For Your Inspiration
Baalei Teshuva Stories
For Your Inspiration
After watching a Project Inspire movie, 21 year old Chani was inspired to get more involved in kiruv. The problem was that she wasn't the type of person to just go up to a random stranger on the street and start talking to them. She sincerely wished she was that type of person, but growing up in a sheltered frum family meant that she just didn't do that sort of thing..
One day, however, while walking through the aisles of a popular bookstore with a friend, Chani noticed a girl sitting in the cafe section, reading from an Artscroll Chumash. This girl had a nose ring and did not look particularly Jewish-definitely not frum! Still something about her caught Chani's attention and she felt inspired to speak to her.
"Maybe I should ask her if she's Jewish," she told her friend.
"What are you crazy?" her friend snapped back. "What would you think if a random stranger just came up to you and started talking to you? You would politely excuse yourself and then quickly walk away!"
"But she's reading a Chumash! Maybe she's becoming frum," Chani reasoned.
"Becoming frum with those clothes?! She's probably just taking a comparative religion class in college."
"I guess you're right," Chani admitted as the two turned around and left the bookstore.
Suddenly, she stopped dead in her tracks. "If I don't say something to that girl, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life!" she thought to herself.
"I'll see you later," Chani told her friend, and ran back inside the store.
She found the girl in the same place she had left her, deeply engrossed in the Chumash. After circling her table four or five times like a hungry shark closing in on its prey, she finally approached the girl.
"Where did you get that . . . thing--I mean book?" she asked awkwardly, while trembling.
"Oh, this," the girl asked, looking up from the Chumash for the first time. "They sell it here."
"Why are you reading it?" Chani asked, waiting to hear about the comparative religion class.
"I'm a traditional Jew-looking to learn more about my religion," the girl answered.
Chani was shocked! "I've learned Torah my whole life," she said. "Do you want to study it together sometime?"
"That would be great!" the girl exclaimed with a rush of excitement, breaking the ice completely. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for someone to ask me that question?"
Chani introduced herself and the girl - Jessica - explained that she lived right next to the local Orthodox community her whole life, and always had a desire to get more involved in Judaism but didn't know where to start. She used to sit in Orthodox restaurants hoping someone would say hello, but no one ever did. She finally bought a Chumash and decided to start learning more on her own.
Chani and Jessica learned Chumash together for the next few months and that summer, Jessica went to Israel to study in seminary for a few months. She ended up staying. Although they tried to stay in contact, it wasn't easy to do so over long distance and they eventually lost touch completely. Last Chani heard, Jessica was still in Israel and was studying in one of the top "frum from birth" seminaries. She also heard that Jessica's twin sister, who was totally against her sister's Jewish renaissance, had also joined her in Israel and was also now totally frum!
What's popularly known as the "Bagel Theory," or "Bageling" proposes that secular Jews desperately want to be recognized as members of the tribe by their frum brethren. They therefore find all sorts of ways to drop hints when in the presence of frum people without outright stating that they're Jewish. Examples include saying random Yiddish words or Jewish allusions at louder than normal volume in the middle of public places such as "it sure is shvitzy today!" or "this line is as long the High Holiday services last year!" There are also other, more subtle ways of doing it, such as reading a Chumash in a Jewish neighborhood or simply sitting in a kosher restaurant looking curious. Next time, let's not disregard these hints as cute remarks, but rather recognize them as desperate pleas for help from lost Jewish neshamos seeking to reconnect to their roots and their people. It might be their only chance to find their way back home.
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