Pepperoni Pizza and Lakewood Off-The-Derech Meetups

A friend wrote a post on this platform capturing a scene of our Lakewood off-the-Derech group meeting on Motizi Shabbos, where we spent time together. I am Gedalya in his story. The scene he captures is not just a fleeting vignette but a window into the deeply layered and often raw experiences of our (ever-growing) group. This post triggered Ash, a well-known creator on this platform, to write a reflection on my friend's post. I created this substack to respond to Ash’s post:

A sad post from Lakewood

I’ve been following and appreciating Ash’s posts for some time now. One of the qualities I hold in the highest regard as a Ben Torah—and a reason I still identify with that ethos—is the bikush ha’emes: the relentless, often uncomfortable pursuit of truth. In Yeshiva, it was drilled into us from the earliest days to value the act of chasing truth, no matter where it leads or how unsettling the destination might be. Reading Ash’s reflections, it’s evident that he is engaged in his own exploration of truth, and I deeply respect that. Yet, reading his reflection on our gathering, I want to offer a perspective that diverges from his in important ways.

On exchanging religion for "pepperoni pizza"

I want to respond to the below quote:

“The second thing that made me sad was this: They exchanged a beautiful religion, heritage, culture and background for a slice of pepperoni pizza. They exchanged our beautiful niggunim for Lana Del Rey. Worse, nearly every single person mentioned seems less happy than before! Why would they do this?”

You suggest that people exchanged a beautiful religion, heritage, and culture for something as trivial as a slice of pepperoni pizza. But this framing—reminiscent of the old taavos trope—misunderstands both the choice and the people making it. It assumes that those who leave Yiddishkeit are abandoning something profound for something shallow, driven by little more than their base appetites. In truth, none of us left for pepperoni pizza. What we walked away from was the claim that Yiddishkeit could stand as an ultimate source of truth. No matter how fiercely we tried to cling to it, no matter how many layers of rationalization we wrapped around it, the foundation eroded beneath us.

For many of us, eating treif wasn’t an act of indulgence; it was a moment of profound, almost sacred defiance. The first bite often came with nausea, with a sense of disorientation so strong it bordered on dissociation. But it was also a moment of terrifying clarity—a reclamation of dignity, an acknowledgment of reality as we now saw it. It was prikas ol, the deliberate shedding of a yoke we no longer believed was ours to carry.

Consider the Marranos secretly lighting Shabbat candles or the Russian refuseniks risking everything to learn Gemara. Were their acts of resistance trivial because they involved lighting a flame or flipping a page? Of course not. The stakes elevated the gestures, imbuing them with meaning beyond the physical act. For us, eating treif carried its own heavy stakes. If we were caught, the consequences could be devastating: losing our jobs, watching our children be expelled from school, enduring a cascade of social and familial alienation. Yet we risked it—not out of rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but to carve out one fragile corner of authenticity in our lives. It was never about pepperoni pizza. It was about reclaiming a piece of ourselves that had been buried under layers of fear, conformity, and silence.

On the "capital T truth" argument:

Another argument you made was as follows:

“I think the issue is this: Without exception, they have been taught (as have I) that the Torah is capital T truth and the reason we follow it is because via magically performing random acts called Mitzvos (the more chumros the better) we get heaven points, and via performing random bad acts called Aveiros we get hell points. There’s no rhyme or reason for these acts or why Hashem would choose them, but that’s what we do. And the best way to get into heaven is by learning all day ancient Babylonian law books and systemically ignoring the conclusions of said laws but following a later work that has all the possible opinions compiled into it.”

You argue that the version of Torah we encountered was a hollow caricature—an obsessive focus on arbitrary mitzvos, endless chumros, and a cosmic points system that reduced spirituality to scorekeeping. You suggest that if we’d only been exposed to a more potent and meaningful Judaism—a lifeforce that connects Jews to history, community, and meaning—we might have stayed. But this argument echoes a familiar refrain often directed at those leaving high-control religions: “You didn’t reject the real thing. You rejected a distorted version. If only you had seen what I’ve seen, you’d understand, and you’d still be here.”

Let me say this plainly: many of us did see what you’ve seen. We are not strangers to the beauty and depth of Yiddishkeit. My friend, in kollel, I was well regarded as being a lamdan and a baki, somehow who took my learning and Yiddishkeit very seriously. In the Lakewood OTD scene, I am the katan she’bichaburah. Many of us devoted our lives to Torah and mitzvos out of an uncontainable love. We didn’t skim the surface; we dove headlong into the depths. To imply that our yiddishket was meaningless (“The Jewish religion they left was the tax code”) is to profoundly misdiagnose the phonominon you are being exposed to. We breathed the same Maharals and the same Rav Hunters and the same chassis Torah and kabbalah that you learned. We felt the fire of Ne’ilah coursing through our veins, the same brand of spiritual ecstasy that leaves you trembling with awe. We all experienced that quiet joy of untangling a Rav Akiva Eiger or mastering a chalek in Shulchan Aruch. Yiddishkeit wasn’t a rote checklist for us—it was a vibrant, all-encompassing force that infused every corner of our lives with meaning.

