An Empty Place at the Jewish Table: Why Are Young Jews Dropping Out?

 

 

Steve Lipman

If a Jewish version of the classic 1960’s U.S. film, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? were made today, many of my closest friends in the Orthodox community could suggest a new title: Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner? 

A Shabbat dinner, in other words.

And they could all suggest the same answer to that question: one of their sons or daughters.

Because there is an empty chair at my friends’ Shabbat tables – emotionally, if not physically.

As we take pride in the growth of the frum community in recent decades, a result of the now-waning b’aal teshuvah movement that has expanded our ranks of shomeir Shabbat/kosher-keeping/daf yomi-studying/sheitel-wearing members, we risk overlooking a concurrent phenomenon: the number of young men and women in those Torah-observant families who are moving away from a life guided by halakhah. People who are following in the footsteps of earlier generations of Jews, who, upon reaching adulthood, stepped away from normative Orthodox Jewish practice.

With no effort, I can count the grown sons and daughters of at least ten families – whom I count as my friends – who no longer consider themselves Orthodox. Name a family in my circles, and I can probably name a child who no longer keeps Shabbat, eats kosher, cares much about Israel, or identifies as Torah-observant. Sons and daughters who studied in Jewish day schools, attended yeshivot and seminaries in Eretz Israel, went to summer camps that were under Orthodox auspices, and participated in other traditional emunah-strengthening, kehilah-building activities. Children from Modern Orthodox and Haredi – Hasidic and Litvish – backgrounds who have disassociated themselves from Orthodox life as they reached adolescence, in substantive and symbolic ways. 

And what is a more symbolic form of estrangement from Orthodox life than absence from a family’s Shabbat table?^[1]

A caveat: It’s not just in my circle of friends. Statistical and anecdotal evidence tells the same story: even as many once-secular Jews are coming into the Orthodox fold and are starting Jewish families, many of their children are opting out. Some of us think it happens to the other guy, to another family. I don’t have that luxury.

But…

… Don’t shrai gevalt yet about our communal losses. While disheartening, the situation isn’t nearly universal, or as widespread, as some discouraging statistics and a series of recent “off-the–derekh” (OTD) sociological studies, books, and memoirs would seem to indicate. It’s not a massive desertion from the Orthodox ranks. For instance, Rabbi Avi Shafran, who as director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America serves as a de facto spokesman for Haredi Jews in the United States, says in an interview with the author, “I know hundreds of Orthodox families, but only two or three that have a child who left Orthodox practice.”

He is fortunate. Most of the families with whom he is familiar are presumably in his fervently Haredi circles.

Rabbi Shafran, in the same interview, says the OTD phenomenon has become very visible “due to the explosive growth in numbers of the [Orthodox] community” (i.e., the more Orthodox Jews there are, the more, according to actuarial reality, who are in a position to leave). And because of the increasing ubiquity of social media, which spread the dramatic “ex” stories, and which many observers blame for the growth in the number of people who question traditional Jewish beliefs (i.e., widely available access to information about the non-Orthodox world may make non-“religious” options seem attractive to people who were not exposed to such “heresy” in their first years of education. Folks in the ghetto never knew about secular literature, non-Jewish music, and other parts of “goyishe” culture).

On the other hand, Rabbi Marc Angel, a leader of the (Modern Orthodox) Open Orthodoxy movement, and founder of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, which treats Jewish tradition from a more-liberal perspective, says in an interview with the author, that while every “ex-” is a regrettable loss to the community, the fact that some losses are taking place is inevitable. “Of course, it is troubling to us when anyone chooses to leave” Orthodox belief and affiliation, he says, “but this phenomenon of leaving one’s original religious community is not uncommon in America, and is probably equally or even more prevalent among Christian communities.”

Adds Rabbi Angel, “Also, there is a counter-tendency – children raised ‘Modern Orthodox’ who then ‘hareidize.’” – i.e., “flip out,” as that pattern is often called. “It is increasingly difficult for ‘moderates’ to hold their own.”

In other words, the tendency of some Jews to gravitate to one end of the observance-and-belief spectrum or the other (all or nothing), is the religious parallel of the current political reality in the U.S., Israel, and other countries – a growing number of men and women, especially in the United States, tending towards extremes, a belief backed up by a 2025 Pew Research Center survey, “Religious & Political identity in the US.”

