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Opting Out of Orthodoxy: I'd Rather Be Adored Than Ignored by Anonymous

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I'm a failure. At least that's what my parent's friends might say. With hushed voices and quizzical looks, I am viewed as only half of a person because, "nebach" I am still single. We singles were reared to do as our parents and grandparents had done, to move from our parents' home to our own home. But the movers stopped on the Upper West Side (UWS) and many of us are still here.

Many of us have a made a nice life for ourselves. At first the UWS, was just a transient place. An apartment that we rented with a few friends for a year or two until we got married was by no means a real home. And then, a percentage of our friends did wed and purportedly do live "happily ever after" in the 'burbs.

But the remaining singles are left to make new friends and find new people to sit next to in shul and chat with at kiddush. The number of shabbos meal invitations decreases and with it, the beauty and comfort of the shabbos environment subsides.

Failing in one arena, we flourish in others. We build successful futures for ourselves by committing to our careers. We build new lives with our work colleagues who provide us with a level of comfort and accept us for who we are. We are viewed as intelligent, ambitious, whole individuals who are making an impact in the world. At work, it is okay that we are single and we begin to embrace that world.

With our newfound acceptance, we integrate fully into society. We have nonobservant Jewish associates and non-Jewish friends whom we join for Thursday night happy hour and sushi. Unattended to by the Orthodox community and with no parental or rabbinic supervision, sushi becomes salmon and before you know it, our year in Israel has gone out the window and we are officially "eating dairy out." Friday nights are long and lonely and who will know if we flick on a light switch or even watch TV? Thursday night happy hour is so much fun and shul is such a drag, it is only a matter of time before we join our new friends at Friday night happy hour and we wonder to ourselves, "what shul?"

It's a slippery slope and it is years in the making. Our parents wonder/worry if we'll ever get married but somehow they deny our religious dissension. Our religious convictions fall to the wayside. Maybe, it was the Day-school system that failed us and never instilled within us a true belief system. Maybe, Judaism was not meant for singles. Without community pressure to keep us in line or report cards from our school rebbe, it can be hard for some individuals to remain observant.

It is not that people consciously decide that they don't want to be religious. But religion is challenging in the best of times and perhaps insurmountable in the single times. For most of us, it is not that we intend to deny the Orthodox lifestyle forever; it is just that we have temporarily shelved it because until we wed, we do not know how to integrate our single life with our religious life. Unless of course we fall in love with a non-observant Jew or a non-Jew in which case, it is possible that we will be lost forever.

And so, with life expectancy on the rise, women being financially independent and people delaying marriage for their real "princess" or "prince charming", many of us have 10+ years of independent living without a community structure.

It is a delicate balance between becoming too comfortable with our single status that we no longer yearn for our basheret and too uncomfortable to remain a part of the community. Social advances and outside influences have continuously impacted Jewish life but as a people we have historically been able to simultaneously integrate and separate from mainstream society. The growing single population that is "opting out" of Orthodoxy should be viewed as a "crisis" not because we are "failing" to get married but because we are "failing" to uphold our religious convictions and are thereby threatening the future of Jewish Orthodoxy.