Incredibly powerful personal testimony by Anonymous on Dov Bears blog. We all know more people like Anonymous than we realize. ---------- Who is Anonymous? Who am I? I am your Neighbor with kids in your childrens class. I am one of the weekly sponsors of the Kiddush club. I am the guy who buys you an Aliya on Yom Tov because no one else wants to bid. I am the one who gives a chaburah every so often after davening. I am your brother. I was your chavrusah in Beis Medrosh. I was your counselor in camp. I learn Daf Yomi on the train in the morning. I do not believe in God. Belief is something you cannot prove (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief), but believe me there are many people like myself in our community. Many people who choose to become OTD, do so at the expense of losing their friends, families, and social standing. There is an excessive amount of distrust, disgust, and even hatred towards people who choose to leave the fold. I and all of my fellow Orthoprax friends choose the best of both worlds. We look just like you, we act and dress like you, our kids go to the same yeshivas as yours heck, they are the best kids in the class, but we are not frum. We love herring and kichel with single malt Scotch, chulent and overnight kugel, and even a geshamk shtikel Toirah at the shabbos table. We also check our emails (not befarhesia) on shabbos, dont put on tefillin, and eat cholov stam ;). We go to great lengths to make sure our kids do not bust us. We put our tallis and tefilin in a different location on the dining room table daily so that our kids think we went to shul after they went to school. We say boruch Hashem, we daven for the amud on Shabbos, and we study gemoroh with them after school. We do all of the above for all of the following reasons: we know you love to hate people who are not frum, and we want to keep the status quo. We dont want our kids thrown out of yeshiva, we dont want to lose our jobs, we dont want you to pressure our spouses to divorce us, and most of all, we want to continue speaking loshon hora with you Bain Gavra in shul! Why did I become an Atheist? I had my Rug Moment... A rug moment is when something happens in your life which suddenly changes the way you think, and therefore who you are. Its like getting the proverbial rug pulled out from under you. For many people their rug can be an illness, change in financial status in either direction, death of a friend or family member, Jail, etc. I realized at that moment, right after my Rug was pulled out from under me, that the only reason I believed in Hashem was because I was born to a frum Jewish family and sent to a yeshiva. Had I been born to a Muslim family in Saudi Arabia, I would be waking up every morning and saying Modeh ani lifonecho Allah melech chai vekayom (in Islam you can say Allah before you wash negel vasser!). Other people have heir own moment of epiphany, however at the end of the day, the result is the same. I am Anonymous, and I am not. I am myself, I am your neighbor, and chas vesholom I am you. Respectfully, Anonymous dovbear.blogspot/2014/05/rug-moment.html
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 15:26:25 +0000