Classically Abby - June 07, 2021


Why Aren't I More RELIGIOUS？？ ｜｜ My Jewish Orthodox Journey

Hosted by
Abby Shapiro
Mentioned
Jacob Judaism
We Saw NOBODY! ｜｜ Husband Vs. Wife MOVIE Review CARMEN HABANERA - Classically Abby OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

189.7

Word count

1,471

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about why my husband and I are not completely observant as Jews, and the reasons why we are not keeping all of the Jewish laws as we should be. I also talk about the benefits of taking small steps toward becoming more observant.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, Classic Crew, and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about
00:00:04.440 my journey to becoming more observant as a Jew.
00:00:12.660 A couple of days ago, I saw on my channel a comment that I thought was really important
00:00:18.300 and interesting, and it asked, you talk about wanting to be more orthodox, you talk about
00:00:22.840 wanting to become more observant as a Jew, so why aren't you just doing it? 0.86
00:00:26.460 And I thought that was actually a good question. I thought it was important for me to address
00:00:31.760 because I talk about on my channel a lot how important it is to be religious and how important
00:00:37.480 it is to have faith, and I also talk about the fact that I grew up orthodox, but that at this
00:00:43.820 point, my husband and I are not observant. So even though we believe orthodox is the correct way to
00:00:49.580 practice, and that is the correct form of Judaism, we ourselves are not in a place yet of practicing
00:00:55.880 everything as we should. We're very open about this because I don't want anyone getting the
00:01:00.260 wrong impression about what we do. We are not keeping all the laws, we are not keeping the
00:01:05.100 practices as strictly as we should, and I think that it's really important to be open and honest
00:01:10.160 about that stuff, because I want you to know that I'm on a journey just like everyone else.
00:01:14.240 But there is a good reason for why Jacob and I haven't already become completely observant,
00:01:20.120 and I want to share that with you guys today.
00:01:22.040 So if you haven't already, I would love if you would consider subscribing to my Substack
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00:01:46.360 for free. So I would love if you would consider subscribing at classicallyabbey.substack.com
00:01:51.800 or head to the link in my description box. But now that that's covered, let's get into it.
00:01:56.980 So just to give you guys a little bit of history, if you didn't already know,
00:02:01.060 I grew up Orthodox. I grew up in a religious Jewish home. I went to Jewish day schools.
00:02:06.600 And when I was in my master's program, I became less religious. And I talked about this in another
00:02:12.760 video, which I will link up above. My husband, on the other hand, grew up Reform. So he really
00:02:18.300 didn't have much of a background in any of this. And when the two of us met, I was kind of becoming
00:02:24.360 less religious. He was becoming more religious. And we decided that we wanted to become Orthodox
00:02:30.160 together. But that was going to be a process. Because for him, there was quite a bit of information
00:02:36.040 that he needs to learn. And for me, I had to understand my relationship with God better.
00:02:43.100 So I know all the laws and the rules. But I wanted to have a better relationship to my
00:02:47.580 creator. And I wanted to make sure that whenever I kept the laws and rules more strictly, I was doing
00:02:53.180 it because I understood it. And because I accepted that upon myself rather than feeling like it was
00:02:58.000 something I had to do that I didn't understand. So a lot of the time people will ask us, why aren't
00:03:03.360 you just observant right now? Why aren't you just keeping all of the laws right now? And I think
00:03:08.900 that's a great question. So I do have a few reasons for why Jacob and I are not completely observant
00:03:14.640 as of now. And I want to share this with you. So the big reason that Jacob and I aren't totally
00:03:20.000 observant is that we don't want to jump into it before we're ready and then have a backtrack
00:03:27.320 situation. A situation where we jumped in too quickly, took on too much, and then you get overwhelmed
00:03:32.360 and you stop keeping things. And this happens a lot of the time to a lot of different people.
00:03:36.840 If you just take on too much, especially without communal support, which is part two, then you
