The #OTDConf begins with Professor Glenn Dynner mentioning Orthodox Jews who toy with leaving and "step back from the precipice," making me think of the sister in the Bais Yaakov play "Truth Be Told," who begins to read Yiddish magazines but then does teshuvah...

Fascinating that in pre-war Poland, girls had an easier time breaking free than boys (emotionally).
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Bundists as Messianic, according to Prof Dynner - fascinating to have my grandmother's stories about the Bundists in my head as I hear this...
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Now Prof Dynner gets into the yeshiva as "dens of heresy" because worldwide depression --> boys can't find jobs, aren't accepted to universities --> go to yeshivas where they can get room and board.
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Those who stepped back from the precipice in pre-war Poland: some want to combine Torah and secular learning, some don't want to disappoint their parents...
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Next up is Prof Motti Inbari, talking about historical "deconversion." #OTDConf

Now we have Prof Rachel Manekin on "Rebellious Daughter: A Historical Perspective." Yes, please!! (Galicia in late 19th and early 20th centuries.)
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I had to leave the end of the first panel, but we're back now for panel 2: Exploring the Social Realities of Contemporary OTDs.
Moderated by @AyalaFader, presentations by David Belfon, Zalman Newfield, and Rona Miles.
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Prof Belfon talks about how leavers narrate being taught to see non-normative Orthodox Jews or non-Jews as lesser, but begin to change this mindset as they leave. (yep, yep yep).
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Belfon: But aversions to different Jewish expressions persist, surprisingly (?)
(Yes, indeed.)
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Belfon: Critiques are indicative of the hierarchies that stay with leave-takers.
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Belfon: They "hate labels," but still describe themselves as Jewish or even observant, but have left their communities of origin. Academic study allowing for more nuance in this area now, which is good.
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Belfon: status quo is maintained by sorting all various kinds of Jews into a strict "insider" and "outsider," not only seeing selves as above non-Jews but also above other Jews.
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Belfon: people return to community 1) because the world "outside" is framed as dangerous 2) for fear of being found out 3) from a sense of obligation to roots and ancestors.
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Belfon: many leave-takers notice that religious observance as a single marker of morality is absurd, see more complexity and nuance.
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Belfon: some leave-takers say Judaism is all about finding meaning for yourself in Judaism, authenticity, interior Orthodoxy matching exterior Orthopraxy - sometimes becoming similar to Jews who they formerly talked down on.
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Belfon: But support for broad range of authenticity is not always consistent. Sometimes judging old communities parents are still part of - as well as "wishy-washy nonsense."
(Yes tell me how to get out of this, please!)
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Belfon: leave-takers disapprove of gender-segregation in normative Orthodoxy and women as "second-class citizens" but also look down on female clergy etc - and confused about these conflicting ideas.
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Belfon: hypothesizing that they still see normative Orthodoxy as the "real" Judaism while not wanting to see it that way (yes, I can confirm, this is what I have been recognizing for a while in me).
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Belfon: leave-takers criticize normative Orthodoxy as "crazy elites" as non-normative do, but also criticize others as frum do - despite leaving because of frum judgementalism, hard to break free.
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I want more time to sit with those ideas, but on to Zalman Newfield's talk now!
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Newfield: Deborah Feldman's memoir and show received criticism as not representing Feldman's own experiences, or not representing OTD people as a larger category - focus on accuracy / truthfulness.
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Newfield: similar to Frye's "A Million Little Pieces," criticism over accuracy --> "A Million Little Lies."
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Newfield: Shulem Deen's memoir talks about both troubled home life and intellectual curiosities: both aspects contributed to process of leaving - in harmony with much of the social science research. intellectual narratives vs social/emotional narratives
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Newfield: "hybrid identity" - take aspects of Hasidic upbringing and integrate into new evolving identity - OTD memoirs often describe hybrid identity (Leah Vincent - aleph tattoo)
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Sidenote: I have a Yiddish tattoo "ich dervart nisht kein geulah" from the Yiddish version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," and I also have Leah Vincent's painting of a woman breastfeeding a book...