The Words We Use

First, the matter of language …

The term OTD is one of the milder ones that members of the still-Orthodox community apply to its members who have drifted or stepped away. The implication: Our derekh. Ergo, a person described as OTD is already convicted; he or she has left his or her community of birth, as well as the “proper” path. Other pejorative terms: Rebellious. Confused. Brainwashed. Unthinking. Heretic. Apikores. Slaves of the yeitzer hara (evil inclination). Frei (free of God-given obligations).

It’s not what people in their circles call themselves. They have other more-clinical, less-judgmental terms: simply “ex,” or “ex-Orthodox,” or “XO,” or “ex-Haredi,” or “ex-Hasidic,” or “ba’alei teshuvah in reverse.” “On their own derekh,” one mother suggests on the jewishmom.com website. Or plain “Jewish” – not wishing to identify themselves relative to what they were, rather to what they are, to the path they choose. Which is similar to many “humanistic” Jews, who prefer that description to “atheist,” stressing what they do believe in (the primacy of logic and reasoning ability), instead of what they do not believe in (a Supreme Deity).

And another point about language …

… How many frum Jews use the word “Orthodoxy” about their belief system? Not many.

While “Orthodox” has come to be an accepted label of the person or of the so-called branch of Judaism, “Orthodoxy” is a misleading description of one’s approach to religion. It is a misnomer, demeaning to sincere believers. It’s not a Jewish concept – there’s probably no exact rendering of it in Hebrew or Yiddish. It means going along with prevailing practice – accepting a normal, established belief system, marching in lockstep. An unchallenging way of thinking or acting. It is a term, with roots in Christianity, which, according to the myjewishlearning.com website, came into common usage in the 18th century during the period of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) and the emergence of the Reform Judaism movement. The term, loosely used to describe the Orthodox “Torah true” community, denotes a corseted mindset of behavior. But being Orthodox is a matter of emunah, not of membership or affiliation or unthinking conformity. “Orthodoxy” is a limiting way of thinking; conveying a mindset that is contrary to the way of life of truly yirat Shamayim Jews, who are weaned on the talmudic give-and-take of pilpul – though such a culture of disputation “for the sake of Heaven” may not be apparent to outsiders, or to the insiders who bridle at the seeming restrictions.^[2]

Back to the demographics. Consider the stats …

According to a 2013 Pew study, 52 percent of Jewish adults in the United States who were raised Orthodox were no longer Orthodox; and in another, more recent study, one-third of Jewish adults in the U.S. with Orthodox upbringings no longer affiliate with Orthodox Judaism or abide by traditional dos and don’ts of observant life.^[3]

Numbers that give pause.

Other studies back up these findings. While demographers caution that a lack of long-term, longitudinal research leaves claims open to doubt, “ex-Orthodox,” according to various estimates, constitute a significant minority in the demographic makeup of many current Modern Orthodox and Haredi communities. Perhaps 10-30 percent. And in some Haredi communities, according to anecdotal claims, losses from OTDs may outnumber the gains from ba’alei teshuvah joining their ranks. Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, a respected pulpit rabbi in New Jersey, a decade ago in an essay on ou.org, cited an unpublished study that found that 50% of the graduates of Modern Orthodox high schools within two years of graduation no longer observe Shabbat or kashrut, and that “25% of those graduates who attend secular colleges assimilate during college and completely abandon Torah and mitzvot.”

No wonder there are so many empty seats at our Shabbat tables. 

Our numbers aren’t big enough to let so many people stray from our midst.

(For context: Ex-Orthodox who now affiliate with the LGBT community, people who often feel excluded from most of Orthodox life, represent a small percentage of the overall “ex” community, most studies have found. On the same hand, most people in the OTD community do not automatically identify as atheists.)

It’s more than a few, isolated cases of Orthodox-raised young adult children who are now part of what we – pejoratively, judgmentally, dismissively, critically – call the Off The Derekh movement. As if there is one derekh, one correct path. And it’s a shame, in the opinion of Orthodox thinkers who are increasingly recognizing and dealing with this phenomenon, and who consider it an indictment of how we are bringing up and educating our children – children who, by voting with their feet, indicate that they feel unable to find a place in most of the Orthodox community. Or to find acceptance as people who question the foundations of Jewish belief. Or to find a reason to stay.

