But I am 100% convinced that a lot of Jews raised in these kinds of extreme environments would remain observant if they could find a way to engage in the world that was once forbidden to them. That’s where Modern Orthodoxy comes in. I have always felt that these formerly extreme Jews looking for relief could find it there.
But they don’t. That’s because the two cultures are so radically different from each other that they cannot adjust. Nor are those communities all that welcoming to those who are so culturally different from them, I’m told. So… they go all the way. And I found it a shame that they could not adjust. What was missing, I thought, was an organization like Footsteps that would not only help them adjust to their new lives outside their former world and yet show them that they can still maintain Halacha.
Thankfully there are others who felt the same way. And they have done something about it. There is a new organization called Makom that does exactly that. It was founded by one of my heroes, Allison Josephs. From the Forward:
It took Josephs two years of organizing and fundraising… to provide an answer to this question: Curious ultra-Orthodox Jews can now receive an orientation to the Modern Orthodox world via Josephs’s latest endeavor, Project Makom. It was officially launched this past December… and soon it will offer classes on a variety of topics, along with religious mentorship, career training, and support groups for those struggling with the transition between ultra and Modern Orthodox worlds.
Josephs and her co-directors, Schaper and Gavriella Lerner, a social work student and teacher, respectively, are currently planning their first official shabbaton, or retreat, where they will offer lectures on, among other things, women in Jewish scholarship and minhag, custom, versus Halacha, law, in mid-April in the New York tristate area…
(B)y establishing Makom — which means “place” in Hebrew — she can show those formerly constrained by religion how to access the strength and liberation she finds in it. “Faith should be there as a thing to lean on, not something to hold you back and to make you feel trapped,” she said.
As can be expected there are skeptics about this project – Footsteps executive director, Lani Santo among them. She questions the need – pointing to Chabad as a place where ultra Orthodox can go to lighten their load. But that shows a fundamental misunderstanding about both Chabad and what they do. Although not an insular movement – quite the opposite in fact – many of the restrictions these people want to free themselves from are a part of parcel of Chabad. And Chabad’s stated mission is not to lighten the load of formerly ultra Orthodox Jews. It is to bring secular Jews closer to observant Judaism and ultimately to Chabad. Something with which they are very successful.
Santo says that she finds most of Footsteps clients choosing to leave observance altogether. That may be true. But I have to wonder, given the opportunity to live a religious lifestyle that is not restrictive, how many wouldn’t prefer that? Wouldn’t remaining observant prevent the loneliness that often accompanies leaving observance completely?
That’s where ‘Makom’ comes in. As I understand them, it is not their goal to get these formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews to move into the Modern Orthodox community of Teaneck. It is their goal to teach them that they can live their lives religiously by adopting the values of Modern Orthodoxy no matter where they live.
It is my sincere hope that those looking to leave their insular lives and participate in the culture are made aware of the fact that they do not have to leave observance to so. In Modern Orthodoxy, you can actually have the best of both worlds.