We could see our Bais Yaakov
educated teenage daughter slipping away from Orthodox Judaism. It was
more like watching a freight train lumber along than a high-speed rail.
It pained us and tore the family fabric. We yelled, we talked, we
pleaded, we changed her school, but we were losing her. On the Passover
eve, the fight was so intense I lost control and she threw chometz
potato chips around. That was the crescendo.
Our
family morphed from Modern Orthodox to Haredi-light. We kept the
television, but sent the children to “black” yeshivas and girls’
schools. As adults, they now tell us they chafed at school rules and
regulations, imposed to cloister them (and protect them) from the
poisonous secular world.
By mid-teens, our daughter “went out” Friday
nights. She made new friends, alienated from their families.
We needed
therapy. My wife and I went, while our daughter clammed up, seething
with resentment.
The therapist made it clear. We stood to lose
her completely or we accept her lifestyle as it is. Maybe one day she
will come back, so keep communicating. God knows we tried. We laid in
wait one night, and when she crept into the house in the wee hours, we
squirted her with water guns. The three of us roared with laughter.
Eventually she moved out, supporting herself with two daytime
waitressing jobs and later as a bartender.
There is an oeuvre of books, articles,
interviews, Facebook rants, and documentaries detailing a genre of
religious rebellion, ugsome personal attacks, excommunication and
rejection. Even the minister’s daughter of the fundamentalist Westboro
Baptist Church recently left her cloistered community and is exposing
its family secrets in the media.
Ex-pats from Hasidism and Orthodox Judaism
recount their alienation from family, friends, and community. They are
alone in a new world. They have few survival skills, because they got
little secular education, no job training, and no one to moor them. The
new world is frightening and lonely place. Some turn to drugs or commit
suicide. Others have a mission to expose, retaliate, and condemn their
rabbis, families and communities in the most dark and vile expressions.
A wistfully written new book by Chaya Deitsch, HERE AND THERE: LEAVING HASIDISM, KEEPING MY FAMILY (New
York: Schocken Books 2015) is a refreshing change on the same theme,
one to which we can relate. Hers was a Lubavitch family totally immersed
in Jewish Law and commitment to the Rebbe.
Chaya’s story gives insight
into the emotional stress our daughter must have experienced, yearning
for what the larger world has to offer while holding on for dear life to
her parents, siblings, and friends still living in the old world. We
made the choice, like Deitsch’s parents, to keep the front door open,
and eventually we learn to accept what we cannot control.
Deitsch musters the courage, at the urging of
her publisher, to tell her parents about her “ease in crossing over into
sin” before her memoir is published. She sits with her parents back
home again. You feel the nervous tension. Deitsch proclaims, “I’m no
longer frum.” Momma says, “You think we didn’t know? That’s why
I don’t call you at home on Friday before Shabbos. I don’t want to make
you lie to me.” And from her father, “You chose a different life. Of
course we knew about it.” Even I breathed a sigh of relief, with tears
welling, having been there myself.
A Hasidic Rebbe once confided to my wife and
me, when we sought solace and a blessing, with a deep sigh, he has a
brother off the derech (the path of strict religious
practices). The brother became Modern Orthodox. It was all I could do to
keep from busting out laughing.
Chaya recounts the small awakenings, like how
impressed as a youngster she was with her Modern Orthodox relatives
seemingly so comfortable in their religious skins. Each transgression
takes her deeper into the secular world: wearing pants (a very cute
story about fit and style), having coffee in a non-kosher shop,
forsaking the kosher cafeteria in college, first for breakfast and then
for other meals.
Deitsch grew up a voracious reader and keen
observer of the world outside her bubble. Her parents worked with her
recognizing early that Chaya was different. They did not go nuts when
she wanted to apply for college, but negotiated with her. I think it is
why she is healthy, a survivor, and productive citizen. She loves her
Manhattan life and visiting her family in the old neighborhood.
And so is our daughter. She has a successful
career and wonderful friends living in a tony urban community. She began
phoning us, coming for Friday night dinners, wedging her way back into
trembling arms. In our house, she was respectful of our religious
practices. Outside was her world. My pet-fearful wife agreed to watch
the dog when our daughter worked. That way, our daughter had to stop by
twice a day.
She once asked me why we let her back home
when the parents of her friends tell them not to come around (they will
negatively influence the other children and hurt marriage prospects)? I
shuddered, but without hesitation said, “Because you’re our daughter and
that comes first.”
Chaya is “one of a smother of aunts, with
nieces and nephews to indulge.” She loves her brothers and sisters and
they her. Our daughter too is close with her siblings, some Orthodox and
others not at all, and they did as much to help her grow as her parents
contributed.