Trials and Triumphs

Scenes from the Journey Home

by Debbie Maimon

Mrs. Maimon lives in Monsey, NY with her husband and children. An elementary school teacher for many years, she now devotes much of her time to writing for various Jewish publications. Her article, “Making My Way Homeward,” was published in Jan. ’00.

A. When You’re Out Of Sync

We were on our way to Monsey for Shabbat – Jeff and I, with Penny, who’s 12. The boys had opted to stay behind with friends. Although I had been the driving force behind this expedition – Jeff was in a good-sport mode, and Penny came on board for the adventure – along the way I became deflated.

It had seemed like such a good idea. Our whole family had been to a Gateways seminar a half a year ago, and we’d all loved it. Jeff’s an intellectual and loves a meaty discussion. He got caught up in some of the lectures about science and Judaism and was very intrigued. The ritual aspects of religious Judaism, however, did not interest him, as they did me.

After our second seminar, I had begun to observe Shabbat as best as I could. Try to visualize Shabbat in a house where Saturday is all about high-decibel noise – ball game blaring… ear-splitting music to wash the car by… telephones ringing, doors banging…. Even if I could have managed not to do anything forbidden until sundown, the day had zero spirit and zero meaning. I couldn’t wait till it was over.

So here we were, ready to try Shabbat a new way, with a religious family where the atmosphere would bring out the serenity and spiritual energy of the day. But the trip was fraught with tension from the outset. The boys griped about our going away without them, even though they were invited – even urged – to come along. My husband was half-hearted about the whole thing. And at the last minute Penny threw a fit about having to change her outfit to something more suitable to a religious environment.

The angst-level rose as we hit heavy traffic. As we passed Exit 160 on the Garden State Parkway, I glanced at my watch and a shock went through me. True, we had gotten a late start, but how had time jumped ahead so?

“Yikes, we’re not going to make it,” I turned to Jeff. He shrugged.

“We’ll still be on the highway at 7:44,” I said.

“Can’t be helped.”

What do religious people do when they get stuck like this? I wondered. Find a hotel? Get out and walk? Leave the car and the luggage to be vandalized?

“It’s not like they won’t let us in the door if we come late,” Jeff said.

“That’s not what I’m worried about. I don’t want to be sitting in this car on Shabbat.”

“I don’t see an option. It’s after 7:30 already.”

“Let’s get off the highway at the next exit, so if we have to walk, it won’t be as dangerous.”

“Walk? Listen, honey, that’s going overboard.”

“Mom, we can’t! We don’t even know where we are.”

“I mean it, Jeff. Take this exit right here. I’m getting out before Shabbat.”

“That’s lunacy. We’ve got another three, four miles. What are we going to do with the car?”

I had no clue. Now it was 7:42. In two minutes it would be Shabbat. I’d been learning about the sanctity of Shabbat: high-voltage spiritual charge, courtesy of a Divine mandate, from the first to the last split second. All excuses except life-or-death inadmissible. Violate at your own risk.

“Jeff, pull over to the side, I’m getting out.” I unlocked the door. He looked at me in disbelief and thumped down the control button on his side.

“No you’re not. It’s dangerous and it’s absurd. Fran! Is this what you want to teach the kids – throw safety to the winds for some extremist nonsense?

Penny looked at me distraught. I tried to lighten up for her. “Darling, you know I’m a big walker. I’ll get there before you, I bet.”

“But I want to come with you!”

“Penny, stay right here!” Jeff was determined to save us from my foolishness. He wouldn’t stop the car for us. Then Providence intervened. Someone unexpectedly cut ahead of us, forcing Jeff to brake. I unlocked the door and scooted out. Penny lurched out with me, clinging to my arm.

I smiled down at her tremulously and we made our way hurriedly to the shoulder of the road. Jeff slowed the car to a crawl and followed alongside us. “Fran, for Heaven’s sake –!” he yelled through the window. A police car flashed his lights behind him. Jeff brought the car to a stop. An officer got out of the car and questioned Jeff while Penny and I waited. Then the officer came over to me.

“Having some kind of trouble, ma’am? Is this man bothering you?”

“Bothering me? No, no, officer! He’s just – I mean – we’re… fine!”

