I fully intended to be a Conservative Jew when I converted, but living in Brooklyn made that somewhat impossible. Not that there were no
Conservative or Reform shuls, mind you, but most Noo Yawkahs seem to believe that if you're not Orthodox, you're just not authentic---regardless of their level of observance/unobservance. When I worked, I had Jewish co-workers and bosses question my desire to get home early enough on Fridays to bentschlicht Shabbos on time. To them, if I wasn't Orthodox, I was just trying to get out of work early. I finally gave up and made Shabbos when I got home (usually after dark, a no-no halachically). I never dreamed I would soon be hijacked into a form of Orthodoxy that drove me nuts!
It all started with pre-Pesach cleaning, and a question as to whether our new dishwasher could be kashered properly. The local rabbi (whom I will not name because he was nice) sounded modern and "with it" on the phone, and I quickly agreed to come for a Shabbos meal. I can't blame HIM for my gullibility, but I was just too eager to find "The Way", I'm afraid. My husband's family were the usual "non-observant- -but-when-they-were-it-had-to-be-Orthodox" Jews, which was typical for second-generationers, and they hadn't wanted me to convert because I might get "religious" (a term meaning anything from lighting Shabbos candles to keeping kosher, etc,). In short, they wanted their son to marry a nice, non-observant non-Jew. You know the rest, I'm sure; there's the joke about the shiksa who marries the son and all's fine till she converts and demands he be a Jew for REAL, so the parents moan about how their son is now a religious "fanatic" because he goes to services on Shabbos instead of working, ad nauseum.
So I went to the rabbi's house, saw this scene right out of Fiddler On The Roof, and fell for it. I don't consider myself a romantic, but I sure had a loose screw SOMEWHERE; from there I went to sheitl, long sleeves, long shirts, dark stockings, and nearly wrecked my marriage. You'd be amazed how easy it is to believe you have a direct line to God (no, I'm not doing that silly dash-instead-of-middle-letter. It's the Hebrew name that counts), when you "see the light"; suddenly, everyone else is an apikoros (a term taken from the Greek "epicurean", meaning hedonist and general sinner), or an am-ha-eretz (literally, "people of the land", but used to denote the ignorant) or, worse yet, a letz (scoffer and downright unbeliever, horror of horrors.). YOU, of course, are a wonderful, sincere and loving Torah-True Jew, so it's okay to say terrible things about everyone else who ISN'T.
Yes, it's lashon hora (literally "evil tongue", gossip), and absolutely wrong according to halacha, but there are ways of bending the meaning to get around the aveirah (a REAL sin, not the "chet", the "missing the mark" kind of sin we usually commit), because for every WORD of lashon hora you break some 31 thou-shalt-nots (too technical to go into here---read the book Guard Your Tongue, translated by Rabbi Pliskin, I believe, from the Hafetz Chaim). At any rate, it seems as if you have God's blessing to trash everyone you don't like. If they're Orthodox you find some flaw; a woman's skirt is knee-length, so she's lacking in tznius (modesty), or a man's yarmulkah isn't big enough, etc. It's Competitive Piety time, and who's more machmir (observant) than the next person. This is not true of ALL Orthodoxy, but it's the kind in which I found myself mired. I'll continue later...
