's clearly a failure among the ham radio community to present itself to the very people that can further continue and progress the hobby.

I'm not completely oblivious to why young people aren't interested. If a young engineering student decides to do some SWL and just finds older folk ragchewing about which medication they take (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that in of itself), they will likely find no interest. The dilemma here is that there are few young people involved, so why would young people get involved in something with so few young people? Anyway, I digress.

My university has a modest ham radio club (which I hope to get some time to participate in soon). Besides that, is there a place where younger hams hang out, or part of the hobby in which they are very active? I might not be able to change this broader reality, but I can change my own actions/environment.

I got super into ham radio when I was in my early teens, a little over a decade ago. I remember the amount of people I could work on 10m during the peak of the last solar cycle, and that was considered a "bad" cycle. I have spent several years barely active as I've been busy with college, etc., and have recently started dabbling with radio again. I find the bands so much quieter than I remember.

This current solar cycle was ostensibly stronger, and I've heard so many less operators on 10m, as well as on all the other bands in general. For context, I mainly just operate analogue (SSB, CW, FM). Is this an issue of an aging ham population? Have that many people migrated to FT8? What's going on?

How have you handled dating once leaving the frum world? Once there was no structure, shadchan to talk to or set way to date, how did you (assuming you did) figure it out? What values/aspects did you look for? Were there any leftover frum components in your approach? I assume there are many who are still interested in long-term relationships/getting married.

Does everyone just go online, or is there still a large amount happening in-person?

I imagine this is an especially huge jump for those with a more chareidi/chasidish background. I'm still curious to hear anyone's stories.

I'm a guy that became BT in early adulthood, so I've never been on the receiving end of this, but I've heard of some crazy tznius expectations that go well beyond halacha that chareidi girls have to put up with in their school/sem. For example, I know one girl whose high school participated in some kind of marathon, which she walked, because she was told she couldn't run. I have heard other things, such as not being allowed to drink out of a straw, but I'm unsure how true these are.

I also live in a chareidi community, and the women, especially the single girls, are quite bizarre. They seem very stiff as they walk around, and will not make eye-contact, nor acknowledge a guy's existence. Many will also rarely show any emotion whatsoever in almost any environment. Are these just weird cultural habits that are developed, or are they specific taught these things as extreme chumras?

Are there any weird idiosyncrasies that you have developed (or even still have) due to this? I'm obviously not talking about basic tznius, i.e. the basic clothing requirements, but things that are under the surface (I guess that's a pun), things that one like myself would be shocked to find out.

Chasidim are obviously having more kids than basically anyone else. They are usually pressured to get married by 19, etc. Their population more than doubles every 20 years. I am for people having kids, but the fact is that no one will keep up with them, unless they also take extreme measures. I figure they will probably be the majority of the state of Israel at some point in the near-ish future, as well as the large majority of international klal Yisroel.

I don't mean any judgement upon individual chasidim whatsoever—it's the ideology they're indoctrinated with. I need not say this, but their culture is obviously unable to sustain a modern civilization. As someone who really values knowledge and reading in addition to Torah, it seems completely dystopian to me for a society to deliberately deprive their kids of skills and ability to interact with the world, i.e. learning English, having good manners, knowing how to use a computer, knowing basic arithmetic, etc., etc. The only reason I'm able to pursue a meaningful career and take my life into my own hands is because I have these things. I have a community, but I don't depend on it, nor the government, for basic living, BH.

Note that I live in a largely Satmar and Belz community. I may be unaware of how severe these issues are with every chasidishe community, although I know these ones are some of the biggest.

The state of Israel, etc., should prepare for this, and think of solutions. What are some possible solutions? What is no one talking about this?

I am (still) BT, but I've gotten very turned off by the dominant kiruv organizations. While I was initially very "inspired" by Chabad (and enjoyed other organizations too), my opinion of them has soured. One reason for this is that these organizations tend to have backwards, insular and very dogmatic hashkafas which, frankly, they often place ahead of Judaism. While I'm still adherent, I've thought a tremendous amount about leaving or seriously altering my approach once the "inspiration" phase was over.

My experience basically was:

-As a very young adult, I had family issues, etc. I desperately needed to find an antidote to my chaos (to reference a famous psychologist)—to find structure—so I experimented with the religion my ancestors kept.