Newfield: divergence, having to do with gender dynamics - most memoirs written by women - of 12, only 2 written by men, 1 by trans woman, rest by cis women. Gives impression more women leave - which is not true, gender proportion is actually similar.
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Newfield: So why are most OTD memoirs written by women?
(Please don't say things that will make me have to change my talk!!! lol)
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Newfield: Possibly better secular education given to girls contributes, also in wider world girls given more freedom to express emotions, key part of writing compelling memoirs.
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Newfield: Relationship between exiters and their families post-exit: Feldman says old self is dead, little or no contact with Hasidic family. Vast majority of exiters do maintain contact with family, fairly robust relationships.
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Newfield: Still not rosy, but the relationships are there.
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Newfield: So, big differences between social science research and representation in media. Why? One possble reason: Writers are unrepresentative samples of exiters. People who have severed ties with family might feel freer to describe intimate details of their family.
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Newfield: "conspiracy of silence" - unspoken agreement between exiters and families to shield families from knowing exactly how un-frum they are.
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Newfield: another explanation: market pressures on memoirist - publishers want salacious / explosive details to capture attention of public.
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Newfield: standards of truth and accuracy not totally applicable to cultural productions like memoirs ad shows, rather attempts at translation of experiences.
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Next up: Rona Miles! on "Exiters' Perception of the OTD Label."
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Miles: Clinicians bringing different take to the table in terms of mental health and well-being.
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Miles: Footsteps conference had buttons with different labels, everyone is comfortable with different descriptors. Looking at why OTD label is found un/acceptable.
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Miles: OTD term is stigmatizing, suggests one single path ("derech"), and labels in themselves too restrictive. OTOH practical term, physical component of leaving in "derech." Also symbol of defiantly undoing pejorative meeting, potential to be empowering via reclaiming.
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Miles: quantitative study: Religious Disaffiliation Survey, developed by mental health clinicians with professional and personal experience with OTD
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Miles: aims 1) how OTD is defined by exiters 2) if label is perceived as un/acceptable by exiters.
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Miles: Majority of respondents define "OTD" as "stopping to keep fundamental Orthodox practices."
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Miles: 12 of the 37 "other" responses wrote in "all/any of the above." Others include "not believing in chareidi brand," "it's a spectrum, there's no one way to be frei" etc.
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Miles: on un/acceptability: 71% say acceptable. 29% saying unacceptable are NOT statistically different across various demographics.
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Miles: Result of the study: opens up conversation, still need more research about who are the individuals who say the term is problematic, how they define it, what about it works / doesn't work, etc.
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Miles: These conversations are happening informally on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc - so let's have them formally.
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Post-lunch, we start with Ellie Ash, talking about Partnership Minyanim and the "fuzzy" boundaries of Modern Orthodoxy.
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Ash: definition of Partnership Minyan: trying to balance halachic observance with inclusion of women. Whether it's considered "orthodox" is a question.
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Ash: Kol Rinah, focus of study: open community, people come and go, social network including people with varying practices and attending various other institutions. Not an encapsulated community - similar for ModOx but clearer for a community on the margins.
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Ash: "leaving Orthodoxy" is not a synonym for "OTD." OTD = behavioral, leaving Orthodoxy = change in social world.
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Ash: Orthodox communities expect more from their members, so some people become more marginal even though they personally haven't changed. Multiple memberships show loose network. Social world diffuse, can't be kicked out of or choose to leave.
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Ash: Jewish community made of networks, not spaces.
YES!
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Next: Itamar Ben-Ami: New Haredism in Israel - Liberalism or Anti-Liberalism? or, Why Haredim Love Trump and Resist Covid 19 Restrictions.
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Ben-Ami: usual understanding: "New Haredim" attend higher education, join the army, join workforce - more "modern," challenge to traditional separatism. BUT claim not liberalism at all but radicalism.