Arguably, Orthodox dropouts are the price we pay, the risk we take, for living in a democracy – one that allows freedom of, and freedom from, religion.

Why is this exodus happening?

There are as many reasons as there are “dropouts”:

• Because these men and women no longer believe in the truth of the Torah, the sanctity of the mitzvot, the Sinai-given obligation to follow the path of accepted mesorah that has guided the Jewish people for millennia. They literally have not kept the faith. If “they” were standing at Sinai, what does that have to do with them three millennia later?
• Because it doesn’t make sense to them. It’s not worth the effort. It’s restrictive – certain jobs and classes are more enticing, more meaningful; dates, more attractive.
• Because abiding by the taryag mitzvot, in their opinion, does not make them a good Jew; many of them stay connected to Jewish life, in other, less-“religious,” more-autonomous ways.
• Because they don’t see (a demanding) God as a major part in their lives.
• Because… why search for a reason, or reasons, why our best and brightest find no emet in Torah? They may not have extensively thought out the whys for their lifestyle changes; Judaism, at least as carried out by their parents and still-frum siblings, simply does not mean as much to them as it once did.

In other words, they do not see a life-defining purpose in the shalls and shall-nots of Yiddishkeit. Why worry about leaving work early in the winter on a Friday afternoon, to get home before sundown, then hurrying to shul if your heart isn’t in it? Why count the hours between a meat meal and a dairy snack if you don’t really care about it? Why turn down that meal with non-Jewish co-workers at a non-kosher restaurant, or that movie on Shabbat, or a job or college major, if you see no reason to cite your religion as a reason for your reticence? Why… the list goes on. Does God care? Does He use a stopwatch? Does God measure the length of a woman’s skirt or the dimensions of a man’s tzitzit? 

Why leave Orthodox Judaism? Why not? What is it adding to their lives? 

Do the young men and women second-guess their choices, or feel ashamed of their decision to opt out? In general, no. They think, on balance, that they are gaining, not losing, by cutting their ties with the lifestyle their parents embraced. They’re not leaving the Orthodox community out of spite or anger, but out of religious ennui and boredom – they’re tired of pretending that details of Shulhan Arukh are important to them.

And their parents – at least those I know – in general don’t make them feel ashamed. The parents practice the type of unconditional acceptance (of their children, while not necessarily of their children’s choices) that is most likely to make their children feel welcome to return to the fold and to their Shabbat tables. These parents, while not driving their progeny away from Orthodox Judaism, are leaving the door open for them to come back.

One mark of demographic commonality: most of the parents in my circle of friends who have experienced a child turning away from Orthodoxy are liberal-minded, non-dogmatic people. Mostly BTs. Parents who at some point in their lives had turned away from their parents’ secular (or at least non-Orthodox) lifestyle. The result: two successive generations of Jewish children breaking from the way they were raised.

Are we losing the cream of our young crop – the young people who, as Judaism has traditionally urged, are not afraid to question the foundations of our (i.e., their) faith? Or are they, as the sour-grapes cynics might assert, the fringe people whose losses we can most easily absorb?

 

The answer depends on who is giving it – whether individuals who consider any neshamah who chooses to leave to be a net loss for Klal Yisrael; or those who would automatically downplay the intrinsic worth of the men and women who choose to disassociate from an Orthodox life.

Who are we to judge?

 To expand my thinking on this subject, I turned to several friends in the Orthodox community, many of them from BT backgrounds, some of them with children who are no longer Orthodox. Their answers influenced me to approach the “OTD” phenomenon from a different angle – from the perspective of the young people themselves, rather than of their parents or the larger Jewish community and its institutions.

The Wrong Questions?

I’m asking the wrong questions, looking at this subject entirely incorrectly, misunderstanding the historical and psychological context of people leaving Orthodox Judaism, some of my friends advised me.

One friend whom I met in yeshiva some four decades ago, a BT who made aliyah and works for an Orthodox organization in Israel, called my questions “a complete mistake. I think the approach – [asking] ‘what did we do wrong in our home, or how could the school have been better, or how can we prevent this?’ – is a fool’s quest.”

The movement of young Jews away from their Orthodox upbringing “ain’t new,” he said …

This is not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon – as long as there have been Jews and Torah, some of the former have left the latter (consider the man in the Sinai wilderness stoned for collecting sticks on Shabbat). 

