I just wanted to take a second to clarify something. My life probably seems a lot worse from my blog than it is. The truth is that mostly it's boring and busy with school. It so happens that the garbage with my community is one of the more interesting facets of my life.
Now, if you read the last post, you know what drama I'm talking about. However, many people seem to be misunderstanding something: people, who likely barely knew me decided what they thought about me and rambled it on and somewhere along the line, people who probably knew me just as well, accepted their truth as fact without stopping to think that maybe you shouldn't listen to what others say about people. It makes it even worse if a rabbi was involved in the repeating of myths.
Anywho, most of my life consists of my ignoring the corrupt Jewish community. I have friends from school and a very good friend that I worked with in 2005/2006. What I don't have, is close friends who are Jewish. I have a ton of acquaintances who are Jewish but, FRIENDS? I scratch my head if I try to come up with Jewish friends. Some of the acquaintances have done or said something that created a barrier to where I couldn't think of them as friends, ever. Others are just simply busy little social butterflies who have many close friends in their friend-etoire. One of the nice things about my acquaintances at my college's Hillel is that people aren't so into gossiping like the married women are. Most people have no clue that I'm a gyoress, because they don't, upon meeting me, hurl at me questions like, "what's your background? Where did you go to bais yaakov?" etc. Part of this might be due to the fact that when you go to someone for a meal, they really know you're not an FFB. FFB's have people. They have aunts, uncles, friends they went to camp with and friend of a friends. BT's and converts can be in this unfortunate position of not having people. The cold, dark reality is that people LOVE to take advantage of, or at least pity those less fortunate. Perhaps this ties back into what a commenter said a couple posts back or so about people wanting gerim to be helpless. We come in helpless and at the mercy of those with yichus and strings and unfortunately some of them want to keep us at their mercy. Another commenter said that the number one reason people go OTD is how the community treats them. I actually think this is more true of gerim and BTs than FFBs. After all, most FFBs that go OTD do do so for theological reasons. Some even had some nice yichus before going OTD. I read online somewhere that one person (not impossible to find out but, I don't want to say) was turned away a couple times from an OTD support group because of his yichus.
Ok, well, this post turned into an ADHD brain fart... and my friend is tutoring me in math tomorrow morning so, I must sleep my brain away...
I have known plenty of converts. One is my learning partner. In general they go through the first level of hell to be converted and then transfer out to the lower levels. But for some reason they stick with it. I think one thing that motivates my learning partner is the quality of the great books in Torah--Torah Gemara, Rambam, Rebbi Nachman. But I really don’t know. But one thing for sure--he can tell the difference between quality books and those that are second rate hacks. I think perhaps there are people like yourself that just have a Jewish soul and so no matter what they go through they just stick with it no matter what.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you should find a different group to hand with than bais yaakov graduates?
ReplyDeleteUmmm, most of my friends aren't Jewish. My closest friends right now consist of a muslim girl, a Russian girl, a Mexican-American girl, a black girl and an OTD guy.
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