Another Baal Teshuvah Success Story
New York Magazine has a story about a woman who is estranged from her child because she left haredism to return to the secularism of her grandparents.
The temptation will be to point at the crazy upstate Satmars, and consider this situation a symptom of extremism. And to some degree, it is.
But look closer.
Carol and Matty [the grandparents of the woman who left the Satmar community] were eventually banned from Deborah’s house. On one of their last visits, Matty saw one of Gitty’s young stepbrothers regarding him warily. “The kid says, ‘Dis is a Yid?’ I felt like screaming, ‘Yeah, for 70 goddamn years!’ But it wouldn’t have done any good.”
Gitty’s situation with Esther Miriam has brought back much of Matty’s rage. “They want such big families, but their way of being a Jew has ripped this family apart,” he says. “Deborah [Gitty's mother] has gotten the worst of it.” In the past few years, Gitty’s brother and sister—Chaim’s other two children—have also left KJ. “She’s lost three children because of this.” Now the pain had extended to another generation.
Carol and Matty sigh. No one really wants to go over these sad memories again. Carol Feinman has one last thing to say.
“There was this one Hanukkah,” she says evenly. “We were going to have a party and invited Deborah. I didn’t think she’d come, but she sounded excited about it. I was really hopeful. Then she calls back with a lot of questions about who’s going to be there, if there were going to be any non-Jews. I said, ‘Probably.’ She comes, and everyone is happy to see her … but at dinner, she doesn’t join us at the table. She’s got her face to the wall, and she’s praying. This is what the Satmar rebbe told her to do if she had to sit down with non-Jews: Face the wall and pray.
“That’s when I knew I’d lost my daughter. That she was gone.”
To a lesser degree, this occurs in all too many families who face a child becoming a baal teshuvah. The contempt towards “other” is palpable and disruptive.
We must pray for comfort for all the families of Zion who lose a child, sibling, in-law, or cousin to the “Teshuva Revolution.”
25 comments
I think your (mis)treatment of frum jews a lot of the time is a form of fundamentalism in it of itself. You act as a charedi in your own right. Your bitterness always shines through. Your skin must crawl when you walk through a frum neighborhood.
anony, at least DK isn’t debating whether or not gentiles are human beings like the gemara does.
isn’t it so cute how SJ is always here to protect his leader and mentor?
but on a serious note..SJ, your are (as usual) misquoting the gemara which does not do that. dk it seems has at least read it. have you EVER even opened a gemara? or do u just assume what u hear is true?
and I have to agree with anony…dk has a hatred for a group to the point where they don’t even get a fair shot ne more. they can do no right. so SJ…he pretty much does treat them as less than human
I find it funny how people dare to belittle someone on account of agreeing with someone else. By any standards of dialectics, that’s just plain inappropriate.
…and then there’s that religious girl who went off the derech. She saw her more secularly inclined girlfriends having fun with boys and wanted to get some. Now she has an incurable sexually transmitted disease to show for her adventures. What about that guy I know who was brought up religious and left the fold as soon as he could. Left his wife and kid, never sent them any money and went gallivanting. He’s now a crack head and is turning tricks to pay for his habit. For every story you can highlight, I can do the same. The secular world as you well know isn’t perfect. I’m not saying the religious world is either but geez, a little balance Kelsaleh!
it was ajoke take it easy. someone takes their views a little too seriously
You forget a few key details:
The article itsel at least hints that she is on drugs. That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
I am not a big fan of Satmar, and they are very often rude, violent brutes who like crossing a red line or two. But in this specific case, truth is the kid is worse off with the mom than the father.
The true story behind the story (details known from KJ and former-KJ acquaintances) that this girl had a few boyfriends with whom she had intimate relations. The last one imprgnated her, so they were forced to marry. The drugs were there too before the marriage, that why a Yoily from such a good-pedigreed family was “allowed” to marry “damaged goods” (read: baalas tshuva).
Drugs and extramarital intimacy are not rare in KJ, they just keep it under the rugs. There’s a good pecentage of kids born after the Rebbe’s passing who are out and out mamzerim. Another dirty little secret the Yoilis don’t want you to know is that many of their women stopped going to the mikva altogether, because they have very strict hair-shaving rules: head not totally shaven - no tevilah. The more frum ones send their women to Monsey - the less frum ones just turn a blind eye. Those who still believe in Santa Klaus and are unluckily married to “rebelious” women who don’t want to look like Skin’ead O’Connor are in a pickle - that’s where many divorces start.