The historical record shows that in earlier generations Jews for centuries left the Orthodox cocoon – to escape persecution, to advance socially and economically, to marry outside the faith, to deal with philosophical questions they regarded as unanswered by Judaism, to join movements like Socialism and Communism, to escape the psychological confines of the Jewish ghetto – mainly because the demands and the culture of Orthodox Judaism seemed irrelevant to them.

Jewish history records Jews leaving their community of birth to convert, assimilate, or find fulfillment in such things as sex and drugs. Bottom line: the children now are embracing what their parents had rejected.

“What about the thousands of Orthodox families in America in the 30’s and 40’s who had not one observant child?” my friend – the offspring of the generation of immigrants who reportedly threw their tefillin in the harbor when they reached New York City – asked.

In short: today’s “OTD” are not an anomaly. 

“As if to say,” my friend added, “if we did it right, everyone would stay observant. 

“I find these discussions wrong,” he said. Why? “Choice. Plain and simple. The Torah has profound and dramatic demands – belief in God, belief in the Torah being Divine, [the belief] that we are bound by mitzvot. Many people do not believe those things. Plain and simple. And rather than being untrue to themselves, they demand that they be true to themselves and not keep mitzvot.”

Can anyone be blamed?

Our fault or their fault?

Or nobody’s fault?

What I am describing , the “drop-out” situation among (nominally) Orthodox Jews, is the normal attrition rate in a free society (i.e., in the States and in Israel), and in a religion that is imbued with the alternative of free choice, says my friend – raised in the Reform movement, he later studied at a prominent BT yeshiva, and now is an Orthodox rabbi.

My friend knows whereof he speaks. His oldest daughter “is no longer observant. Does not keep Shabbat or kosher.” Which he accepts. Not happily, of course, but resignedly. “We mouth the words that every soul is unique – well, if that is true, then we should not wonder why people choose a different path… we should assume that some will. Across all religions and denominations, you can predict that a certain percentage [will], regardless of how good the education and upbringing is. A certain percentage will simply make other choices.”

My friend’s respectful conclusion: I’m missing the big picture. “The success today in the Orthodox world of 80 percent-plus retention [his estimate] is the story.”

By condemning people for exercising the right to determine how they decide to lead their spiritual lives, we are employing a double standard, he told me, echoing the opinion of other thinkers in the Orthodox world. While we laud the generation of BTs for using their bechirah, their God-given free choice, to take on the commandments that were given at Sinai, we condemn their children for going in the opposite direction.

“Even those who list themselves as ’Nones’ [identifying with no religion] are generally not devoid of spiritual aspirations,” Rabbi Angel wrote on his jewishideas.org website – they simply nourish their aspirations in a non-“Orthodox” way. “Among highly educated individuals whose minds have been shaped by secular universities and culture, there is surely a greater emphasis on self-reliance and individualism,” Rabbi Angel wrote. “They simply are not finding that their spiritual aspirations are being fulfilled within ‘establishment’ religious contexts.”

An Insider’s Perspective

One of the people I approached, whom I have known since he was young, was Max Lenik, a project manager in the museum world in Chicago who was raised in an Orthodox family (both parents, notably, are ba’alei teshuvah) in New York State’s Rockland County, and has counted himself among the ranks of the formerly Orthodox for more than a decade. He documented his spiritual journey, and that of fellow travelers, from frumkeit – “non-observant and non-believing” – in his college thesis.^[4]

Lenik’s thesis was based on interviews he conducted with people in his friendship circles who were “in the process of leaving Orthodox Judaism.” His writing indicates little struggle with shedding one’s old identity, or few strategies for adapting to a new environment – just a natural process of moving from one world to another, and mutual support of one another. Most of the people he interviewed were also the children of BT parents, he explained in the introduction to his thesis, which he wrote because he wanted to put his own life decisions into a wider context and explain the thinking that went into his peer group’s decisions. “I realized that I had subconsciously surrounded myself with friends of a similar mindset… I realized I was far from alone.”

In his thesis, Lenik describes a divorce from Orthodox life that begins with a gradual separation, a “gradual letting go of certain observances and the slow drift towards a more lenient religious approach and possibly a life with no religion at all.” Not out of bitterness or blaming one’s parents, but out of a sense that their parents’ theological priorities mean little, or nothing, to the children. “These ex-Orthodox Jews find themselves in a very ambivalent gray area. Some choose to lose their religious identity completely, others keep some aspect of the religion and leave others behind, and some choose to take on Judaism as more of a cultural identity only and not as a practiced religion at all.

