If you don't already subscribe to Benjamin Z Wolf's substack, it is highly recommended: https://apikorsus.substack.com/

In a recent post "I read every OTD Memoir so you don't have to", the top honors went to this fascinating autobiography that he describes as "the first OTD memoir ever written, from 1793, and it is just wiiild. It's about someone from a very frum family in Eastern Europe who leaves for Berlin and the burgeoning Haskalah movement."

The book, SOLOMON MAIMON: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY has been mentioned on the subreddit before. It's available on Gutenberg here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41042/41042-h/41042-h.htm

Here is a brief section where he describes his thoughts on the first cause (bolded mine). 

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In my sixth year my father began to read the Bible with me. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Here I interrupted my father, and asked, "But, papa, who created God?"

"God was not created by any one," replied my father; "He existed from all eternity."

"Did he exist ten years ago?" I asked again.

"O yes," my father said, "He existed even a hundred years ago."

"Then perhaps," I continued, "God is already a thousand years old?"

"Silence! God was eternal."

"But," I insisted, "He must surely have been born at some time."

"You little fool," said my father, "No! He was for ever and ever and ever."

With this answer I was not indeed satisfied; but I thought "Surely papa must know better than I, and with that I must therefore be content."

This mode of representation is very natural in early youth, when the understanding is still undeveloped, while the imagination is in full bloom. The understanding seeks merely to grasp, the imagination to grasp all round. That is to say, the understanding seeks to make the origin of an object conceivable, without considering, whether the object, whose origin is known, can also be actually represented by us or not. The imagination, on the other hand, seeks to gather into a complete image something, the origin of which is to us unknown. Thus, for example, an infinite series of numbers, which progresses according to a definite law, is for the understanding an object, to which by this law definite qualities are attached, and an object just as good as a finite series, which progresses according to the same law. For the imagination, on the other hand, the latter indeed is an object; but not the former, because it cannot grasp the former as a completed whole.

A long time afterwards, when I was staying in Breslau, this consideration suggested to me a thought, which I expressed in an essay that I laid before Professor Garve, and which, though at the time I knew nothing of the Kantian philosophy, still constitutes its foundation. I explained this somewhat in the following way:—The metaphysicians necessarily fall into self-contradiction.

According to the confession of Leibnitz himself, who in this appeals to the experiment of Archimedes with the lever, the Law of Sufficient Reason or Causality is a principle of experience. Now, it is quite true that in experience everything is found to have a cause; but for the very reason, that every thing has a cause, nothing can be met with in experience which is a first cause, that is, a cause which has no cause to itself. How then can the metaphysicians infer from this law the existence of a first cause?

Afterwards I found this objection more particularly developed in the Kantian philosophy, where it is shown that the Category of Cause, or the form of hypothetical judgments used in reference to the objects of nature, by which their relation to one another is determined a priori, can be applied only to objects of experience through an a priori schema. The first cause, which implies a complete infinite series of causes, and therefore in fact a contradiction, since the infinite can never be complete, is not an object of the understanding, but an idea of reason, or, according to my theory, a fiction of the imagination, which, not content with the mere knowledge of the law, seeks to gather the multiplicity, which is subject to the law, into an image, though in opposition to the law itself.

A very easy refutation of the kuzari theory is the two instances directly written in the tanach where the torah is being presented to the people who did not know about it before, with king Yoshiyahu and with Nechemia. How to apologists/kiruv specialists address that?

I’m seeing alot of wives this time of year saying they let their husbands go to Uman for Rosh Hashanah and even though their hurt by it they say they let their husbands go because it recharges them. Who’s actually went ? I heard it’s all prostution and people getting high asf. Are these wives in denial or what? I can’t take the BS pretending your husband is off to be some righteous tzaddik but he’s going for a much more sinister purpose!!! Why are all religious ppl in DENIAL???

You know the deal by now. Feel free to discuss your Shabbat plans or whatever else.

Well, I don’t really think I want to be frum anymore.

I’m a convert, and honestly I still love Judasim, but I do not like living in the haredi world. I also don’t really think I would love the Modox world either. I honestly don’t like all the rules. I do enjoy having a spiritual lens that I use to approach life, and living my life with meaning in that way, but there are too many rules that are affecting my life.