All this, however, does not justify DK’s smearing all those whom he decides are haredim as if they were all the same (examplary open-mindedness and non-stereotyping mindset, eh, mister “non-judgemental” and “liberal”), all the while doing philosophical summersaults to prove that really not all muslims are bad, and that there are only just one or two murderers, and that honor killings are by far not as bad as forcing womento shave their heads and rejecting evolution is by far a greater crime than blowing up buses with litlle children.
DK has a point in emphasizing the “If you’re not with us, you’re against us”-attitude that is going strong in many Chasidishe circles, even stronger among BTs than among FFBs, which eventually silences all criticism, even constructive one. Indeed, it requires dogamitism to transcend from a secular lifestyle and education to a frum mindest. Frum, a word of German origin, means to be mindlessly and uncritically religious. It does not equal to “observant”. Among my literally hundres of Chasidic friends and acquaintances, there aren’t even half a dozen that do not continually fear some religious “authority’s” allegations - whether true or false ones. There are drugs and there are crime, but there also is a lot of gossiping in those circles. I’m even said to have “intimate relations” with frum Brooklynites that I’ve never even have met. Either that, or the sex was so lousy that I didn’t even wake up. So, there isn’t always fire where there’s smoke, but the frum communities have to decide whether they want to keep the status quo and at that risk collapsing totally as more and more frum youths realize their upbringing doesn’t equip them with what they need in everyday life or they can try to adapt their values to their environment - which Jews of the past have done, and those certainly weren’t any less religious.
mindset*
I’m sorry for disrupting the arguing but oh my that is one giant kid. I hope the knees of all those he sits on the lap of are good and strong.
factual basis, i have bad news for you, i heard it from an othodox rabbi. XD
* it as in the debate in the gemara as to whether or not gentiles are human beings.
and I have bad news for you SJ…people make mistakes and lie even “orthodox” rabbis. unlike how all of u portray relgious jews we do not think we are perfect and there are many among us who are father from it than others. so you should see if for yourself before assuming that its true (even dk is good at that, and ironically, at finding stuff like this in the gemarah :))
Of course. Changing your construct from the UWS “other” to the Williamsburg or KJ “other” is certainly prayerworthy.
Hello, everyone has an “other”. Including you. Choosing to define your construct on the basis of religion is at least as valid as choosing to define yourself on the basis of racial stereotypes or ethnocentricity. Imposing the construct “jew=ethnicity” on people who believe Judaism is a religion is ludicrous. *Not * imposing it and still expecting that jews who believe Judaism is a religion relate to non practicing jews as such is absurd.
mohammed,
Don’t give me that moral relativist crap.
Why not?
Mohammed - Satre was a moral relativist. A few days ago you wanted France nuked in time for Bastille Day because of Satre and now you support him! Even a moral relativist would find that hard to stomach.
Factual Basis, this orthdox rabbi is a yeshiva teacher. XD
* orthodox
RL
there you go again, mixing up the everyone and anyone. I said something morally relativistic, therefore I support all moral relativists, no matter what other stupid things they may have said.
How logical.
Yossi (Joe) Izrael
Were you being fully serious when you chided DK? I don’t know if you’re a new reader or what, but this:
“DK’s smearing all those whom he decides are haredim as if they were all the same (examplary open-mindedness and non-stereotyping mindset, eh, mister “non-judgemental” and “liberal”), all the while doing philosophical summersaults to prove that really not all muslims are bad…”
Is not even close to DK’s take on anything.
Read gitty in her own words,
FriendsForGitty.com
she released a statement
Give me a break. The fact is, plenty of BTs (myself included) go to incredible lengths to accomodate their non-frum family and maintain a beautiful relationship with them. I am chassidish, my parents are traditional, my kids are little, I teach them to respect their grandparents, everyone respects everyone else, we accomodate. Lots of families manage it. There are other dysfunctional issues here which are being ignored.
Mottel, are you Satmar? Kiryas Joel Satmar? Because if you are some Chabadnik or Bresolver BT, you should just shut up, this situation has nothing to do with you.
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