• The message that every Jew is really meant to live like a Jew resonated with me, as did the perceived structure, stability and happiness of the Jewish families I had met. I became orthodox for a combination of intellectual and emotional reasons (but thankfully never fully towed the line of any particular movement).
• As I got to a mentally healthier state, I came to grips with the fact that I was "mekareived" at an extremely vulnerable stage of my life, especially with everything that was going on. This made me, to this day, seriously question my own motives for becoming religious, and I decided to start rebuilding my faith from scratch, and asking if this is really what I believe in.
• Later moving to a Jewish community on my own really changed my perspective. I fully realized the all these different kiruv organizations I had experienced really built a bubble for their subjects they brought in—a sort of "BT world". I found out the real Jewish world was not exactly the same as what they presented. I also met many Jews (especially the non-Chabad chassidim) that seemed miserable and without meaning or self-expression. This is obviously a generalization.

One last thing I want to share is that I'm not (at least I try not to be) angry. I don't think that this is all the result of ill intentions of those working within the kiruv world, but mainly an issue of bad ideology and ignorance. Furthermore, I assume most on this subreddit are independent thinkers, and that's how you all ended up here. I think most of the world are not independent thinkers, and so maybe they are just destined to get completely brainwashed by a simplistic ideology, and that's just the way it is.

What's your experience with the baal-teshuvah world? I know there are many different kinds of BT/former BT out there, and many did not have this experience at all.

*As this is a long post, feel free to just read and answer the title. But, it is appreciated if you read :)

I reckon that most frum people don't actually have the emunah shleima they say they do. I, a BT, am personally still frum, but have a lot of questions (don't we all?). There are certain appalling facts about the frum (especially the chareidi) community that really, really challenge my faith, about which I have another post.

It's fair to say that I don't fully believe, 100%, in what I'm "meant" to believe. The reason I'm religious is that I have realized that there are many things in Tanach that I do strongly believe in, especially the values, but am I 100% sure that the akeida, or that Samson had special hair powers? Of course not. I'm halfway through reading the Kuzari, but it hasn't really changed this about me. I also don't know what I don't know, and I don't fully trust my own reasoning in most respects. Anyone heard of the preface paradox?

It's so typical for frum people to answer this question with, "Of course it's true! It's obvious." I think that's just something they say. I think it's normal to be unsure, and like Descartes said, you must pick a path to lead yourself out of the woods, because most any path will bring you to a better place than where you would otherwise remain.

Interestingly, I have actually met some frum people that do think, at least somewhat, the way I do. In one example, I met this one kiruv-ey type Rabbi that invited me into his house on Shabbos. He had also invited a lot of BT's from the local BT yeshiva (that he's not affiliated with). He quickly caught onto the fact that I'm not satisfied with the typical answers, as he astutely put it. He then criticized much of the frum world, especially the outreach/kiruv side of it. He said something like: "do you really think they actually believe in moshiach when they daven for geulah"? The young BT's there were appalled, but I obviously resonated. He then recommended the book 'Six Constant Mitzvos", which I read. I didn't like it that much, although it did slightly touch on these same concerns with the community at large (just not sufficiently).

So, I'm really curious. When you all went "OTD", did you realize that you never really believed? Were you conscious the whole time that you didn't believe? Or, were you truly convinced, and then had an awakening? (No judgement, whatsoever, regardless of the case. I can absolutely understand how someone can get completely brainwashed growing up in a chareidi cult, being deliberately deprived of knowledge and ability to reason.)

First of all, I'm apologizing ahead of time as this post is partially a vent. And if this post is too long, then skip to the last paragraph, where I'm asking the question (but, it's better that you don't).

I currently live in a completely Haredi community with Haredi house mates on a street that entirely speaks Yiddish. I am B.T., but have always been somewhat well educated/levelheaded and knew from the beginning that the Haredi hashkafa was wrong. I've been living in this community for some time now, and my opinion on this cult-like worldview and hive mind has gone from 0 to negative 10. I still love the individual people and often don't blame them, but they live in an oppressive culture. If I had a kid that decided they wanted to become Haredi, that would be a nightmare situation.

It took me several years of living frum to realize that I'm unfairly grouped in this arbitrary label (and misnomer) of 'MO', even though I probably live much closer than they do to average frum Jews from 100 years ago (Haredim became way more extreme in the last century, and are thus, in fact, more "modern"). 'MO' just means you're a normal Jew that has a normal job and acts and looks like a normal, productive member of society.

Most of y'all already know this, but here is what I commonly witness, on a regular basis, from individuals I know:

-Extreme lack of basic knowledge on all sorts of subjects.

-General inability in being able/knowing how to interact with outsiders (speaking/reading English, having good manners, etc.)

-Not knowing how to use computers/wasting hours a day talking with airlines, banks, etc. on the phone.

-Calling literally everything goyish, and thus refusing to live like a normal person.

