This passion for truth led me to reject Yiddishkeit when confronted with the incontrovertible evidence that it was a false belief system. I was never trained in epistemology, and as a yungaman, my ability to parse reality from fantasy was stunted by my training nevertheless, I spent almost fifteen years in the bais midrash being taught to care about the truth.
For me, being a Ben Torah entails being a person with a bikush ha’emes – someone who is committed to truth above all else. Yet for all my criticism of Judaism and Frum culture, I still identify as a Ben Torah. It may seem strange that I titled this work “A Ben Torah’s Guide.” Not only am I an atheist, I am practically an anti-theist. The prompt I gave myself and those who helped with this work was simple: If we could go back in time to the moment we lost our faith – what advice would we give our younger selves? What nuggets of wisdom did we have to learn the hard way? What advice would have saved us needless heartache and misery? This guide is the answer to that question. My intention on these pages is to highlight the knowledge we OTDers wish we had at the beginning of our journey. Yet, the points of commonality between those going OTD are universal to the point of tired cliché. Lastly, leaving the Frum community is an intensely induvial journey, with no two experiences mirroring each other. Many describe their journey out of Yiddishkeit as intensely disorienting, yet view this time as some of the most introspective and enlightening times of their life. For many people, going OTD is the most challenging experience they will endure in their lifetime, but it can simultaneously be the most liberating and euphoric of experiences. Few experiences are as paradoxical as going OTD.
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