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Ben-Ami: deviation from Classic Haredism seems liberal bec of activity in other spheres beyond Torah learning and enclaves. But the problem lies in defining army as "liberal" when it's actually very nationalistic; and defining any deviation from separatism as "liberal."
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Ben-Ami: Weber defines religion not as ideology or institution but "lifestyle."
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Ben-Ami: modern religious lifestyles: 1) world as an arena for religious activities 2) religious activities as separate from world.
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Ben-Ami: ultra-Orthodoxy is not tradition but IS modernity! Modern by nature: attempt to create disciplined society, solidify dogma, purify society, eliminate transgression, political.
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Ben-Ami: New Haredim = challenge to the idea of world outside the Beit Midrash as inherently "secular."
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Ben-Ami: New Haredim challenging secularism, and is therefore radicalization, not liberalism.
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Ben-Ami: So, on to Trump and Covid19...
As Haredi loses separation - attempt to answer - how to separate while public sphere cannot be ignored? --> liberalism as threat to separatism --> in order to remain Haredi in mixed world, must be anti-liberal.
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This is honestly the best explanation for the mind-bogglingly strong Trumpism of the Haredi world.
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Next up! Moshe Krakowski: Sliding to the Left: Ex-Haredim Who Don't Leave Orthodoxy.
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Krakowski: There's lots of discussion of ex-hasidim, but focused on completely OTD rather than peopl who remain Orthodox but ex-hasidic. (Covid caused issues in reaching subjects.)
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Krakowski: Small sample started via Project Makom, different from ex-Hasidim in Monsey.
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Krakowski: 3 pathways out: 1) personal chaos, trauma, shapr break; 2) one big event, followed by slow drift away; 3) gradual and slow drift, no sharp break - majority is #3.
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Krakowski: Most match Newfield's findings re: having overall good relationships with families. No ostracizing from communities.
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Krakowski: Difference in Project Makom: more likely than usual Hasidic people to be connected to online/intellectual/OTD world, engaged in philosophical questions.
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Krakowski: Some respondents say "call me Orthodox now, but come back in a few months, I'm already on my way out."
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Krakowski: Who even counts as Orthodox? ModOx / OpenOx / CentristOx, etc. Belief vs practice as criterion?
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Krakowski: Ex-Hasidim think of ModOx as classist and snobbish, whereas in Hasidism, perception of comfort and familiarity.
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Krakowski: So why leave? 1) too black-and-white, no nuance 2) lack of belief 3) sense of Haredi life as too all-encompassing, ModOx allows you to think and be however you like - mediocrity turns into a positive pluralism.
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Krakowski: when asked respondents whether they'd be okay with kids becoming chasidish - 2 unequivocal "yes," 4 "yes but" - be able to make a living, don't be cruel to those who are different, can't be brainwashed.
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Final speaker in this panel: Dikla Yogev with more on Modern Haredim!
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Yogev: will talk specifically about Modern Haredim in Israel and Covid.
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Yogev: Modern, Classic, Radical Haredim more useful to think about than Hasidic, Litvish, Sefardic, etc.
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Yogev: 20-50% of Haredim in Israel are Modern Haredim - get different responses based on who is asking... (big issue in all of this kind of research).
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Yogev: During first wave of Covid, connection to internet in Haredi communities rose, not just in Modern Haredi - gives access to objective information and other opinions.
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Yogev: informal social control: being a Modern Haredi, especially vocal and active trying to advance community, comes with a price: policing by Radical or Classic Haredim - discrimination, harassment, online bullying, kids expelled, etc.
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Yogev: Modern Haredim do have effect on Classic Haredim - those with access to internet (Modern) became more integral during Covid, posting flyers with objective info etc. - filled the gap created by silence and contrafactuals of Haredi leadership.
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Yogev: highlights an internal paradox: are the Modern Haredim promoting informal social control, policing those who used to police them?
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Yogev: open questions: did Covid accelerate modernization? Is permanent internet access now "no going back" in Haredi life? (after Gulf War, Haredi households went from no radio -> permanent radio) Did Covid allow Classic Haredism to question authority --> individualism?