“The two processes of exiting one culture and entering another overlap, creating a cognitive and theological dissonance within these young men that, more often than not, leaves them unsure of where they are headed,” Lenik wrote. “The parents maintain that [original] ba’al teshuvah enthusiasm while their children experience the more passive emotions towards religious practices of the [previous generation’s] frum from birth demographic.” While the children “want religious autonomy,” their parents “and communities want conformity.” And, citing another expert’s findings: “These youth felt that simply being religious due to habit was not enough for them and that being religious, while it really wasn’t diminishing their quality of life, it wasn’t adding anything to it either.”

In other words, while they didn’t want their grandfathers’ religion, they also did not want their fathers’. Or any.

Lenik, 30ish, says he prefers the term “non-practicing” over OTD; and he finds the description of “OTD” people as “at risk” to be “definitely offensive.”

He seriously questioned his relationship with Orthodox Judaism by the time he spent his post-high school gap year at a yeshiva in Israel, but “I had my doubts prior to that. I just felt really fake” while going through the motions of observance, repeating the same words of prayer every day, accepting claims about the uniqueness of Judaism as the sole source of truth, and about the shortcomings of non-Orthodox branches of the religion. “I never felt connected” to the demands or exclusivist culture of the Orthodox community.

Now he calls himself “agnostic more than anything.” He says he and his wife, who was raised, and still identifies as, Conservative, will raise their children – one already, a second one on the way – in “the Conservative pipeline”: Solomon Schechter Day School, attendance at Conservative synagogues. Their home: “not 100% kosher.” His wife lights Shabbat candles most weeks; they will conduct a Shabbat meal most Friday evenings.

They, Lenik says, are following a “comfortable” path within Judaism. As his parents have.

Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman of Passaic, N.J., a community populated by many ba’alei teshuvah, concurs. His speculation: “Kids in essence [are] following their parents’ own model, namely, the parents changed the life they were brought up in, and now their children do the same.”

Statistics and several interviews back up this assertion – that BT mothers and fathers are disproportionately represented among the Orthodox parents whose children shed an Orthodox lifestyle as they grow older.^[5]

According to most statistical research and anecdotal reports, people who have come to identify as ex-Orthodox typically began to have doubts about the Orthodox belief – and normative behavior – system beginning in, or by, their early teens. A time when many adolescents examine what they think and how they act. In other words, though these young Jews’ bodies were in the Orthodox community, their hearts weren’t. In other words, they had already begun to emotionally step away from the milieu in which they were raised. In other words, the formal, physical step to leave their hometowns and their accustomed way of living did not mark a major departure from how they already regarded themselves.

Maybe that’s the price that BT parents pay for telling their children how they were raised (non-Orthodox) and what they became (now-Orthodox) – a certain percentage of young Jews are likely to do what their parents did: deviate from their parents’ path. You picked your religious path – why can’t I pick mine?”

In much of the Orthodox velt, hand-wringing about the “drop-outs” is often accompanied by opprobrium. Often, knee-jerk, undeserved condemnation; as if people who have turned away from our interpretation of Torah have automatically turned to drink and drugs and unbridled sexual satisfaction, a wanton life of no limits. As if the entire non-frum world finds escape in controlled substances and warm bodies. An essay a decade ago on the matzav.com website about the Footsteps organization that eases an OTD’s path into the non-Orthodox world was illustrated by a large photograph of a young man slumped against a bare wall, his hands folded over his head, a forlorn look on his face. There was no caption on the photo, but the tacit message was that someone who had ostensibly left the Torah world was physically alone and spiritually lost.^[6]

Which is not necessarily the case. Many – if not most – of these young men and women who no longer travel in our circles are emotionally and psychologically healthy, with thriving careers and well-adjusted friends. And they’re not bitter.^[7]

If they weren’t eating cheeseburgers, we would with pride claim them as our own.

But their values, to varying degrees, aren’t our values. Ditto for their lifestyle choices.

I know these children. I have seen them grow up. They’re largely nice kids, polite, sensitive, educated – smart enough to make their theological choices based on an insider’s knowledge of the Torah world, and of an acquired knowledge of the once-foreign secular world. They’re not shooting up, hooking up, or engaging in modes of destructive behavior. They are not criminals. They have simply taken up a law-abiding, secular way of life that does not condemn eating treif or turning on a television on Shabbat; a way of life that simply offers more opportunities and more fulfillment than actions bounded by the Mishnah Berurah. Frumkeit simply does not make sense to them.

