Who are the Baal Teshuvas(Newly Religious Jews) of 2022?

Who is a Baal Teshuva and what is the psychology behind one in 2022 Western Society? In Rebecca M. Ross's "Blowing the Head Off Of Outreach" which I highly recommend, she points to materials of how Kiruv professionals approach Kiruv.

The first trait that a Campus Rabbi will look for:

    "1. Middos – good character traits. Nice, normal students. Is this person nice, punctual, helpful? These are questions my source tells me are critical to ask before investing serious time." 

    "Nice, normal students. Is this person nice, punctual, helpful?" is essentially a less blunt way of saying, is this person pacified(not assertive), seeking approval, and receptive to shame and motivating negative emotions like guilt and shame.

The second trait that a Campus Rabbi will look for:

    "2. Intelligence. Torah’s philosophy is brilliant and true- and completely adverse to many ideas we have in the Western world. A student is required to question what s/he thought to be true about priorities and ideas. Such a person (obviously) must be a thinker but proceed with caution if the person takes too much pride in his/her intelligence (see #1)  or has an addiction  (not aspiring) to perfect grades."

    "A student is required to question what s/he thought to be true about priorities and ideas" is a way of saying that this person needs to be a mix of neurotic, undecided, and an over-thinker.

The third trait that a Campus Rabbi will look for:

    "Such a person (obviously) must be a thinker but proceed with caution if the person takes too much pride in his/her intelligence (see #1)  or has an addiction  (not aspiring) to perfect grades."

     This says that the person is somewhat interested in philosophical concepts and is undecided, can't see themselves as too intellectual otherwise they will not be able to handle the contradictions in logic that are rife within Orthodox Judaism, and can't be too perfectionist otherwise they will suffer from raging Baal Teshuva syndrome. A raging Baal Teshuva will go incredibly extreme very fast and then burn out which will hurt a kiruv Rabbi's pay and reputation of delivering high quality people that will fit into the community. There is a common theme of OCD tendencies towards observance within religious observance cross-culturally.

    The Rabbis are describing a mentally unhealthy individual as an ideal kiruv target. Someone can't have too much good for themselves going on otherwise they will not be as receptive to brainwashing. If the Torah was objectively true, it would logically follow that the smartest people would be the people a Rabbi would want to be the ones to target first as they could see it the easiest. Alas, this is not the case and so the Rabbis are left picking up the Jewish scraps that society has left them.

    When a Kiruv victim arrives at a trip, learning program, or Yeshiva the first thing that occurs is that the person gets acclimated to the environment that has been carefully constructed. There is an attitude of gratefulness for being given the ability to join and the person is happy to get along. The Rabbi(s) will eventually start teaching and due to this feeling of being indebted and not wanting to seem ungrateful, people listen and pay attention. If something about the teaching bothers the kiruv victim, they will make a note of it mentally and wait until the end to ask a question. The response to questions are usually feel good answers, a study or statistic about the truth of it from the secular world, or some internal quote from the wisdom of the sages to get the kiruv victim to see a similarity to the current teachings. If the kiruv victim can't keep it to themselves until the end, they will interrupt and be given a swallowable version of, shut up and just accept it, we'll get into the details later if you want, but just don't interrupt for now. The rest of the experiences with people are so positive that the kiruv victim will ignore this treatment and psychological and intellectual slight of hand.

    There is this joking, eery comment that sometimes comes up when one meets a new Baal Teshuva in a learning program or Yeshiva. It goes along the lines of 

person 1:"How did you end up here?"

person 2: "I met a Rabbi in (insert name of home town or city here) where I started to learn with them.." Sometimes they will have a friend that recommended this to them so they will add "and I was recommended by (such and such friend) and eventually I went on a trip to Israel (or did) such and such retreat or getaway program"

person 1: "That's how they get you!(Joking manner)

person 2: "Yeah haha, Baruch Hashem(Thank god) I am here"

    This gets less weird for people the longer they have been in the community. It is kind of like Pokemon, got to catch them all. The echo chamber that is Orthodox Judaism and the grouping of Baalei Teshuva reinforces newly created and concretized beliefs because they are finally exposed to a group of people with a similar personality and stop being able to understand why others do not get the truth that they see. Baal Teshuvas are told that if you help someone become religous, that they will get a portion of that person's reward for mitzvahs in Olam Haba(the next world). Non-religious Jews who may have been friends in the past start to seem like potential points in the mitzvah point game that Orthodox Jews view the world as. It is akin to the Hedonic Calculus of Utilitarian philosopher Bentham, except with playing others. The Tanakh(all canonized Jewish writings) provide lots of psychological knowledge on the nature of people's emotions and so the new Baal Teshuva has no qualms about using their new psychological knowledge to manipulate and brainwash others in their spheres of influence. This also provides validation for one's own emotional regulation by convincing oneself that they are righteous for helping others see the truth and feel good about their own newly held beliefs.

     As a kiruv victim advances through the stages of becoming "more religious" the act of the disappearing Kiruv Rabbi starts to appear as other Rabbis take on the role of authoritative figure. The kiruv victim will be encouraged to "Aseh lecha Rav"(Make for yourself a Rabbi) which comes form Pirkei Avot(Ethics of Our Fathers) where a person will go to ask individual practical and philosophical religious questions to the Rabbi who serves as a spiritual advisor. The Baalei Teshuva realizes that the friendship and love they received was part of a deliberately constructed act but are grateful to them for bringing them to their current position in life.

 Through the love of the community and individuals around the kiruv victim, he stops asking questions and turn off the part of the brain that is skeptical and tells him to use critical thinking. Everyone around him talks with such conviction and strength that it is highly charismatic and makes the Baal Teshuva want to feel the same level of conviction about their own beliefs. The kiruv victim starts to adopt community norms such as dressing in a suit, using Yiddish expressions, distancing from secular and non-Jewish friends, distancing from non-religious or non-Jewish family, and keeping Shabbat with sometimes adding self-imposed extra stringencies(Chumra). Within the system everything begins to make sense and the whole world is viewed through this lens. The kiruv victim begins to see eye to eye with the community which includes often zealously mocking non-believers, dehumanizing and being suspicious of non-Jews, giving speeches, and being a source of inspiration for FFB(religious from birth) Jews.

The Baalei Teshuvas of today are ridden with doubt, guilt, low self-worth, and existential angst. A decent amount have OCD, Anxiety, Depression, and trauma from their past. Some of them are highly private with their issues that they struggle with because of the fear of being perceived as crazy. They present an image to others who are not religious as a source of stability, strength, and conviction when really they are just pretending the best they can because life is easier this way.

 

In reality, no one knows the meaning of life. Those who claim to know are just unable to mentally grip the fact that they are the ones who assign meaning to things. The only difference is that the Baal Teshuva has outsourced this for security and comfort. It takes a mentally stable individual to accept and be comfortable with the fact that life only has the meaning one assigns to it and that life does not need a justification to be lived.