“Fellow claims he’s your husband. Says you had a little quarrel and he’s trying to persuade you and the kid to come back inside. That true?”

“Well, yes, I… ah….” How to explain this bizarre situation? My daughter came to the rescue.

“It’s just that the Sabbath is starting and we can’t drive on the Sabbath, so we’re walking the rest of the way.”

Eyeing Jeff suspiciously, the officer suggested that he get on his way on the double. From where I stood I could see the flush of humiliation on my husband’s face as, without a glance in my direction, he took off. The officer then offered us a ride in the police car, which we graciously refused. We asked and received directions to Monsey. He got back into his car and to our embarrassment, cruised alongside us until we reached the turn-off where the area became residential, and sidewalks appeared.

“Mom, I think Daddy’s going to be furious,” Penny broke the silence as we walked along.

“He’ll cool off over Shabbat, Pen. It’ll be okay.”

But would it? Stung by Jeff’s deep disapproval of the choice I had made, I was torn. I knew some painful scenes lay ahead

Jeff, a person to whom dignity was so important, would never embrace a lifestyle that made one appear ridiculous – as he had been made to feel on the highway, due to my “lunacy.” That I would willingly embarrass myself – and him – over what he saw as religious extremism had deeply upset him. It felt terrible to be so out of sync. Would he and I ever be on the same page again?

***

In marriage, more than in any other relationship, strong differences of opinion on matters affecting one’s deepest feelings, can severely test the relationship. The challenge may be greatest when husband and wife find themselves on two different tracks in religious commitment. This is especially true when the couple started out with shared viewpoints, and one spouse then moved on and adopted different values, as often happens in the teshuva process.

“A certain degree of estrangement is unavoidable when spiritual feelings cannot be shared,” said Mrs. Adina Frager, a prominent therapist who has coordinated training programs for therapists treating an Orthodox clientele. “There’s a loneliness. There’s frustration at not being understood as we would like to be. It takes a tremendous amount of emotional maturity, on both sides, as well as respect for the other’s boundaries, to bridge the gulf.

“All too often, the emotional dependence of one partner translates into feelings of being threatened by the other’s spiritual growth, or lack of it. There is the need to keep the partner on the same page, if not the very same line on the page. Then the issue is really one of control, which can be toxic to any relationship.”

“When interest in Judaism destabilizes a marriage, the issue is most often not religion, but rather the relationship,” agrees Rabbi Jonathan Rietti, a noted outreach professional with extensive experience in marriage counseling. “Where there is love, sensitivity and respect, religious needs and differences can be negotiated.” In essence, it’s no different, he said, than if a husband and wife were told by their doctor to follow a certain exercise and diet regimen, and one religiously kept to it, while the other did not.

“Can you see a good relationship crumbling over something like that?”

The warmth and security of an extended family circle is a blessing many of us take for granted. What can replace a doting Bubby and Zaidy, affectionate aunts and uncles, close-knit cousins? Who else can we count on to respond with pride and joy to our children’s milestones and accomplishments?

“Send me the kids for Shabbos, Leah, and just rest up,” is a magic offer one can hope to receive only from a parent or sibling who truly loves us and our children.

“The absence of family is often felt most painfully at the time of a simcha,” notes Rabbi Braun, dean of Yeshiva Ohr Somayach of Monsey. “A young couple connected with the yeshiva had their first child,” he recalled, “and the excited father called his parents with the news.

“Dad! We get a mazel tov! Rachel had a little girl!”

“Very nice. Congratulations,” was the tepid response.

The young wife phoned her mother. “Mom, guess what?! We had a baby – a little girl!”

“And how do you expect to support a child with your husband still in that yeshiva?” came the cold rejoinder.

“Unfortunately, simchos are often a time of heightened stress for families of baalei teshuva,” says Rabbi Braun. Inevitably, conflicts and halachic questions arise over family members who have been invited to attend, but insist on driving over on Shabbos, or bringing along non-Jewish spouses or relatives. Baalei teshuva often find themselves in a related dilemma, where their presence is expected at an event that they are halachically forbidden to attend, such as an intermarriage.

“Family relationships have ruptured over these issues,” said Rabbi Braun. “It is one of the most painful sacrifices baalei teshuva have to make. For that alone, we should stand up for them.”

