Elul is a Mindfuck
by Natan Stern
Can we all agree that Elul—at least in the litvish/ashkinazi iteration—is a mindfuck?
I am one of those people who has no malice or anger towards the frum community. But I have little doubt that Elul scarred me. On paper Elul may sound like a good idea – we can all use a time to reflect on our life path and acknowledge the wrongs we may have committed against our fellow man – but that is not how Elul plays out in real life for your average yeshiva bocher.
Josh’s Story
Josh is in his thirties, lives together with his non-Jewish girlfriend, and works in IT.
I met Josh on www.reddit.com/r/exJew/, an excellent resource for people who left the Jewish faith.
Hi Josh, what can you tell us about your religious upbringing?
I grew up on the east coast of Canada, so there wasn’t a real Orthodox shul around. For whatever reason, my mother was hell-bent on us having a Jewish identity. She was the main driver behind us going to shul, going to Hebrew school after regular school, and so on. She didn’t grow up religious but my dad did and had left it. They’d come to my school (I was the only Jew there) and do presentations about the holidays and what not. Anyway, I went to a not very religious summer camp (shout out to Camp Kadimah), had a bar mitzvah, and the whole deal. We also randomly went kosher one summer.
Read moreWhy I went Off-the-Derech
by NS
My journey from an extremely religious ben Torah to an atheist was long and painful. Over a few years, I transformed from being someone who loved nothing more than connecting with the Torah to facing the realization that I had devoted my life to a lie.
My questions started innocently enough, subtle incoherencies in the Rambam and the Ramchal, but the deeper I dove looking for answers, the more questions seemed to surround me. Problems with Chazal, historical inconsistencies in Tanach, the impossibility of the Mabul, for two years I became cripplingly obsessed with trying to resolve the questions that haunted me.
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