Last week I wrote an article here about a reality television show that I found entertaining but misleading. The star of the show left her religion and became wildly successful as a fashion designer and CEO of a top modeling agency. But, my complaint about this woman is not her success or even her leaving her religion. My problem is her dissing her old life and claiming things about her past life that are simply not true. Maybe they were true for her, but they are not for others.

After writing this piece, I read some of the comments, most of which were agreeing with me, but I started to wonder whether I am being intolerant by writing this article. I thought maybe I need to accept what the family did – that-is decided to become irreligious and even believe their stories about what it was like for them when they were religious.

Maybe my saying, “wait that was not my story,” is kind of invalidating their experience.

But then I thought more about it and realized something. Here’s the thing. When two people – one religious and the other non-religious can each respect the other for their choices, that is tolerance. And I believe that I respect the star of the show for her choices. After her oldest daughter got married, Julia Haart left her community and stopped observing Judaism. My response to that? Her business. Not mine. No judgement at all.

But what bothers me is that I feel that she – and in particular her daughter, Miriam — do not tolerate and actually judge the ways of Orthodox Judaism. And that’s why I wrote the article. They believe we are fundamentalist, unhappy, repressed, unable to get an education and other things. Simply untrue.

So read the article I wrote  here and let me know what you think.