Hold on to your dreams

 When you are considering OJ and express concern that you'll be forced to give up your interests and hobbies, you might be told, "Anything you do now, you'll be better at."

It's a standard kiruv line. And it's humbug. If you have six kids and a job to pay for their tuition and weddings you will have little time for your interests and hobbies. Shabbos will interfere with your hobbies too. The Chamber music group meets on Friday night. The softball club meets on Shabbos day. Half your weekend is Shabbos. So only Sunday is left. That's when you spend time with wife and kids and home repair.

You get two weeks vacation for your job, yet Yom Tov in chutz is 13 days a year, plus Purim and Tishe b'Av.  Weeknights you schlep home from work. If you live in New York, it's a one hour schlep minimum. You schlep to Maariv, which is always made longer than it has to be. You will not have the time for your interests. And I'm not even getting into the Torah study that they pressure you to fill all your free time with.

Technically, this doesn't mean you have to lose your interests. You will have less time for them, much less. So certainly, you won't become better at them. But the halacha doesn't prohibit them entirely in most cases. 

However, if you get a rav, as they all tell you to do, then any halachic wiggle room goes out the window, because nearly every rabbi seeks to shut you down. That's how they operate. They see their job as keeping you in as much misery as you can tolerate, and convincing you to do the same. You don't even want to know their view of you. It's this: you are a yetzer hara. And anything that you want to do with your life must be bad. Their job is to talk you out of it. Just as some say the purpose of government aid is to give the poor just enough that they don't revolt while keeping all the riches with the rich, the rabbi keeps you just miserable enough that you don't leave the religion while he keeps all the happiness for himself. 

For himself? Yes. He doesn't work for a corporation. He doesn't have a boss. He doesn't sit in a cubicle. He might not even  have to commute. He has to deal with shul members if he is a shul rav but he's still the king. He gets great pleasure in all the adulation. Even Modern Orthodox rabbis are showered with this. And beyond that, he always enjoyed Jewish culture. That's why he became a rabbi. He enjoys Torah study too, the limited form of it that he's familiar with. He's in a profession that he prepared for all his life. You fell into something because your yeshiva wouldn't let you get job training. 

When I say that he prepared for it, I don't mean he prepared in the right way. He doesn't know how to counsel people. He doesn't know how to inspire with the right choices of Torah material. He doesn't appreciate the halachic leniencies that are there to help people survive. But he doesn't hate his job. It's very Jewy, like him.

Nearly all rabbis are the same. They go to the same types of schools where they are indoctrinated with the same attitudes. Few of them know any halacha or any real hashkafa. Aren't they learned? No. They engaged in Brisker Lomdus on the yeshivishe mesectas at the Mir or Lakewood year after year. They all study the same thing, and it has nothing to do with practical life. The only hashkafa they know is their two paragraph dogma sheet that they pick up from yeshiva schmoozes and Shabbos tables. They hate the world. They hate the gentiles. They tolerate you if you obey, if you imitate their ignorance about everything, if you bow before them and never talk back.  

If they are Yeshivish, they hate the Modern. If they are Modern, they hate the Yeshivish, even though from the perspective of the BT, they aren't much different. YU was taken over by Yeshivists. Herschel Schacter led the way. If he allows a career, he ruins it by forcing you to move to Israel. On the balance, he's just as oppressive.

So what to do? You observe the halacha and you try to make yourself happy. Because if you are miserable you likely won't last. And if even you do, your kids will not because the sadness, anger, and disappointment in your face will affect them deeply. They aren't stupid. They'll see your face as the picture of their future if they continue with this religion, not knowing that the problem is that it's only the picture of one form of it.

The rabbi doesn't care if you are miserable. He likes it. He dislikes your happiness. He sees that as an indication that he isn't doing his job, which is to oppress you and corral your evil inclination.

So keep Shabbos and Kashrus, and otherwise do what you always did to try to find some happiness in this life. Don't assume that a blatt Gemara will replace everything you ever cared about. Same with living in Israel. That's the rabbi's dream, not yours. Hold on to your dreams.