It's worth noting that although I was never Haredi per se, I was drawn to some aspects of their hashkafa early on and was somewhat brainwashed by them (like most baalei teshuva, having gone through their yeshivas, etc.), before making a deliberate decision to completely disassociate myself from that worldview.

Although I'm still religious, I am wondering what many of y'all would think about me staying religious while observing what's going on. All this rubbish does make me question my religion a lot more, but at the end of the day, I do believe in the values of the Torah, and I try to do so, simply, without associating with Haredim. I actually think that their culture is antithetical to Judaism. Additionally, I actually think that their emunah is usually not genuine, as it is based on lack of knowledge rather than consciously picking from a set of possible beliefs. That's why, I think, so many of them (including some of you) went hard OTD as soon as some doubt entered the mind, because they weren't allowed to explore knowledge or entertain such doubts growing up. In a way, they are actually tinok shenishba. To be clear, I'm not criticizing anyone here as you all have your individual stories, and I've also thought hard and long about whether I actually believe in Judaism myself. Do you agree with me, or do you believe that Haredism logically follows orthodox Judaism, and that I should just leave orthodox Judaism?

I'm currently taking a 7-week Calculus I class over the summer. I also took College Algebra and Pre-Calculus in accelerated 8-week sessions and got virtually perfect grades. My algebra, especially, is good, and I always scored between 96% and 100% on the exams. However, I'm halfway through this Calculus I class, and I got around 45% on the first two exams (US grade). I am going to try and scrape by with a C, but it's very likely that I will end up having to drop the class and retake it in Fall.

I feel like I'd be doing just fine if this were a normal one-semester-long class, putting in around five hours a day into this class. With enough time, I can understand the concepts, but this class blows by each concept so quickly. Every couple of days is a new concept. I usually don't have enough time to finish the homework, as every other problem looks different and requires a whole new 10 minute video to watch. Then, once I get to the exams, I simply struggle figuring out when to apply which rule, and remembering how to execute the rule itself.

I read in so many places that the biggest struggle people have in calculus is with the algebra. Therefore, it's safe to say I was overconfident going into this. It turns out the algebra is not the issue for me. Would many others struggle in a seven-week course, or am I likely doing something wrong?

I often try to meet new people, or start conversations with people I already know, but the conversation will fizzle out usually after exchanging a few basic words. I'm interested in keeping conversations going, simply because this is how connections are made, and I'm interested in connecting with people. The conversation is just a tool, one that I struggle to use. Who else struggles with what to say?

As many of ya'll know, we are not always introverted, but we may appear that way as we can struggle to socialize, and I do often feel the need to socialize, meet new people, network, etc. But I often experience this horrible problem when I put myself in social situations. I'll give a recent example.

I just showed up at a local gathering of fellow young professionals where it's normal to network, make friendships, meet people of the opposite gender, etc. I had been here before and loved it, but this time, when I tried introducing myself to people, we would exchanged names. They didn't seem particularly interested, and they immediately turned around, walked back to the friends they were talking to, and carried on. I felt very ignored. No one came up to me, either.

Here's my approach: I look around and see different pre-existing friend groups standing and chatting with each other (I was the only new person in the room and didn't know anyone). So I keep looking around, pacing with drink and popcorn in hand, and occasionally I will see somebody temporarily standing alone, or leave their buddies to refill a drink or something. I mentally lock on and approach, and attempt to make eye-contact. If and when that is established, I ask what their name is, etc. After this process, the above result would happen, and I ended up sticking out like a sore thumb, being the only person in the room not actively in a group chatting and laughing about things, which was a very familiar feeling. I kept trying, but eventually left.

As stated, this often works, and often not. What I did notice is that I was more tired that day and had barely slept the night before, having taken a long flight. When this is the case, I sometimes talk too softly and unenthusiastically, and I think that can put people off. So it may have been me, but it also may have been that particular crowd itself, which I failed to recognize as not welcoming or cliquey (there were maybe 40 people, so it's hard to believe that about all of them). I always wonder why others (as easily, visually observable) don't end up in this situation, and think maybe it's just because most newcomers would immediately identify the environment as unwelcoming and just leave before it gets awkward.

I used to experience this way more, but in my mid-twenties, it still is an issue. Does anyone else experience this problem? Does anyone else stick out like a sore thumb?

Just a funny story: Years ago at age 18, I thought it would be normal to just pop into a group of people standing and chatting, and make a compliment to one whom I knew. (Maybe this works for really cool people, but I'm not cool enough.) I got the most cold sounding thank you and judgmental look ever and learned my lesson.