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Shira Schwartz responding: "being Orthodox" is no one thing, perhaps shift questions - not to try to pin down "what makes someone in or out," but instead examine what diversity of expressions of "frumness" tells us about being on / off the "derech".
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Schwartz: and how does all this contribute to questions of personhood?
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Schwartz: also consider how "OTD" as identity has been influenced by broader discourses of identity.
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Schwartz: non-Jewish or non-Orthodox narratives about hw to look back on where OTDs came from, often used to help non-Jewish/Orthodox communities feel better about their own positions.
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(Sidenote: falling into yeshivishe reid every so often is a bonus of this conference... but everyone is quick to translate, which is wonderfully inclusive.)
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(My panel is up next, so I won't be live-tweeting that. I may be back for Naomi Seidman's keynote, but I also need to prep to teach, so we'll see...)
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Naomi Seidman's keynote: a wonderful reflection on the "OTD moment" - popular literature, many academic books, academia may add "OTD studies" as a division, and this conference as a "reunion of strangers."
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Seidman: protracted rivalry over who will frame this narrative, contested territory. OTD is not a "before-and-after" but a generative gap...
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Seidman: OTD also internal struggle to leave discourse which frames leaving as defection.
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Seidman: question of definition proxy battle for OTD struggle to find selves at intersection of religion and secularism etc.
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Seidman: This is also an "Orthodox moment," with Agudah conferences "youth at risk," Covid thrusting community into sight --> who's at risk now?
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Seidman: leaving Orthodox world is almost never a clean break.
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Seidman: the past months' news cycles catapults us back into the neighborhoods we grew up in.
(I feel this so much.)
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Seidman: “Distance and proximity aren’t measured by miles or circumscribed by walls.”
(Thanks to Shira for getting the exact words.)

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Seidman: watching our community, watching our community being watched, watching our community watching us.... double and triple vision...
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Seidman: what may have been seen as struggle over religious belief reveals itself to be political and social.
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Seidman: Country being torn apart by divides, but OTDers already know about divides and rifts in the fabrics of our society.
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Seidman: Is there any sense in speaking about OTD as a collective term? Productive in sensing community, but some want to disappear. Community exists mostly in virtual spaces- as we try to live together, separately in the "era of Zoom," OTD community already pioneered...
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Seidman: OTD tested boundaries of and escaped the "we," nothing so limiting as the first-person plural (quoting Shira Schwartz).
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Seidman: "Did I leave a community, or did I pick that up after I left, from the secular narrative about this so-called community?" Communities saw selves as fractious, seeing differences in kinds of hats!!!
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Seidman: all of OTDers at this conference thrown together as OTD, but all have differentces.
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Seidman: OTD susceptible to ideological shaping by Orthodox narratives that pre-ordain the OTD experience but also from secular narratives.
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Seidman: Do we look for ancestors in maskilim, rebellious daughters - as far back as Acher, who still liked to hang out in his old neighborhoods as many contemp OTDers do? Is there conversation on these grounds? Or do we give up the frum game of yichus?
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Seidman: Do we need a long tradition? As a form of individuation and rejection of collective narrative, maybe our ow OTD narrative is another thread to be snipped.
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Seidman: mis/fortune to be becoming secular at a moment of post-secularization and the glamour of religious multiplicity. Non-Jewish/frum audiences revel in ripping off sheitlach... But Islamic veil is counter-colonialism and anti-Western oppression - but sheitel?
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Seidman: (I'm overcome by emotion listening to Naomi's speech and the chat is alive with requests for Naomi to publish this - so beautiful, so poetic, so emotional. So I stop live-tweeting here ad just listen.)
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Shira Schwartz notes that in an age of identity politics, OTDers are alluring because we're trying to shed identity?
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At the end of the conference, lots of people pointing out how much OTD reading and "OTD theory," such as it is now, is like queer theory.
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