What If We Just Don’t Believe You Anymore?

A response to Gershon Ribner’s tidy categories for why we leave

In a recent podcast episode, Gershon Ribner offers a play-by-play of a conversation he had with someone who left Yiddishkeit.

The title promises a dialogue with an “intelligent adult,” but what unfolds is a staged monologue. A performance meant to amuse the faithful, not engage the doubter. It’s theater - and not particularly good theater.

He structures the talk like a multiple-choice quiz: four reasons why someone might leave religion. Here they are, in order:

• Reason 1: You left out of spite.

• Reason 2: You were disillusioned by bad role models.

• Reason 3: You had intellectual or theological doubts.

• Reason 4: You found religious life too emotionally difficult.

Three out of four (1, 2, and 4) lean heavily on a familiar trope: the person who left must be broken. Hurt. Emotionally stunted. It’s the classic “who hurt you?” defense, now with a Yeshivish accent.

I’ve known a lot of people who’ve left. Not one of them did it to spite their father. Or because the mitzvos were “too hard.” Reasons 1 and 4 are red herrings - emotionally manipulative distractions meant to discredit rather than engage. “You’re just mad at your dad” isn’t a response. It’s a shield.

Reason 2, disillusionment with religious authority, is at least plausible. For some people, that’s the beginning. When people who claim to embody Torah values act like bullies or frauds. But that doesn’t bring the whole structure down. It’s just the first crack.

The collapse, when it comes, usually comes from Reason 3. Serious questions. Not bitterness. Not laziness. Not trauma. Just questions - about God, revelation, truth.

This is the only reason Ribner treats with a hint of seriousness - and even then, it’s just to tee up his next trick. He imagines the bochur saying: “I had questions. I asked. The answers didn’t hold up.” Which, for many of us, is exactly how it started.

But instead of engaging with the questions, he pivots: “Did you go to Rav Moshe Shapiro? To Noach Weinberg?… or you just discarded it based on arriving at your own little conclusion with the extent of the Seichel that you have”

It’s a rhetorical sleight of hand. He doesn’t address the question. He questions the asker. As if the only valid way to leave is by debating Rav Elyashiv and losing on points.

He scolds people for not bringing their doubts to the gedolei hador. Let’s accept his premise for the moment. Even then - it’s disingenuous. Because the very system he upholds is designed to make sure those questions never make it that far.

Yeshivas don’t teach you to think. They teach you to obey. Inquiry is punished - and then the inquirer is blamed for not trying hard enough.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

- Noam Chomsky

Here’s the truth: most people who start questioning don’t feel safe enough to say it out loud. The system doesn’t reward inquiry—it punishes it. Doubt is treated as failure. Curiosity as rebellion. So the questions get buried, or whispered behind closed doors. And when they do surface, the response isn’t what Ribner imagines - some deep, rigorous dive into theology. It’s more often something like: “Daven that you should have more emunah” Or the classic chuckle and k’nip: “Have you finished Shas and Poskim yet.”

What Ribner doesn’t understand - or maybe just can’t admit - is that most people who leave aren’t trying to destroy anything. They’re not angry. They’re not trying to be mevatel mitzvos. They just don’t believe anymore. The core claims - God, Torah, Sinai, reward and punishment - don’t hold up.

That’s it.

And yes, that’s terrifying. Because when you’ve built your life around those truths, and they start to fall apart - what’s left? People don’t walk away from that lightly. They agonize. They lose sleep. They lose community. Sometimes they lose family.

When someone like Gershon Ribner says, “You just didn’t try hard enough,” it’s not just false. It’s cruel.

And here’s the thing. Beneath all the smug dismissals and demands for a “real reason” lies something quieter. The insistence on explanation isn’t curiosity - it’s defense. A way to keep the walls intact. Because if someone can walk away - not out of pain or rebellion, but simply out of clarity - then the whole system feels less inevitable.

That kind of freedom is terrifying to people who’ve built their identity on certainty. If belief isn’t automatic - if it’s a choice - then someone, someday, might choose differently. And that possibility shakes the whole scaffolding.

There’s another detail that haunts the whole performance: two of Ribner’s own children are no longer frum. That doesn’t disqualify him. But it casts a long shadow. The laughter. The mockery. The easy confidence. It doesn’t read like strength. It reads like armor. Armor worn by someone who’s been hurt - and doesn’t know how to grieve it honestly.

If he really wanted to engage, he would have sat with the actual question:

What happens when a person no longer believes that God gave the Torah at Sinai?

Not “who hurt you.”
Not “did you ask a gadol?”
Not “are you just lazy?”
Just that one question.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he laughs.
And the crowd laughs with him.

Because laughing is easier than listening.

If you’re open to listening - really listening - start here: Dear Rebbe. It’s a letter from a former yeshiva student to his rebbe. It’s not angry. It’s not rebellious. Just honest.