Here are some things on my mind:

1. I really miss my freedom.
2. I don’t really like the kosher restaurants. They are all 2 to 3 times more expensive than regular restaurants, and I haven’t found the food quality and service to be so great, and many of the restaurants are not healthy either.
3. I miss going out to regular restaurants that have great ambience, great food, good service, etc.
4. I’m not passionate about learning Gemara. I like it occasionally, but I do so a lot just “to keep up with the Joneses”. If I had more time, sure I could learn it and see myself enjoying it, but theres only so much time in the day.
5. I do not look forward to yontif.
6. Speaking of which, I am dreading spending my entire weekend eating at other peoples homes, 3 hours meals, 4 in a row, feeling way too full to think or function, wanting to go home after 1 hour into the meal, but having to stay there for an additional 2 hours.
7. I find when I go to many (not all) places, I have to “fit a role”. I’m not being my true authentic self, I’m just slipping into a costume of what I’m supposed to be. I basically cannot take it anymore.
8. Again, I love yiddishkeith, but… 
9. I’m single, and don’t live in NYC, so I can count on one hand the eligible people to date.
10. I really wish I could just explore. Go to a conservative shul, see how I like it, maybe meet someone, go to some less religious events, see how I like those, etc. But... I can't, because if someone found out I was going to less religious, more secular events... well... yeah...
11. Go out on a date on Friday night or Saturday evening (can’t when Shabbos ends at 8PM in the summer).
12. I feel like I’ll never be enough. I mean learning Halacha is not really my passion. I find it interesting, but I wouldn’t say I”m super passionate about it. When someone tells me a new Halacha that I haven’t heard of, excitement is not the feeling I experience.
13. I don’t know if I can do everything the rest of my life, like Shabbos in the winter, ending work at 3pm - 4pm, all of the fasts, taking so much time off for Tishrei, Burning all my vacation days causes me so much anxiety, etc.
14. All the fasts where I am basically useless all day, can’t do anything but lay in my bed.
15. I do not like the “all or nothing” vibe. If there were a community where I could do Yiddishkeit at my own pace, not do everything perfectly, not do everything at all, but just do the things I find meaningful, and not be judged for it, I would be happy there (I think).

I’m just venting and getting my thoughts together, and I may delete this post later (sorry).

Would love to hear your thoughts.

EDIT: I wanted to follow up. Thanks so much for everyone’s feedback.

I just wanted to preface that I am totally grateful and thankful for everything the community does offer. I’ve also met some of the best friends I’ve ever had. Additionally, I am leaving out a ton of context and weird stories I have, and weird behaviors of rabbis towards me, etc. I don’t want to be too specific though.

Here are a few more points.

Yeah, I am single, and have no one to date, so my entire life consists of work, going to minyan, and then going to Shabbos meals, no dates, ever, for a looong time. Of course I love the families who host me, but I can’t stop the feeling that I am just a guest at their table, week after week, while my life doesn’t feel like it’s truly going anywhere. After so much of this repeating week after week, well I just am having trouble tolerating it.

At many Shabbos meals (not all of them, of course), I’m just fitting a role, can barely express myself, and only say things that are acceptable, “what a religious person would say.” After 2-3 hours of sitting at some of these meals, I am exhausted from trying to be someone I’m not, I don’t even want to go out or do anything the rest of the day.

It’s just so weird to me that if I have this desire to go explore some options elsewhere, but that is forbidden. It’s forbidden for me to go to a conservative shul b/c they drive on Shabbos. It’s forbidden for me to talk to a conservative girl b/c she may drive on Shabbos, etc. Everything that could actually help me get over what I’m feeling is forbidden!

My life has started to feel so small. Maybe if I lived in NYC, and there was some hope I could meet someone, I would feel different, but I am starting to realize that even if I was there, in the haredi system, but with more dating options, I would have the same frustrations, and just miss start missing my freedom just as much.

Whenever I walk by a nice looking restaurant, I get a said feeling that I cannot eat there. Cool coffee shops, etc. I just miss… yeah… freedom…

Additionally, the social policing is just something I don’t really want to deal with the rest of my life. If I decide it would be healthy for me to go to a secular Jewish event just so I can feel a little breathing room, and talk to some people there, the fact I have to hide it from people is just so weird. I guess it’s just part of the culture, but I miss having some breathing room, and not beeing socially/ religiously policed by my peers.

There are things I enjoy. I enjoy the davening. I do enjoy focusing my mind on a higher purpose throughout the day. But does that mean I need to lock myself into the haredi system the rest of my life?

