Author: admin

  • Celebrating Freedom

    Celebrating Freedom

    In just the past couple years, I’ve had so many moments where I would let off a sigh of relief and realize how great it feels to be free. I was helping put on a Pesach Seder at a Conservative temple when the first night fell out on a Friday night, and we needed hot…

  • Chabad Young Adults Break from Cult Mentality

    Video: Chabad-Lubavitch Young Adults Break from Repressive Cult Mentality

  • My Own Derech

    Living in the heart of a major frum community, I thought there was no one like me. I either had to decide to remain in the community and keep going to shul even though I didn’t believe in Hashem, or I had to go off the derech and completely let go of all the things…

  • Connection

    Connection

    For me, well, I didn’t even know that being “off the derech” was a thing. Of course, in the back of my mind, I knew people left orthodoxy, but I didn’t know that people talked about it, not in the way I needed to talk about it. I thought maybe they left and disappeared, somehow…

  • Not Alone

    Not Alone

    Being the token orthodox Jew in a small rural town was lonely enough. We had moved here because it was cheaper and closer to my husband’s job. I made a place for myself as a sunday school teacher and organized rosh chodesh events for the women who were eager to learn more of what I…

  • Follow Us!

    You can now follow Off the Derech on our Twitter Feed @OtdWeb  

  • Skepticism

    Skepticism

    I think skepticism is part of my nature. I have always been one to question and probe, but until my last year in high school, I hadn’t thought to question my belief in god or the practice of my religion. During that year we had a weekly “mishmar” class that dealt with Jewish philosophy and…

  • Apikorsus

    Apikorsus

    For at least a decade, I felt like I had a problem that had to be fixed. I desperately wanted to find some rav, some teaching, or even some segula that would cure me of my apikorsus. I spoke to countless rabbanim and frum scholars, and I would get some answers that made sense at…

  • Questions

    Questions

    I thought I was the only one. You know, the only baal teshuva to go off the derech. Surely, no other BT had gone off the derech before me and my little family. Except that I wasn’t yet thinking about it in those terms. I was thinking that we had to flip the circuit breaker,…

  • Chanukah: When We Lost And They Won

    Chanukah: When We Lost And They Won

    by Peter Walters Remember Chanukah – dreidels, chocolate coins, latkes, lamp-lighting, all that stuff? Great wasn’t it? One of the really great things about Chanukah is that it’s almost as good as Christmas, but without the whole goy-guilt. Remember how it was put: the time when the few defeated the many; the small beat the great;…