I think what you say is very fair and an important reminder to anyone telling their stories; experiences need to be kept in perspective and they can't be told only for the sake of celebrating the victim vs villain narrative. However, I think the onus is just as much on the audiences to appreciate more nuanced and less self glorifying stories. There seems to be a much bigger market for feel-good narratives about heroes who left the fold, and the market shapes the output, in my experience.
I think it is fair to say that the frum side is more likely to be intolerant of differences than the not-frum side. People have to leave because they are not tolerated, not because they don't tolerate.
Anon, I think what you say is fair, but if people who leave are angry and see everything through dark-glasses then they are still, you know, acting on understandable human emotion. Leaving is traumatic, like a divorce, and in the most amicable departures there is animosity and different sides to each story. So you'd understand if there would be hard feelings between people who left the fold and people who stayed. Of course coloring an entire community in the stroke of personal feelings does neither justice to writing nor to the subject, but at least we can understand where those feelings come from. They come from pain, from trauma, from loss, from rejection. They are human. Personally I think biased writing from the ex-frum voices is as much a disservice to those who left as it is to those it is biased against. Any critical reader can see through bias and lose trust in the author. But still, it's bias we can understand.
On the other hand the writer of this piece has no obvious reason for his maligning and nastiness. It just strikes me as inexplicably mean spirited.
Mr. Tenonbom --
That you assume that people who had gone through something as traumatic as leaving their entire communities are the happiest people around reflects not on the people, but on your own limited understanding of the most basic human experience. Even more, to think that you know if people are happy or sad based on a two hour dinner just shows more of your own complete lack of insight. But what I'm most bothered by is that you benefited from a group's hospitality and their willingness to welcome you into their world, (they even posed for your pictures which you published!) and then you showed absolutely no empathy or kindness here in return. That's what's really sad thing about this "piece".
קיינער קוקט נישט ח"ש אויף קיינעם ווי אין א זו. אפשר שמעקט אייך נישט אז מען לערנט קאלטור, אבער דאס מיינט גארנישט אז מען רעספעקטירט נישט די איינוואוינער פון וו"ב. ביי פילע מענטשן איז לערנען קאלטור א וויכטיגע לעקציע אין פארשטיין די פילע מינע מענטשן אויף די וועלט און דאס איז בכלל נישט ספאציפיש צו חסידים.
As kids, we said "shpeez" for dagger in Yiddish.
The lack of a need for Yiddish, with the introduction of Modern Hebrew and the assimilation to English, is what probably destroyed the language. Diatribes are everywhere.
The field will hopefully be revived by intellectually engaged Hasidim or former Hasidim.
And furthermore... what did you expect? That you will write an essay about Jewish politics trying to appeal for understanding between Jews and Palestinians, and you will achieve understanding between Jews and Jews? That we can have this conversation without the Right repeating its position and the Left repeating its position and all parties continuing to repeat the same lines that we've heard for years? And is it possible to see how the Jewish Right and Left are so strongly divided, each side only convinces itself more of its moral superiority with each conversation? Can we in any way envision a little bit of clarity between the Jewish Right and Left, so that we can begin to envision a better approach rather than mass mani, finger pointing and yelling apocalypse? Does it have to be so bloody grim?
Happy Father's Day to this amazing man!
![[Avatar]](/images/avatar26.png){kind=avatar}
Frieda Vizel 
Branch