How Accurate Does a Survey Need to Be?

Rabbi Dov Fischer

A Modern Orthodox guy from a Modern Orthodox family goes to a wonderful liberal college… He still is frum as he begins his freshman year. One Saturday night he attends a party on campus. He meets a great female. She is gorgeous. She drinks alcohol freely. He never before has seen a woman who drinks alcohol so freely. Her teeth are perfect and pearly white.

He can tell, certainly by their fourth beer, that she is into him. He is overwhelmed and overcome. He never before has met anyone like her. She is everything he ever could have hoped to ask for — and never even dreamed of. So he gets involved with her, or with her friends, or with all of them, or -  opportunities for such socializing and even “hooking up” on campus are beyond endless — and he soon accepts that his deepening relationship with her and with others like her requires him to become non-religious.

Either that girl changes his life, or she and others like her combine to change his life. I saw this happen frequently when I was an undergrad at Columbia University between 1971-1975. I still remember the names of the guys from yeshiva high school — there were 13 of us who wore kippot as Columbia freshmen in September 1971 — and only two of us still were wearing kippot by our senior years.

Imagine if this fellow were interviewed. Having given up frumkeit, the fellow is asked by an interviewer: “Why did you stop wearing a yarmulka at Columbia? Why did you become non-Orthodox?” 

He has a choice. He can respond: “Because I met this gorgeous co-ed/gal/chick/lady/person of the female persuasion.” [The noun is generational-dependent.] OMG! She drinks alcohol so freely. She does weed. She can ski… And she is into me. She is everything I ever could have hoped to ask for. I think about her all day, and I think about her all night. I cannot get her out of my head. (And) there is no way she will observe Shabbat and limit herself to kosher restaurants and two sets of dishes and monthly mikveh when we marry — and she sure does not now.” 

He could offer that honest answer to his questioner.  

But he is not going to say that — not to the interviewer, and not to the mirror that he sees each morning. He knows that sounds so superficial. It is so self-demeaning. He is a brilliant Ivy League undergrad, and he is giving up everything in the world — his life, his tradition, his heritage, his eternal soul — for that? …For perfect white teeth and skis?”

So instead he teaches himself to find a deep, philosophical, intellectual basis: “Well, Orthodoxy does not accord equality to women. And it is insensitive towards Gays. And the readings in my Contemporary Civilization course and the values I am being spoon-fed by my humanities professors do not accord with what I was spoon-fed by my parents and rabbis before I came to college. So let us be clear: None of that reasoning he tells the interviewer is true to the reason he left. Rather, he left for a gorgeous girl.