biggest mistake

 The biggest mistake I made in become Torah observant was getting involved with yeshiva people because they are lunatics. They see the entire religion as being about Gemara lomdus. A baal teshuvah has more important things to do such as learn how to observe the mitzvos, learn about their meaning, get an understanding of some basic hashkafa, find a place to live, get a parnassah where they can keep Shabbos, and get married to a suitable match. Yeshiva people don't want to bother with any of that. They take it all for granted because it was all handed to them. At this point in their lives they are focused on Gemara study and they assume you are like them. They also operate this view that every problem in life can be solved with Torah study. You have an ingrained toenail, you need to study Tosfos. I'm exaggerating only a bit. They lack empathy. They lack sensitivity. And many of them are vicious. If you even hint at discomfort with anything they do, they become pit bulls. They spend so much of their day feeling superior to all of humanity and Jewry, that they can't turn it off. There are BTs with a gentile parent, gentile uncles and aunts, gentile friends. What do you want them to do, despise everybody they have known all their lives because you are going to become their family. But you are not going to become their family. You might sit and go over a Rashi with one of them once or twice. You want  them to despise colleges? They spent their entire childhoods planning for college. Not everybody adores Gemara study and certainly not at the start and certainly not with the way its is usually taught, i.e. without any educational methodology. A Gemara is not a magic hat that you pull rabbits out of. But many yeshiva guys act like it is. Just open to any page and feel the wonder exploding from the page. That's what they think and they are fools. I'm sorry that I ever stepped foot into a yeshivish institution. My life would be completely different if I had never exposed myself to these people and by that I mean it would be incomparably better. I'd be more religious and much saner. 

moshe