Today, judging by the drop-outs’ own words, they are not running to anything; they’re simply walking away from a lifestyle they don’t find attractive or relevant. The demands and expectations of kabbalat HaTorah are simply not worth the effort.

While the leaving-the-fold phenomenon is noticeable in both the Modern Orthodox and Haredi communities, anecdotal evidence disagrees whether it is more prevalent among the former, whose higher education and familiarity with the language and high-tech/social media practices of the outside world make the way seamless; or among the latter, who find the distinctive dress and highly prescribed way of life intolerable once they begin questioning the foundations of their faith.

Which, in total, the frum community would agree, is a loss to our numerical and spiritual strength, as well as to the men and women who have loosened their ties to the Orthodox part of it.

Like Their Parents – But in Reverse

Making the reverse trip from their BT parents, the children don’t feel the attraction that Abba and Imma had in changing their lives to ones in accordance with ancient texts and eternal ideals. Like their parents, they found that their deviance from what they had learned at home and in school had a consequence – parental and communal disapproval.

Another, non-Jewish – but often-misunderstood – religion, offers a related precedent: Rumspringa (“running around”), in the Amish community. It is best-known for reports of young Amish adults acting “wild,” in ways not usually associated with the conservative Christian sect.

There is a difference between the OTD phenomenon and the Rumspringa “coming of age” practice, in which some Amish participate when they reach their mid- or late-teens, a time when they are free to explore aspects of non-Amish behavior and folkways, and to decide whether they want to officially stay in the Amish community, be baptized, and accept all Amish regulations and stringencies (the Ordnung). Remaining obediently Amish is strictly voluntary; there is no official penalty, no coercion, no communal shunning, for declining to accept baptism and stay in the church – yet relations with some individual families may not remain close. But someone who does join, then drops out, is shunned.

According to the amishrules.com website, “85%-90%” percent of Amish youth who go through Rumspringa remain Amish. The teens, who grew up Amish, opt for what is familiar, and raise subsequent generations of young Amish who enter the Rumspringa period and emerge as Amish adults.

Which suggests that Amish teens remain with what they know best.

In terms of the Jewish community, an upbringing in a frum home is no guarantee that all the kids will continue on the path of Torah observance – Esau’s parents, we remind ourselves, were Isaac and Rikvah. You don’t get better yichus than that.

Schneur Zalman Newfield, an assistant professor of sociology at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, who was raised in the Chabad-Lubavitch hasidic community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, but now says he leads “a secular life,” offers some words of optimism about men and women who have left Orthodox Judaism. They have not completely left their Orthodox upbringings behind, he says.^[8]

Newfield, author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation while Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020), based on interviews with 74 young formerly-Lubavitch and formerly-Satmar Jews, says, “important elements of their upbringing… stayed with them even years after leaving. My research challenges the basic notion that exiters ever ‘complete’ the process of exiting. None of them are completely free of their past.” He calls these people, who continue to have a foot in their old, Orthodox, world, “hybrids.”

But they continue on their terms, not their parents’.

While Yeshiva University, the flagship institution of the Modern Orthodox movement, has conducted extensive, nonjudgmental research on this subject, a prominent hasidic (i.e., Haredi) group in Israel is, surprisingly, leading the way in advocating the principle of radical acceptance. Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach, Israeli-based rebbe of the Belzer Hasidim, in 2023 founded an organization he calls Ahavat Kadumim (ancient love).

The organization – unusual in the Haredi community for recommending embracement, rather than condemnation, of its youth who have left its ranks, left the faith but want to be emotionally and physically supported – focuses on keeping “straying” members close to their families and to the still-hasidic community, “with no intention of persuading them to return” to hasidic life, according to a report on matzav.com. Welcoming, not kiruv. 

“They studied in hasidic institutions throughout their lives,” a Belz hasid close to the rebbe was quoted by matzav.com as saying, “and even though they decided not to observe Torah and mitzvot, we must continue to care for them and embrace them unconditionally.”

