I recently read an article on Slate.com about
teaching men who were deeply religious how to live in a secular world.
The man who is doing the teaching was former from the most restrictive
of Hasid sects. His wake up call came when his daughters came home from
school and said that all nonJews existed to see the good of the Jews
From
what I remember of Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman, that’s a very limited
number of do-gooders with an audience of a few billion. Like Feldman,
many of these men and women leave their restrictive sects and are
effectively immigrants into our world. Most men didn’t learn enough to
pass the GED and most women learned significantly less.
The article mentions FootSteps, a New York based nonprofit group that helps these people integrate into
society. While the Slate article focuses solely on dating and relation
to the opposite sex, this website offers all sorts of resources for
higher education, trade school, abuse hotlines, and social support
(MeetUp is a listed resource).
Most
did not learn marketable skills and don’t know how to relate to secular
people. Most Hasid sects teach that premarital touch (and non- familial
and spousal touch) would result in God’s wrath. I remember Feldman
saying that when she saw her first movie, she had no clue what was going
on or what that was supposed to be.
I would love to volunteer at a place like that. While I’m not Jewish, the whole concept of teaching these people about the world that always surrounded them fascinates me. I wonder if they have organizations like this in the DMV? With my social skills and surplus of personality, I may scare the religion right out of some of these folks.
Current Music: Pretty Fly for a Rabbi - Weird Al
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