O WOW!!! After reading your post above about the book (where you addressed me) I realize you are the author!!! Very good book indeed, but, as I said above to Chaya H., if one is a Baal Teshuva who becomes more Frum than the other partner, I don’t know if the “mixed” marriage can work in all cases. I hope it can!

I read the book, believe it or not, 6 years ago (I took it out of the library in Bay Terrace, I believe). It opened my eyes, but, remember, I wasn’t as Frum then as I am now! I’m not sure that book can really work in a home where one of the partners is MUCH more Frum than the other one. Still, you can’t rush it with your family. Each person, on his/her own, will find Hashem step by step, we hope.

Welcome to the blog! My brother (not frum) actually bought your book (What do you mean…) for my Mom and she really liked it. My family had Shabbos lunch at your house a couple of years ago when you were working on the book. It was much needed. Thanks and sorry to be OT.

PS It is important to take anything you read in the media with a grain of salt, there is so much that inaccurate and plenty of Lashan Hora.

Jaded, thanks for the flattering and brilliantly brave comment, but I will leave the translation of towering works of Torah erudition to people actually erudite in Torah!

I think that this is essential for adults and teens, FFBs and BTs alike.

Years ago I gave a talk @ the JHC’s Long Island Center entitled “Hasidism; Reformation or Reaffirmation?” The upshot was that as a movement it was both. I think that for many an essential component of the dynamic that drove their return to Yiddishkeit was not being “rebellious” but being revolutionary, of being part of a counter-culture that would shake up the establishment and it’s wholly inadequate and corrupt way of doing things.

IMO this is why the Yeshiva world from the mid-40s to the early seventies was more vital and dynamic (and produced more outsatnding people) than it is today (despite being much smaller). Before it became the new “establishment” IT was a REVOLUTIONARY movement.

Here’s a partial list of Jews of Genius over the last several centuries who revolutionized, reinvented and reinvigorated without betraying tradition:

The Ba’al Shem Tov, the Kotzker Rebbe, RSRH, Rav Nachman, Rav Yisroel Salanter, Rav Chaim Brisker, his grandson RYBS, Sara Schnirer, Rav Meir Shapiro, Rav Kook, the Satmar Rebbe, Der Alter fun Nivardhok, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rav Kook and Rav Hutner.

So much of what seems to be ancient, mass-movement Judaism today owes so much to these trailblazers that it’s hard to imagine that they were ever considered noncomformists much less visionary revolutionaries. But read your (unbiased) history and you’ll discover that nearly all were extremely controversial when they first burst upon the scene and met with stiff opposition. Some continue to be controversial today.

Not that we can wave a wand and fabricate a visionary revolutionary leader out of thin air but as the OTD crisis grows to pandemic proportions cutting across all socioeconomic strata, denominations and scholarship levels it may be that this phenomenon represents more than a widespread social pathology. As an expression of a deep-seated dissatisfaction with Yiddishkeit in it’s current incarnation it may betoken a whole generation’s collective soul demanding a new movement, the next Chasidic/Mussar/Lomdishe fill-in-the-blank_____ revolution, a reinvented Yiddishkeit that speaks to their unique time and place while remaining firmly rooted in the Mesorah.

The trick is to be conservative without being preservative, to be orthodox but not mere oxen pulling the yoke of popular opinion. Easier dreamed for than done.

Ron Coleman asked above:
“’25 predisposing factors’ is such a complex concept that it has pretty limited predictive ability, wouldn’t we say? Or is there a hierarchy, perhaps?”

BT (and other frum) parents need a new weapon in their fight for family sanity and against off-the-derech-ness. Yes, kids are not computers, although many spend long hours with them and are best friends with them. Still, a troubleshooting flow chart like this one (maybe less complex, but maybe not) can be a good model for a parents’ handy tool:
http://www.fonerbooks.com/poster.pdf

This format graphically shows the decision-making hierarchy suggested in Ron’s remark.

In summary:
Some worthy Jew should turn Rabbi Russell’s 25 factors, or somebody else’s factors, into a usable flow chart for parent decision-making.

Martin: Check out the above mentioned book, it would be appropriate for the situation you are describing. Good luck.