00:03:43.760 just won't end up keeping things. You will start feeling overwhelmed. You will start feeling resentful
00:03:49.360 and you just will stop keeping things. So instead of jumping in and keeping everything all at once,
00:03:56.160 we've decided to take small steps so that it becomes more integrated in our daily lives.
00:04:02.360 And so that by the time we are keeping everything, we have taken that on deliberately. That's
00:04:08.000 something that we chose. It's something we understand and it's something that we believe
00:04:12.600 in. And this is especially important for my husband because he grew up really not keeping
00:04:18.840 any Jewish laws. So for him to take on everything all at once would mean that he would really have 0.84
00:04:24.700 to do a 180 from everything he knew growing up. And I want for him to have the best opportunity to
00:04:33.220 actually love and understand and keep all of the Jewish laws because there are many Jewish laws.
00:04:38.420 We have 613 commandments. We have pretty strict rules about how we spend our days and spend specific
00:04:45.620 times. And it's very important that if you take those things on, you really understand them because
00:04:51.540 otherwise they just feel arbitrary. Now, I don't believe they are arbitrary. I want to clarify.
00:04:56.820 I'm saying it can feel that way if you don't do this intentionally. And that's really important.
00:05:03.620 So we have decided to take things just a little bit slower so that as we do become more observant,
00:05:09.800 we really keep to it. And this is something my husband has said, is that we are orthodox,
00:05:15.560 not orthoprax. So what orthodox means is that you believe in the laws and the rules and you believe
00:05:22.800 that orthodox Judaism is what things should look like. We are not orthoprax. We don't practice
00:05:28.240 the laws that we believe in. So we do keep many of them at this point. We have a completely kosher home,
00:05:35.840 for example. But we don't keep as many as we should for people to see us as orthodox. And that really
00:05:42.460 comes down to us keeping sabbath and the holidays. Once we're keeping sabbath and the holidays,
00:05:47.580 then we would be much more openly accepted as orthodox Jews. And I would feel comfortable saying
00:05:53.280 we were orthodox Jews. So that is really the main reason that we are not totally observant as of right
00:05:57.980 now. But part of that is also where we live. So Jacob and I don't live in a primarily Jewish community.
00:06:06.080 And being in an orthodox Jewish community is one of the fundamental baselines of living a Jewish
00:06:12.320 life. Because when you are keeping sabbath strictly, you're not allowed to drive. You have to be able
00:06:18.380 to be within walking distance of things. So you all live in a small area. And if you're living outside
00:06:25.360 of that area, it's very difficult to actually keep the laws because you're not allowed to drive
00:06:30.320 anywhere. Judaism is such a communal religion, which is part of what makes it so beautiful.
00:06:35.100 So that when we are not living in a Jewish community, we are not actually getting an opportunity
00:06:40.800 to participate. Now, do we believe in God? Absolutely. Do we believe that we should be
00:06:46.460 practicing more? A hundred percent. We are just working on that slowly and surely. Kind of like
00:06:53.340 the turtle in the hair. We are taking the slow but steady to win the race. We really want to be
00:06:58.780 the best, most intentional Jews by the time that we are actually keeping everything. So that is where 0.73
00:07:05.280 we are at in our orthodox journey. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. I'd love to know in the
00:07:09.980 comments, where are you at in your faith journey? Kind of what are you doing? Because I know we are
00:07:14.300 all in different places when it comes to our faith. So I'd really love to know. Let me know in the
00:07:18.080 comments down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video. Make sure to subscribe and please
00:07:22.780 make sure to hit that notification bell to get notified of all of my new videos. If you would like
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00:07:32.540 head to classicallyabby.substack.com or to head to the link in my description box. If you'd like to
00:07:37.860 follow me on social media, it's at classicallyabby absolutely everywhere. Thank you so much for
00:07:42.140 watching and I'll see you guys in my next one. Bye!