“The intention is not to bring them back to Judaism,” The Jew in the City website reported. “The program is being built solely to support [the former members of the Orthodox community] through any sort of emotional distress they’re experiencing, to give them pure love and care for exactly who they are.”

According to matzav.com, the rebbe reportedly took this step after the suicide of a 23-year-old former Belzer hasid who had been rejected by his family. “The young man’s suicide deeply affected the Belzer kehillah.”

An initiative like Ahavat Kadumim is a sign of de facto recognition of the value of a practice such as Rumspringa.

Another example: Rabbi Menachaem Bombach, an educator who serves as a spokesman for Israel’s “progressive Haredi community,” in a Times of Israel blog, “Thou Shalt Love your Child who Leaves Religion,” wrote about his relationship with his adult daughter. She is no longer Orthodox. The rabbi described shopping with her in a Jerusalem mall; she was wearing jeans. People stared at father and daughter. For one “ultra-Orthodox couple,” the Bombachs “seemed to have become their favorite place in the mall.”

The rabbi’s daughter asked if he was embarrassed “by the looks that were relentlessly cast” at him.

“Even if I am,” Rabbi Bombach, who serves as founder and CEO of the Netzach Educational Network, answered, “you are my daughter, and I love you, and you are more important to me than anything else in the world.”

The rabbi’s advice:

• “Pay no attention to the small-minded people who gossip and judge you behind your back.”
• “Be honest with yourself and ask yourself what bothers you more – that your child has left religion or that your child no longer abides by the external trappings of the community’s dress code.”
• The fact that great Torah leaders in the past had children “who left observance… did not diminish the greatness of these scholars.”
• “Just as God accepts us despite our weaknesses, so too we must accept our children in their new ways of life.”

What is our communal response to this growing phenomenon? It depends on our attitude: Do we regard dropouts as a problem, as a failure, as a reflection on our children and on us, or as an inexorable fact of Jewish life as old as the biblical Patriarchs who had children who did not stay on the Jewish path, and of latter-day rabbinic figures who had children who did not stay Orthodox as adults? 

Rabbi Bombach cited a story well-known in Orthodox circles: the father of a daughter who was no longer “religious” and dressed immodestly asked Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, a respected leader of the yeshivish wing of Orthodox Judaism in Israel, if the girl should be banished from the family’s home, lest she influence the other children. Answered Rabbi Shteinman, “You may send away the other brothers and sisters, but this daughter must be allowed to remain at home at all costs. She is the one who needs your love more than all the others.”

Some Dos and Don’ts

In short, the decision for some people to turn away from Orthodox Judaism is their responsibility – not their parents’ or teachers’. But for whatever role the adults play in shaping the children’s spiritual future, here is some advice culled from various reports on the OTD topic:

• Don’t say no if your child requests a compromise or accommodation that does not blatantly transgress halakhah. Inordinate inflexibility is likely to turn the child away.
• Don’t automatically condemn or criticize. That may be what turned him or her off in the first place.
• Emphasize what part of your – or your child’s – observance is important. Not every mitzvah or minhag is of equal spiritual value.
• Give them time. His or her beliefs or behavior at 16 may not be the child’s feelings about Judaism at 26.
• Focus on what your child likes about Judaism. That’s something to build on.
• Pick your battles. Is every offense to your way of doing things worth a fight?
• Emphasize modeling, not coercion. Show, don’t tell, what a child should be doing.
• Accept half a loaf; accept what your child is doing. That will make your child more willing to listen.
• Look at yourselves, not at them. First, ask yourself why your child is acting in a way of which you do not approve.
• Don’t worry about the OTD child’s effect on other children’s possible shidduchim. If you do, it sends the message that the other kids are more important, more valuable to you.
• Don’t be surprised by your child’s attitude. Did you ever deviate from your parents’ expectations?
• Don’t immediately react to every criticism of Orthodox customs.
• Acknowledge and validate your children’s concerns. Even if their criticisms are not true, they are your child’s reality.
• Don’t blame yourself for the choices that your child, at this stage an adolescent or young adult, makes. Isaac and Yaakov also erred (overlooking one child’s shortcomings, and favoring one son over his brothers, respectively). Are you more holy than the Avot? 
• Pay no attention to outsiders who criticize you or your child. Did they raise your child?

An Orthodox rabbi friend of mine, product of a strictly Haredi education, says he asks one question if a congregant or some other member of his community approaches him about taking on a humra or accepting a strict interpretation of observance: “Will that bring you closer to God?” Not, “What does the Shulhan Arukh say?”

