Likelihood of Success

It was in June, and it was not written on this blog, or on Dean’s World. Tonight I was browsing friends’ blogs and came across this article, and it reminded me of what I’d written on a related topic last June. It was originally published on Beyond BT, a blog for “BT’s,” i.e., baalei teshuva — Jews who have adopted Jewish practice late in life. I have reprinted it here, changing some of the lingo and adding some explanatory links, but changing none of the self-obsession. If you don’t go in for that you can browse away now!

You can find the original post, and the extensive commentary that followed (some of it also laden with Yiddish-Hebrew terminology, however), here.

Everyone gives up something when he becomes a religious Jew, or frum. Some more than others, of course. Sometimes precious relationships are breached and, unfortunately, can never be repaired. Other times, people give up lucrative career opportunities or fame or one or another kind of social standing. These are the sacrifices that even the least learned baalei teshuva place on the altar in their service to God.

Now I, for instance, did not give up a particularly notable “party” lifestyle, including any of the elements you might associate with that; I was always on the square side. Is giving up three hours a day of TV considering giving up “something”? Hardly. As to food, I never liked shellfish. Okay, cheeseburgers, chicken parmigiana — but what serious person can reckon the loss of a particular kind of food, or even the convenience of being able to eat anywhere, serious sacrifices when offered the opportunity of personal and spiritual fulfillment in exchange?

Yes, more subtle sacrifices are the social things attendant to these physical pleasures — the inability to “go out” with friends and colleagues to restaurants, say on Friday nights. These return as momentary blips of the heart, but if a person merits the development of a decently normal frum life in a frum community and is blessed with a frum family, these are easily recognized as pleasures of dubious worth. You simply do not share the values of the people you are not going out with and as nice as all the restaurants and bars in the world look from the outside, they are — aside from the value of fellowship with any decent person, which I refuse to assign a zero value, as transient as it may be — easily recognized, also, as basically empty inside. (I do not even understand what married people are doing in restaurants at 9 PM — don’t they have families? My father was never in a restaurant on a weeknight, or in a bar, ever. Maybe that’s why I’m here with you today.) At least, I, for my part, have gotten past these, and do not struggle, even though there are pangs.

Now, I will tell you, if you agree not to tease me or make a big deal about it, that I used to be a very successful collegiate actor. You will, I hope, entertain me when I say that, back in the day, I could entertain you; that I reached a point in my college stage career that I could, and did, cause a thousand people to erupt in laughter by raising an eyebrow; that I shared the stage with a famous Hollywood star in those days and held my own, and then some. I held audiences in the palm of my hand. But do you think that is what I miss by virtue of becoming an observant Jew? It is not. In fact, even in my callow and “secular” state, I knew how preposterously unhealthy it would be to seek this dopamine rush regularly. This was so not only because the big bad world was not college, but also because I knew that almost no one makes it, or stays made, and that even those who come close get addicted to this sort of ego gratification. Most become — as we see on the gossip pages — horrid shells of people, attention and adulation junkies for whom happiness is always transient and who end up relying not just on greasepaint and hair dye but on the liquid, pill and powdered chemical substitutes for that rush. There’s no business like show business for a reason.

No, I do not miss the stage.

I miss the music. Read the rest of this entry »