And yet, with all that passion, with all that love, we still couldn’t reconcile it with the claims of truth we were taught. It wasn’t for lack of exposure to the beauty or richness of the tradition. We lived it, we cherished it, and we embodied it; many of my friends sitting around the fire sharing the same pepperoni pizza far more than I. But love alone couldn’t override the nagging, unrelenting, and often horrifying realization that the foundation we had built our lives upon didn’t hold. This wasn’t a rejection born of ignorance or rebellion. It was the heartbreaking acknowledgment that what we had so deeply revered no longer made sense as a source of ultimate truth. For many of us, that recognition was not a triumph but a profound loss.

On Judaism as a culture:

Your primary thesis seems to be that you wish we would liken Yiddishkeit to a culture—something akin to Thanksgiving traditions or the reverence shown toward the American flag. You suggest that rejecting it purely because it isn’t true misses the larger point. But here’s the problem, and one that you waffle waffle over in your edit added after people started attacking you. Judaism is far more than a cultural heritage. It is a high-control system that lays claim not just to traditions or identity but to the very fabric of a person’s daily existence.

Living in Lakewood, my sons will not learn English past 8th-grade school, adding a lifetime limiter to their ability to engage with the rest of the world. My daughters are being carefully molded to aspire to one life path: marrying a “learner” who dedicates his life to Torah study. My children live in a meticulously constructed bubble, one designed to prevent them from meeting, much less befriending, anyone outside of their religious world. They have never met a “goy” their age, and all the stories they are exposed to in school are designed to enforce the “them vs. us” framework that is the emblem of frum existence. Their Yeshiva /Bais Yakov curriculum is built to enforce this bubble, omitting subjects that might expand their perspectives. The Shulchan Aruch is jam packed with with hundreds of thousands of detailed laws, and it will be drilled into them—not as a guide for meaningful living, but as an unyielding standard they are expected to meet (My six-year-old son does not know the ABCs but already knows almost a hundred halachos of brachos and shabbos). And when they inevitably fall short, as anyone human would, they’ll be taught to internalize guilt and beg forgiveness for their failings. Yiddishkeit is not merely culture; it is control.

Culture, at its best, is flexible and inviting. It allows space for individuals to find their place within it, to cherish its rituals and symbols without feeling suffocated by them. Being American doesn’t mean you’re prohibited from befriending someone from another country or marrying someone outside of your cultural circle. American parents do not sit shiva if their child marries someone from outside their border. There’s no boundary drawn so tightly that it isolates you from the broader human experience. Being American doesn’t demand that your identity hinges on rigid exclusivity or conformity to a code of conduct that governs every waking moment. You are free to carry your Americanness lightly—celebrate it when you wish, set it aside when you don’t, and even redefine it entirely in the context of your own life.

Unlike Chanukah, Thanksgiving doesn’t come with the threat of punishment for failing to cook the turkey just so. There’s no cosmic ledger tallying whether the cranberry sauce was homemade or store-bought, or if you even showed up for dinner. It’s a tradition, not a straitjacket. Its meaning is flexible, allowing space for participation without the weight of existential significance. Nobody claims that failing to celebrate Thanksgiving with the proper decorum risks unraveling the moral fabric of society or incurring divine disfavor.

This is where Judaism, particularly in its high-control expressions, diverges so sharply. It doesn’t merely offer rituals or identity markers; it demands absolute allegiance, infusing even mundane actions with enormous cosmic stakes. mitzvos are not framed as a personal or cultural choice—as you were ironicly rebuked and forced to add in your edit, they are divine commandments, failure of which carries eternal consequences. In this context, one’s entire life becomes a performance, an intricate balancing act to avoid divine scrutiny and communal judgment. This is a far cry from the light, voluntary embrace of a culture; it’s an all-encompassing system of control.

If Judaism were just a culture, many of us would have stayed. We would have gladly held onto the songs, the traditions, the moments that brought us joy and connection. But it’s NOT just a culture. It is a framework of control, one that claims the right to dictate who we are, how we think, and what we value. For those of us who walked away, it wasn’t about rejecting heritage or dismissing the beauty of the culture. It was about rejecting the parts that treated our lives as chess pieces to be moved without our consent.

When we gather on Motzei Shabbos to eat pepperoni pizza, it’s not a cheap act of rebellion or of indulging in our tivvos. It’s a quiet, defiant proclamation. It’s us telling ourselves—sometimes for the first time—that we are free. Free to make choices, free to step out of the roles that were pre-written for us, free to take back our lives from a system that demanded everything without ever asking if we were willing to give it. It’s not about pizza. It’s about reclaiming autonomy, about reminding ourselves, even if we’re too afraid to shout it from the rooftops, that we are no longer slaves to a system we no longer believe in. It’s not just a rebellion against authority; it’s an embrace of life. וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּֽחַיִּ֔ים