T

he story is told of a ruler (okay if you must know it was a king) who decided to visit the local jail in his capital city. After speaking with each of the inmates he gave a surprising order: All were to be released immediately except for one. As word of the edict spread there was great rejoicing in the cells save for one whose hapless occupant demanded and was granted an audience with His Majesty.

“Your Highness” he implored “I simply don’t understand. Didn’t I pour out my heart to you about being an utterly innocent man who’d been cruelly framed? How could you?”

Said the king “But that’s precisely it. After your fellow prisoners contritely shared with me their many crimes I told myself it simply wouldn’t be fair for you to share their corrupting company any longer. I sent them away in order that you pure as the driven snow will no longer need to suffer their sullying influence.”

That’s what came to mind when a press release came my way informing me of a first-ever study of formerly Orthodox individuals. After looking through the study I decided to decline the kind offer to interview the researchers. I have nothing against surveys of this topic or any other but what can I say? I’m just not in the habit of being a dupe for an agenda-driven publicity piece masquerading as serious research.

It was an “opt-in” survey which as its sponsors delicately concede is “not ideal” by the scientific standards for such surveys. It was facilitated by a group devoted to helping ease the exit of formerly religious young Jews into the secular world. Among the “guiding and assisting experts” were three staff members and one board member of that group; another is an academic who recently moderated a session on “Unpacking Ultra-Orthodoxy” at an all-day Orthodox-bashing seminar in Manhattan.

When the lead researcher states openly that the “the goal of this survey was to give this group a voice” that means we’re dealing with advocacy not disinterested science even if leading demographer Steven M. Cohen of Reform’s Hebrew Union College sat on the advisory board. Hey Dr. Cohen do most studies in your line of work seek to serve as a “voice” for the respondents?

And when the executive director of the aforementioned ex-Orthodox advocacy group (which has serviced all of an average of 120 individuals yearly for the past decade) says in the press release itself “This survey provides concrete evidence that people transitioning out of ultra-Orthodox communities desire understanding and support” I translate that as “This survey provides concrete evidence that our group desires understanding and support… from big private foundations.”

But what’s this got to do with the king and his criminal subjects? Let’s be clear: The topic of Jews forsaking their heritage is a complex extremely painful one. It deserves discussion – honest discussion – beginning with a consideration of what are likely the many contributing factors. Indeed in a section on the reasons respondents gave for leaving Yahadus the researchers write of a list “of approximately fifty reasons… some of which were subtle variations of overlapping themes. Many respondents offered multiple reasons…”

I begin perusing the study’s statistical breakdown of Jewish breakdown. “No questions lack of openness 6%.” Okay.  “Community hypocrisy double standards 9.6%.” Yes definitely an issue we should address. “Judgmentalism gossip not accepted 6.5%.” Ditto. “Abuse and domestic violence 6.3%.” Surprisingly low given what’s been written on the topic. And the leading category that of “things I read/learned contradictions 19.5%.”

But why are there no categories of reasons rooted in good old-fashioned taavos: cheeseburgers Saturday at the beach a newfound “friend” — or better yet weed-laced cheeseburgers on Saturday at the beach with a newfound friend — not to mention sundry variations on this theme that are indeed not for mention in a family magazine? Or is this population uniquely heavy with ascetic seekers of truth?

To be fair there’s a category on the list of “religion too restrictive stifling 5.2% ” and maybe that’s the code language of an eideleh Yiddishe neshamah for cheeseburgers and all the rest. Yet only 5.2% cited it as even a contributing factor to their leaving religion behind? A more impressive group of meaning-obsessed altruists I’ve yet to encounter.

But somehow I don’t think the king of our opening tale would be impressed given his fine-tuned sensitivity to and lack of patience for psychological game-playing. He might have said to those in their self-imposed secular prison cells “It’s good you’re here where you can think sublime thoughts (and maybe write a best-selling memoir) the better to be insulated from those frummies beset by shallow desires and base drives…”

And so in a strange way this survey becomes a compelling argument for sticking around Yahadus. That’s the place where instead of riding off into the secular sunset declaring heroically that “biblical criticism made me do it” or “give me rationalism or give me death ” never to look back — or inward — again one gets to hear himself say to Hashem a few times a day (hopefully with some kavanah) “I’ve sinned I’m human weak I need to do better please help me.” In fact we’re coming up on a whole month and a half of doing that rather intensively.

It’s the place where one can learn from Chazal and the masters of mussar and chassidus who are their interpreters what it means to be honest not just in business crucial as that is but with oneself too. It’s where one learns that we do the things we do not primarily based on what we know but on what makes our egos and bodies feel good. It’s also the place we learn that we can use what we know to influence that ego and body.

It is in a word the place where because we acknowledge Someone besides us bigger than us Who made us we’ve got a fighting chance at real self-honesty.

“YOU’RE A JEW!”  It’s coming up on four years since I profiled the legendary Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau for Mishpacha and his name came to mind last week with the sad news of the passing of the frum actor Shlomo (Steven) Hill at age 94. One of Mr. Hill’s claims to acting fame was his decade-long dramatic role as “Adam Schiff” a hard-nosed big-city DA who is said to have been modeled after Mr. Morgenthau. When I asked the latter if he’d ever met “Adam Schiff” he said with a smile “I had lunch with him a couple times and I said ‘When you get ready to retire I want you to let me know because I want your job.’.

There’s an interesting parallel between Hill’s life and that of Morgenthau’s father Henry Jr. who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime treasury secretary in that both started off as thoroughly secular Jews and experienced midlife awakenings of the soul albeit of different sorts. In our interview Bob Morgenthau told me that despite coming from a deeply assimilated German Jewish family “starting in ’37 or ’38 my father started going to temple on the High Holidays because he wanted people to know he was Jewish. Around that time he started watching what was going on with the Jews of Europe and was very concerned about it.”

That concern of course reached an apex in 1943 with his storied meeting with Rav Aharon Kotler and Rav Avrohom Kalmanovitz in which the rabbanim demanded that he use his high office to get FDR to do something about rescuingEurope’s Jews. After that he became in Amos Bunim’s words “an effective champion for the Va’ad Hatzalah.”

Steven Hill was already critically acclaimed as one of his generation’s finest actors when he landed the role of Sigmund Freud in a 1961 play called A Far Country. The script called for a scene in which a patient was to scream at Freud “You’re a Jew!” Hill recalled in a New York Times interview that when “she would let loose this blast I would take it. And in the pause that followed I would think ‘What about this?’ And I was provoked to explore my religion. I slowly became aware that there was something more profound going on in the world than just plays and movies and TV shows.”

Two men of prominence. Two critical moments in which their very identities as Jews were challenged. And two decisions to rise to the occasion. May we all merit to do the same when our moments come.