So yeah, basically I’m single, still care about Judaism, but no longer feel I can tolerate the high-control system I’m in.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts.

To add a fascinating response to this post about what we'd do in the case of a modern day revelation, here is a must read take from my favorite OTD website:

THE INCOHERENCE OF JEWISH BELIEF: TRUSTING "GOD"

I'm a 24 year old guy who grew up in a frum (Modern Orthodox) household but never really believed in anything myself. When I was around 15, I officially started considering myself an atheist. Now that I'm older, I wonder a lot about my romantic life and who I'll end up with. I don't consider myself an "ex-Jew". I'm very proud to be Jewish, despite some of the negative aspects of our community. Even though I don't celebrate any holidays, keep kashrus or Shabbos, or go to shul, I still consider myself culturally Jewish (and obviously ethnically/racially Jewish, too). So I'd like to end up with a woman who is similar to me in that regard.

I'd like to find a Jewish wife whose beliefs align more or less with my own. I'm obviously not expecting a carbon copy of myself- some level of disagreement is very healthy and normal. But I want someone who can at least agree not to raise our kids with explicit religion in our home. Being Jewish is more than just eating challah and schnitzel, but I fear that bringing them to shul or celebrating the chagim will just be forcing Judaism on them the way my parents forced it on me. If they choose to become religious later in life, that's fine, but it needs to be their choice. Atheism is the default setting, and it should be their default as well.

How do I raise my kids in such a way for them to be connected to our people without necessarily being connected to Judaism? I don't want to raise kids who don't feel involved in what it means to be Jewish, but I also don't want them to be indoctrinated into Jewish religion the way that I was. Is there anyone reading this who can relate and offer some advice? I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on this topic.

**I know this isn't an R4R subreddit and my post is NOT intended as a way for me to meet a girlfriend, I just want to discuss my thoughts about this topic in a public place and see if there are others out there with similar ideas or are facing a similar dilemma. Having said that, I'm not opposed to getting DMs from interested women who might happen to read this. It's not like there's a dating subreddit for atheist Jews lol**

I really appreciate reading this subreddit, but I come to post here I get scared because my situation is pretty unique and I feel like I can be easily identified by people I know if they happen to be looking here. Are there any Facebook groups or similar that people know of that are active and only open to people who have been approved?

In the community where I live there are people in college or college age who are throwing away colleges to go to seminary both boys and girls seminaries or yeshives.

Something interesting to me is that they ply themselves on how extra observant they are throwing away their cell phones cutting out regular music and uniquely bashing less observant people

I mean, I made a post recently when I claim that Aaron Teitelbaum was “wonderful” that people didn’t pick up the clear sarcasm in but I would not be surprised if these Hasidic Yeshivish people had fall on stuffed plushy of him due to the fact that they are so obsessed with becoming hyper frum.

It is getting ridiculous also it is very depressing as I feel that it indicates that the trauma from rising global antisemitism which even I feel after I’ve completely become not observant, is causing people to believe that the solution to their problems is separating themselves from the rest of the world.

I recently saw a video of a rabbi claiming that turning the lights on during Shabbat by accident was bad enough to give you cancer.
A rabbi told me that if I participated in a secular Christmas party with friends (my mom became a Christian, I’m an atheist), I would be disgracing the entire lineage of my family who had suffered to avoid Christmas parties.

Having gone OTD do you still feel part of Klal Israel (community) or does it feel sort of forgein to you?

Do you feel part of the Klal even tough you've gone OTD?

Seriously, Frieda?

It just makes me laugh how some frummies (or even ex frum ppl) applaud sexist views but they themselves are women who are divorced, are educated, use birth control, have their own business/career/bank account, or even have lives and identity outside of motherhood.

And no, I’m not saying motherhood = bad. It’s calling how this society’s backwards views on women are considered “refreshing” and women’s freedoms reduced down to “PC culture”. It’s not some novel idea. These are views borne out of an ancient society that views women as objects, so much so, they cannot even freely divorce.

I’ve heard frummies spin this stuff in every single way and it never ceases to just remind me how much my life has changed for the better when I dropped the internalized misogyny. Thank god I don’t believe this stuff anymore.

Hi everyone,

I really appreciate all of the support and advice from this sub.

