This phone call is part of an overall ‘exit interview’ strategy, which serves a very important function in the effective execution of a company’s business plan. After all, if you decided to cancel your credit card due to poor customer service, excessive fees, or steep interest rates, it is safe to assume that many others will follow your lead.
Well, over the past twenty years, I conducted hundreds of terribly painful ‘exit interviews’ with children and adults who have abandoned Yiddishkeit. I can tell you in no uncertain terms what it is that they wanted – and why they took their business elsewhere.
Those were the opening lines of Exit Interviews, an essay I wrote in Mishpacha Magazine eight years ago on the importance of investing time and energy to find out – really find out – why kids and adults abandon Yiddishkeit (My next essay in Mishpacha described the street scene and my concerns that things were escalating.)
We all, this writer included, come with our biases and life experiences which lead us to conclusions that may be incorrect or at least only partially correct. A special education teacher may say learning disabilities are the leading cause of kids abandoning religious practice, a marriage therapist will say it is stress at home and an activist for abuse survivors will say it’s child molestation. (Several years ago, I posted what I think to be Top Five Reasons People Abandon Yiddishkeit).
But to the best of my knowledge, no one is really asking the children or adults themselves! I strongly feel that educators, community leaders and parents need the information that Exit Interviews would reveal.
As a small start, we created this survey to start collecting feedback from NLO (No Longer Observant – I personally don’t care for the term “Off The Derech”) people, their family members and others who are knowledgeable about this subject.
Kindly take a few minutes to complete this survey. You can also help this effort by emailing it to someone who can add value to this survey and by posting the link on your social media.