There’s a myth about baalei teshuvah that we were all drunks staggering around unhappily before we saw the light and now our task is to leave our prior lives behind entirely and start all over with this new group of perfect people and to imitate them in every way and to learn Gemara all day long. Well, I wasn’t unhappy, and I didn’t drink alcohol or smoke or anything like that. I didn’t become Torah observant out of unhappiness. I was looking for a higher path, and I think I found it. However, trashing my prior life was a big mistake that caused me much misery and actually took me off of that higher path because you can’t do it when you are feeling crazy and sad. I had good friends that I never replaced. They didn’t leave me. They were cool with what I was doing. I left them as directed by people who were going to become my new far more moral friends and family but never did. I don’t regret becoming Torah observant, but I regret handing over my life to pushy people who ordered me to be like them. It went too far with me giving away my music, my tennis racket, and my art books. The people who made big promises about the nirvana I’d find if I dumped my life never gave up their childhood friends or their life pursuits. They don’t know what that’s like, how dangerous it is, what it does to your mind, especially when that nirvana doesn’t materialize. I had some good moments with Gemara, along with much frustration. But it wasn't a replacement for everything that I loved and it didn't need to be. That was put upon me by people who had never done anything else with their lives. Well, goodie for them. But it wasn't good for me.
"Machon Shlomo was founded in 1982 with a small student body and a small staff, in an apartment building that stood at the entrance to a fledgling Jerusalem neighborhood called Har Nof. At the time, the community consisted of a dozen newly finished buildings perched atop a mountainside, flanked on either side by forest and miles of undeveloped land. The only road to the main city was a dirt path. It was this unassuming location, far from the bustle of the city and the distractions of tourism, that the yeshiva’s founder, ...., hand-picked as the site where motivated students could build themselves to achieve greatness." Those words are from the Machon Shlomo website. They are an attempt to glamorize what was an unhealthy situation. Har Nof is a normal community now. Back then it was a construction site. There was no bookstore, pizza shop, or falafel store. In Israel, that means it was not an actual neighborhood. We had few neighbors and had no simchas to attend, no bar mitzva...
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