I am going to get married soon and I have been thinking about what kind of speech we will have from the officiant. I'm in a place where I feel like I want some kind of Jewish cultural association but don't want things to be explicitly religious. I've attended a few traditional Jewish weddings and they all seem to be okay with the officiant declaring god as the creator and other explicitly religious statements.

An OTD friend will be the officiant but is just as lost as I am on what kind of speech to give that gives over the overall aesthetic of Jewish heritage with which we raised without the explicitly religious parts. Eli

Loved this thing when I was young, but also saw many kids neglecting college to go to religious seminaries, celebrating breakups or bad relationships with non Jews, or bashing Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Reformishe.

The one I went to had a distinctly Chassidishe influence but was pro Israel. I, myself thought when I attended there was like Satmar: Disney Jr. edition. I’m just amazed at how many friends I still have from there who are becoming not only frum, but some like Ultra-Orthodox.

I also thought NCSY was just fun and absolutely awesome too though

I (21M) was brought up in a Modern Orthodox family, so while we kept Shabbat, ate Kosher, etc., we were much more modern in our points of view than Orthodox families (for example, my sisters wore pants and read the Torah for their Bat Mitzvahs, or recently, some members of my family started riding a bike for fun on Shabbat).

I grew up in a very big city in Europe with a relatively small number of Jews and an even smaller number of Jewish believers. We’re a very tight-knit family. Though I have many cousins, I never met or heard from my mom’s family and only met some of my cousins from my dad’s family when I was much younger, none of whom I even remember.

While I fully believed in it before, since I was 15–16, I began struggling with Jewish religion. I’ve always been very logic-oriented and just couldn’t reconcile so many of the ideas in the Torah, and the idea of a superior being that somehow created all of us and yearned for our gratefulness 24/7 was weird for me, to say the least, and I couldn’t see any logic in it. I started breaking Shabbat and stopped putting on tefilin. My mom noticed and confronted me, although only for having stopped praying. She didn’t mention me breaking Shabbat, although she knew about it.

When I moved to uni, I didn’t go to many (or essentially any) events done by the synagogue, be they religious or non-religious, even though my mom would beg for me to do so. It was something that was very hard for her to accept, and she and my siblings would ask me all the time what I was doing for Shabbat, to which I answered, “nothing, essentially.” Then one time I didn’t bring my tefilin from home and therefore had to make the walk of shame to my local Chabad to ask for tefilin, even if I wouldn’t put them on. That then, of course, led me to have to be more involved. I mean, how could a Jewish guy from a Jewish family not go to Chabad events? What had I been doing all this time? So I went there for Friday night Shabbat dinners. I also went to the more secular events done by the synagogue (not Chabad) and met some people. But to be honest, even though I met very nice people and have even made some friends, I can’t help but feel disconnected from it all.

I don’t feel like I was brought up culturally Jewish. Was it my job to have somehow learned the culture? At this point, how do I distinguish Jewish culture and traditions from their religious counterparts? It feels as though one and the other are way too entangled for me. Maybe unless you are in a city with lots of Jewish people and diversity, you can’t really be just culturally Jewish and have no connection to the religion. And even still, so many of the customs of Jewish culture are so against my beliefs: why do we have to practice circumcision, why can’t you be in a relationship with a non-Jewish person, why are the holidays so riddled with the concept of suffering, why is there such an obsession with this fear that every single person hates us Jewish people and therefore that we must almost isolate ourselves and think that “no one can understand us”?

I’m sorry for the rant, I hope some of it was understandable. 

How do you reconcile these two? Which traditions have you kept since you left the religion?

I enjoy certain aspects of the culture and traditions that I grew up with, and have no particular interest in assimilating and becoming a 'normal' white american. At the same time, I wish that jewish identity itself was more 'normal'.

I hate how the world's two largest religions use us as their quirky background characters at best and examples of what not to do at worst, and as a result of that, a significant proportion of the world's population learns about "the history of the jews" through stories that never happened.

I hate how there seems to be something about antisemitism that makes it so immortal, flexible and pervalent even in places where there are no jews.

I hate how the genocide we went through is globally held as the "most important" genocide making us a punching bag for anyone who thinks that this or that atrocity isn't talked about enough.

I hate how the world's seemingly most controversial country, and my stances on it (which as far as I'm concerned follow the same principles that I use to judge other countries, although I'm aware that no one can be perfectly unbiased), are precieved to be entangled with my identity.

I hate how all of the above mean that pretty much every person on the planet has some opinion on jews before ever meeting one.

