WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE? ASK A BAAL TESHUVA, AND ASK YOURSELF, TOO.

Imagine a dinner at a softly lit, elegant restaurant on a harbor. Large windows offer a view of the waterfront, twinkling with the lights of moored boats. At a linen-covered table for two, Rachel and Susan are deep in discussion, sharing their thoughts and laughing at their private jokes.

They’ve been there for two hours, reminiscin.g over glasses of wine, plates of artfully spiced seafood, a wedge of rich chocolate mousse cake (split between them, of course) and now, some coffee and Amaretto. They are lost in a happy fog of contentment as the waitress indulgently refills their coffee cups.

Fast-forward ten years. Rachel is now married, the mother of five small children. She and her husband are dividing several portions of French fries among the paper plates spread out on the table of the kosher pizza shop. Their toddler is grinding a small square of pizza onto his face as he attempts to fit it into his little mouth. The infant is slung over Rachel’s forearm; the only position that soothes his colicky tummy. The ambience is more school cafeteria than restaurant.

That moment in the pizza shop was 15 years ago, but Rachel remembers it today.

“It seems like a trivial thing, and it really is,” says Rachel, who is now a grandmother. “But I became suddenly aware that dining out as I knew it was pretty much over. I used to love walking down a street in midtown Manhattan noticing all the different restaurants. Years ago, each of them was like this little world of possibility. It suddenly hit me that I missed that pleasure in life.”

Rachel’s been Torah observant now for more than two decades, and yet, in many ways, she still deals every day with the disconnect between her upbringing and her current life.

“What I have is so much more beautiful and meaningful than anything I could have had in the secular world,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I once read an article in a Jewish magazine – I can’t remember which one – that said that a person’s idea of ‘normal’ is set by the age of eight or nine. That helped me forgive myself for what I saw as a failure to fully mainstream myself into the frum world.”

Besides these fairly incidental souvenirs of a past lifestyle, many larger and more complex issues may arise from a baal teshuva’s transformation.

Rav Chaim Mintz, shlit’a, Oorah’s founder, tells of a well respected figure in the yeshiva world who grew up in a non-religious home and had been a devoted sports fan. “He admits that to this day, when he hears that his team won, it sends a chill up his spine,” Rav Chaim says. Although this stubborn tether to the secular world may seem fairly benign – there are plenty of mitzvah-observant sports fans – it is an unwanted distraction to this rabbi. It has no place in his current world, a world he embraces wholeheartedly. And yet, it just won’t go away.

Another long-time baalas teshuva talks about her lingering affection for the rock and roll songs of her youth. “It’s nothing I would want my children to listen to,” she says. “But when I hear these songs on the Muzak at the supermarket or even on hold on the phone, I feel like a kid again. I enjoy the energy boost it gives me.”

“I once bumped into a neighbor at Shoprite late one Thursday night. The store was pretty empty and I was enjoying myself, going up and down the aisles at a nice relaxed pace and listening to all my old favorite songs. When I met her, I said, ‘Isn’t this nice? We have the whole place to ourselves!’ She said, ‘It would be great except for that awful music.’ I don’t know. Should I try to force myself to hate it? Is it a flaw in me that I still like it?”

Besides these fairly incidental souvenirs of a past lifestyle, many larger and more complex issues may arise from a baal teshuva’s transformation. There may be a whole world of friends with whom he or she can no longer socialize. Family events that may have once been a source of warmth and connection may become a source of contention.

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