Bi-sexual Transgender?
Uh... Wrong blog, people!
BT would be modern orthodox Jewish for "
Baalat Teshuvah" or "Baal Teshuvah" for the guys, literally, "master of return." I once heard a pretty cool insight about the "Hay" corresponding to the last "Hay" in shem HaShem and how it falls from grace when we mess up and that the act of teshuvah "returns" it (in other words, elevating fallen sparks).
I'm sure there's a lot more to that.
Anyway, the whole BT concept or movement tends to refer to those of us whose parents or grandparents (and even further back, still) went
secular on us and then all of a sudden, spoiled brats that we were, we said "this sucks!" and ran off to those seminaries and yeshivahs with the specially formulated curricula that helped us make our way back to Torah observance...
...and then we all lived happily ever after.
Well, not exactly. It's really just the beginning, because there's a plethora of issues to cope with, such as going "home" to our parents which may involve all kinds of kashrut and Shabbat observance problems. And what about dealing with all of our old friends, who now seem to think that we have developed an array of bizarre
obsessive-compulsive disorders (and that's putting it nicely).
Then there's the whole dating issue, which becomes less about dating and more about
tachlis: you can't go secular because it just wouldn't work, and FFB's (those who are Frum From Birth) just aren't "cool" enough because they can't relate to any
pop culture references--well in some cases they do, and in others they don't. What about frumy's family? They don't always approve, you know... So that leaves us with other BT's--great... a PAIR of broken people, as if ONE wasn't bad enough!
Which brings me to another major aspect of being BT, especially for those who "saw the light" a bit "late" in life. As much as one may wish to "start all over again," you just can't. Well, in many ways, yes, you absolutely can. But let's not lie to ourselves about the nature of Reality.
So, you daven to HaShem about the pathetic state of affairs and beg for mercy. You get up, brush yourself off and resolve to make the best of it... and that goes for all of us, because
we all mess up big sometimes. It can be tough to cope with , but I can accept how the system works. Fine.
What I take issue with is this sort of BT box/label that has been created. It gives this mistaken impression that the only ones who have mastered the art of returning to HaShem (like we're really the leading experts on the topic) are those of us whose souls were priveleged enough to have to scratch and claw their way out of secular society.
What about everyone else? Do you mean to tell me those
people in the wigs and black costumes are "there" already? That those Jewish folks driving their cars to the park on Saturdays are the most misguided people on the planet? Am I worth less because I never had the
zchut of receiving a
Beis Yaakov education?
Not necessarily so.
As we grow in Yiddishkeit, we learn the fundamental idea that we serve G-d in a sort of two-fold way: on Shabbat, we honor and we keep; when we
daven, we say the words and we meditate with cavanah; we keep
mitzvot d'oraita and
d'rabbanan; there is the "
what" and then there is the "
how." It seems that all we do involves an interplay between the external and the internal. If not, then the word out on the street is that you're doing it wrong.
Furthermore, to roughly quote
Rabbi Noah Weinberg from
AishHaTorah, "It's not about where you are on the ladder of life; what's important is how many rungs you climbed." Therefore, those who were born into an environment that provided the structure for
kedushah have a different, intangible sort of "ladder" to climb. Their soul's job is to find that personal, profound inner meaning and appreciation for all of it--without ever having lost it. Now that's really tough to do.
I challenge the fabricated "BT box" because the truth is that one way or another, we all have tshuvah to do and we can all become Baalei Teshuvah, each in our own way. So let's stop putting so much weight on religious appearances and other such quantifyable metrics of spirituality.
Shall we?
