Israel Irenstein left Brooklyn's Gerrer hasidic community and learned how to date. Now he teaches other ex-haredim how to meet and romance women. And he does it for free through Footsteps.
Slate reports:
…“There are three problems specific to the ex-religious when they first try to date,” Irenstein says. “Inexperience, having no identity, and having no understanding of the opposite sex.” That makes sense when you consider how insular the Orthodox communities are. Premarital sex, even premarital touching, is prohibited. And there is a rule for everything, including which shoelace to tie first and what to do with one’s facial hair. OTD’ers who come to Irenstein never had the awkward, albeit formative, experiences the rest of us had—slow-dancing with some height-inappropriate partner in seventh grade, locking braces with someone in the back of a movie theater, getting to “second base.” Their questions for Irenstein range from the peculiar such as, “Is it OK to pay a girl $80 to go out with me?” to the commonplace concerns of men on the New York dating scene: “How many dates before I should allow her to split the check?”…
At 29, Irenstein was married with two daughters, living in the Hasidic community he’d grown up in. He remembers his 6-year-old coming home from school and telling him that non-Jews existed solely to witness the good deeds of the Jews. He’d wanted out of Hasidism for a while, but that was the day he pulled his kids out of school and laid plans to move. “I would have done anything,” says Irenstein, “even given up my own life, to make sure my kids weren’t forced into cult living.”…
Frustrated by his own cluelessness, Irenstein turned to pick-up artists and dating coaches, including New York Dating Coach, as well as to self-help books, Tony Robbins’ confidence-building seminars, and therapy. He was less interested in learning pickup lines and routines than he was in retraining his brain; he wanted to project self-confidence. Today, that’s what he teaches—that if you feel good about yourself, you’ll have an easier time with the opposite sex. It sounds basic, but to many OTD’ers, it’s not.…
“You’ve got a lot going for you,” he tells [a student]. “But you have work to do. It starts here,” he says pointing to his head. “You have to fix what’s in here.”