Yeshiva

SH: Disclaimer - I had some great times in Yeshiva and made some very good friends. This post doesn't reflect those times but rather is an attempt to capture those moments of depression and gloom and how it felt to be a skeptic stuck in Yeshiva.

Also your Yeshiva experience may vary. This is just about me.

You sit in a small blatt room where the Rabbi is talking. He has been shouting for the last ten minutes about the enemies of Judaism. Western culture, television, secular literature! You try to think about something else but this man continues on his tirade against everything that is not the holy Torah. And then you look around. And people are paying attention. They're not just paying attention some are occasionally nodding in ascent to this ridiculous diatribe. You look to your left, you look to your right and almost everyone is fixated on the extremism of this so called Rabbi. And you start to wonder if everyone has gone insane.

But how could it be? Everyone insane and you the only sane one? You live in an insular world of Torah learning and prayer. There is no outside until the next bein hazmanim or off shabbos. No. Until your vacation there is nothing else. And nobody but you thinks there is something wrong. You're the only one who screams inside at the rampant stupidity and the mockery of logic. And you start to wonder if maybe you're the insane one.

But you know better than that! You know that you're not crazy! You know that this closed world is not the real world. You know! But everywhere every day the same things are repeated. Your ears are filled with the same message over and over again day in and day out. Everywhere you turn the same refrain. Everywhere you look the same ideal. There is nothing in this world worth doing besides learning Torah.

And you thank God that you know that this is not Judaism. You thank God that you hate this world so much that you are able to fight the brainwashing. Your skepticism blocks the noise. Your complete unwillingness to be turned into these people allows you to weather the storm and leave the Koslei Hayeshiva relatively unscathed.

But you look at your friends. You look at those who entered the Yeshiva without the nagging doubt. You look at those who have never questioned Judaism in their lives. And you watch them slowly be transformed. The constant barrage of the Yeshiva's ideology eventually brakes their meager defenses, for nothing can defend you from such constant conditioning except a strong cynical sense of skepticism.

Then you find yourself in a room. It's afternoon Shabbos seder and you and other malcontents are sitting complaining about Yeshiva. There are always malcontents. There are always those puzzle pieces that just don't fit. It does not take much to not like the Yeshiva. You are from a more Modern Orthodox background. You want to go to the movies. You hate learning Gemara from morning till night. Any of these little things will put you outside of the pale.

Everyone is laughing and mocking the stupidities of the Yeshiva and you feel that here in this room on a shabbos afternoon there is a small bastion of sanity in this world. You get overexcited and make fun of some clearly stupid Gemara or maybe you mock a verse in the Chumash. And then suddenly the room falls silent. The lighthearted fun comes to an abrupt stop. because these people are not skeptics they just are not Chareidim. They look at you uncomfortably because you have crossed the line. Even those who don't fit the mold have a line. And then you begin to wonder again if you're the only sane person in the room.

And then you leave the Koslei HaYeshiva and stare at the bright world and you're blinded by it's radiant light. The darkness you've lived in for all those years, broken only by the occasional glimmer of a bein hazmanim, had become an inseparable part of your life. But now it's all in the past. And you walk onwards towards the future. And swear to never look back. But before you leave you take one glimpse back at the poor retches still stuck in that world of gloom and misery and you remember that you too once lived with them. You once were part of that same world and you can't fathom how you survived it all. How!?

And you seriously start to wonder if you were once insane.