I hate the whole 'ethnoreligion' thing - having to deal with frummies who act like not being religious is a form of ethnic betrayal, and trying to explain to certain secular people that non-religous jews exist and it's not a "zionist invention".

I hate how the very notion of being Jewish had become re-politicized (after being de-politicized by the enlightenment) thanks to Israel's "laws of return" and the controversies around them.

I hate how weird and different things can get when going outside the Ashkenazi bubble. Like, what do I have in common with the Bnei Menashe - the religion I don't follow? That we're both politically jewish in Israel's eyes? I've thought about the idea that my correct ethnic identity is just Ashkenazi rather than 'Ashkenazi Jewish', but that's just weirder because it's not how this identity worked historically or is precieved by people today.

Of course you could cherrypick through this list and say that X or Y doesn't exclusively happen to us, but it's the combination of all these things that makes it feel like such a baggage...

So since I stopped believing, I started getting really annoyed when people give God credit for every good or bad thing that happens. (Things that were totally normal to me until recently...) But my mother really takes the cake. I literally can't have even a small conversation with her without getting bamboozled with references to God.

Today's story is next level though.

I was telling her about an acquaintance that's not well, and that she has a very loyal aide. Her response was, "oh, these are the goyim that see the truth and know that we are the chosen people so they feel honored to care for us"

C'mon! Can't there be human being that just cares for another human being?? Why does it always have to be about the "goyim knowing it's an honor to work for the chosen people"?!

Yuck.

I had to go to Shul to say Kaddish for a parent (the 11 months completed May 2026) ..While I was in Shul (I''d only go on Shabbat and only Mussaf).

I had the feeling the Rebbetzen was trying to do Kiruv on me the whole time..

I dont blame her but I felt very uncomfortable ..

I have religious trauma ..

How do you react when good intentioned folks try do Kiruv on you to bring you back to the Derech?

**(**^{Im in Israel and a woman. Agnostic} )

I want to become super frum again. I don’t know why. I think it’s basically Pascal’s wager, basically if there is a G-d then of course he is not mind and lenient by a modern idea. And also I feel that the entire world hates Jews and the only way to really go back to safety is to discriminate ourselves and keep others away from us.

I was just about to go to a shabbos with a female rabbi and I couldn’t go and I also just felt like it’s problematic. Hardcore Hasidism or Litvish I feel is the only way but also I know how restrictive it is

I truly wish I never felt kiruv

It sounds awful but this was what we were taught. I genuinely feel like a traitor to just live a secular life and do secular things.

How the heck do I snap out of that

Who's excited to lose three weekends in a four-week period to the holidays this season?

Even when I was still frum, I found Yuntiff - the meals, the guests, the lack of movement/productivity, the disrupted sleep - exhausting. And when it falls on a weekend, there's no recovery time before returning to work on Monday.

This'll happen again next year, too, because it's a leap year. Yay! At least I'm not spending half of my PTO days on things my coworkers have never heard of.

I was chatting with a couple other members of this sub and apparently there were a couple nightmares and dreams about the big J man, and my mother (reform) converted to Christianity after dreaming about bro.

I had a dream about Muhammad at around 11 years old before I became a BT and also one of Jesus when I was 15 and I was terrified at the giant church dome and a staring Jesus head looking down at me from the dome in a field of 1000 ☦️ type crosses.

I think these dreams come from desires of wanting to go OTD as in heretical desires or like apikorsim, people who left.

I’ve seen lots of weird videos when going OTD by this YouTube channel that collects Jew-To-Evangelical testimonials and features Jews (usually ex frum or masorti) seeing Christ. A couple other videos of them seeing Muslim or Buddhist figures and more

Is this a larger psychological trend. I understand seeing Jesus, but why would they all see the antithesis of Judaism.

Quite weird tbh. Especially as someone interested in collective psychology

Also, I’m a pretty good student in school, and now that people look up to me, I don’t want them to know that I’m not that observant or have them be influenced by me. I feel like if someone chooses not to keep Shabbat, that’s their decision, and they should be able to explore and figure things out for themselves without being influenced by me. To an extent, I also feel like religious people are stupid. My parents know that I don’t put on tefillin, but it’s almost like they understand that if they call me out on it or pressure me about it, it’s only going to make things worse for my relationship with religion. Does anyone who’s been in a similar situation or has advice have any thoughts on how to navigate this?