This is a good guideline – put your child’s relationship with the Creator at the forefront of your reaction to his or her behavior.

While logic dictates that belief determines action, Jewish tradition strongly suggests that action can shape belief – opening up an “OTD” individual to the beauty of Judaism, but not forcing him or her to take part in a Jewish activity, can influence the person to return; i.e., show, don’t tell. And don’t demand.

Sara Devora Chrysler, a Jewish educator and author in Manchester, England, in an email conversation with the author, said that the growing number of drop-outs from an Orthodox lifestyle can be traced to parents and fellow educators who fail to do this, who do not provide enviable and emulateable role models of translating Jewish beliefs into Jewish actions, who do not demonstrate the kedushah in even the smallest Jewish act. The fault, she said, is “not allowing authenticity“ to color everything they do, not making “Hashem’s planning of a destiny” central to the way children are taught about what being Jewish means.

In other words, if the place of God in raising and educating a Jewish child does not trump the dos and don’ts, a child is more likely to find the why be Jewish missing.

In other words, if our main concern is what the children who become former Orthodox Jews are doing, or not doing, and not the faith that is supposed to motivate them, we are missing the point of a Jewish life.

In other words, we are not sharing why we stood at Sinai.

In other words, as Chrysler said, God is not often present – to an adequate degree, at least – in the Jewish classroom.

Or at the Shabbat table.

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^[1] Full disclosure: 1) A committed ba’al teshuvah for the majority of my 75 years, I, divorced for a long time, do not have children; my thoughts here are observations culled from the many Orthodox families I have befriended over the decades. 2) My experiences in the Orthodox community may be skewed by the type of people with whom I naturally associate – men and women, who, by Orthodox standards, are relatively open-minded and accepting, and are therefore likely to raise children who feel free to make their own lifestyle decisions and to reject what they see as unbending religious dogma.

^[2] Equally superficial, sanctimonious  and ambiguous is the term “religious,” facilely equated with “Orthodox.” Doing certain obligatory acts does not make you religious, does not indicate the depth of your faith; I know plenty of Reform and Conservative Jews who may not strictly follow halakhah but are truly “religious.” Orthodox does not necessarily mean “religious,” does not automatically reflect one’s relationship with the Creator, does not always mean that someone claiming that title behaves better or more in accord with what God desires. No more than someone calling himself “patriotic” is a more-fitting model of his country’s putative ethos. An OTD individual may be “religious” – in a wider spiritual sense – in his or her own way.

^[3] According to the 2020 Pew study, “Jewish Americans in 2020,” 67 percent of U.S. adults raised as Orthodox Jews identified as Orthodox as adults, indicating a 33 percent “dropout” rate.

^[4] “The Dissonance Within: The Struggles and Life Strategies of Young, Ex-Orthodox Jewish Men,” while an undergraduate anthropology major at Purchase College in Westchester County, New York, 2013.

^[5] These findings are according to a 2016 study by Nishma Research, “Starting a Conversation: A Pioneering Survey of those who Have Left the Orthodox Community.”  A 2019 Nishma study, “The Journeys and Experience of Ba’alei Teshuvah,” reported similar statistics.

^[6] Besides Footsteps, other organizations that ease people’s entry into the non-Orthodox world include Out for Change (Yotzim LeShinuy), Hillel, and Otot, in Israel; and Freidom (online), and Project Makom, founded by Allison Josephs of “Jew in the City,” which works to help “former and questioning Charedi Jews” find the beauty in Orthodoxy, in the United States.

^[7] https://matzav.com/deciphering-off-the-derech-understanding-the-language-of-footsteps/

^[8] Similarly, Moshe Krakowski, director of doctoral studies at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education, says a 2025 OU survey conducted under his auspices, “Attrition and Connection in American Orthodox Judaism,” of people who have left Orthodox Judaism, found that many of the surveyed individuals said they remain connected to the Orthodox community. “Many of the people we spoke with were not alienated or angry,” he said. “Many … may want to continue to participate in some capacity.

“Most of the respondents overwhelmingly still had very positive feeling towards the Orthodox Jewish community even while sometimes also having very negative feelings,” Krakowski said. “Out-and-out hatred or feeling that the Orthodox Jewish community is wrong or bad was really, really tiny.”