“It may take a few years, but often, forgiveness and reconciliation do eventually come about, especially between siblings who were once close,” said Dr. Frager. “After a while, the bond of love overcomes the hurt, and allows healing.”

B. The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner

I’ll give you the facts but you’ll have to imagine the emotions yourself. It’s still a raw wound. Too raw for me to get into the how-do-you-feel-about-that aspect of it.

I had begged my younger brother Phil, when he told me he planned to marry Yvonne, not to do something that would cut us off from one another. “Your kids won’t be Jewish,” I told him. “It’s one of the most destructive things you can do as a Jew.”

Such talk – don’t marry “out” – is considered racist to the western liberal mind. (I know – I’ve been there.) So Phil gives it to me but good – the whole nine yards. He lets me know how disappointed in me the whole family is for abandoning the values I was raised with – tolerance, diversity, brotherhood of men, all that hype. He lets me know that to surrender to the emotional blackmail I was trying to pull on him, would destroy every last bit of his self-respect.

Lastly, he informs me that the most serious cut-off will not be the cut-off between him and me, but between me and my entire family, because no one in the family will forgive me for allowing religion to drive a wedge between brothers, and for trying to destroy his happiness.

We were sitting in a restaurant and had to keep our voices down, but pretty soon, things were spiraling out of control. I was firing things at him, like, “You marry this person and you’re destroying Jewish continuity. You could be raising little Jew-haters right under your own roof one day!” And he was lashing back with, “How are you different from a racist bigot like Louis Farrakhan? You call this religion? All you know is hate!”

I got up suddenly on the pretext of making a phone call. I mean, my hands were shaking. Phil and I were once close. I was the one he came to when he got busted in college for some crazy shenanigans he did. I was his role model – not always a good one, maybe. But he turned on me with such venom, it’s like we never had anything between us.

Here’s the clincher. A couple of days later I get a one-line note from him. It says, “The Nazis must have hated Jews because of Jewish bigots like you.” It was signed, “Your ex-brother, Phil.” The crowning touch came a day later. My mother called and said, “Sean, if you don’t show up to your brother’s wedding, I will never speak to you again.”

So I went to my Rabbi to ask a she’eila. Maybe, to keep the family from splitting up, it might be permitted in this case…? The answer came back unequivocally, in the name of Rabbi Pam l”xz. “A Jew is not allowed to celebrate an intermarriage.” Period. Finis. End of discussion.

The wedding took place a couple of months ago. Since then, I’ve been ostracized. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is the effect it’s had on my kids. You have to understand, there was a relationship there. Uncle Phil, Grandma, Grandpa… My kids love them. They have so little extended family as it is. From my wife’s side, it’s a pretty bleak picture. Her parents were divorced years ago and her mother’s remarried to a non-Jew. They’re barely interested in my wife, never mind her kids.

When my son, Ahron, turned six last week, he called up Grandma and Grandpa and invited them and Uncle Phil to his birthday party. When he got off the phone there were tears in his eyes. “They say they can’t come because Uncle Phil’s wife is not allowed to come,” he said. The kid was so hurt. He was trying to understand. Don’t his grandparents love him enough to come anyway? What does Phil’s wife have to do with it? Go explain that to him.

Maybe it’s all for the best, because Ahron is getting older and Phil is definitely not a role model for him. He buys him all kinds of things that are not appropriate for yeshiva kids. He takes him aside when he’s here for a visit and teaches him Heaven only knows what.

I’m always secretly throwing out or “losing” the stuff he gives them – dinosaur books, bionic people, Batman comics… I get rid of them when my kids aren’t looking. It was getting to be a real problem.

But on the other hand, not to have any family at all, except for your parents – it feels so alone to a child, so sad. All his classmates have cousins, aunts and uncles, family get-togethers…. What child wouldn’t feel a void? I feel it myself. I know we’ll get to the finish line and it’ll be glorious, but right now…it’s the loneliness of the long-distance runner, you know what I mean?

C. Recipe For Rebellion

The following account, adapted from the notes of a therapist who specializes in working with teens, casts light on some of the issues especially relevant to families of baalei teshuva. To protect the privacy of the parties, names and identifying information have been changed.

It was their second session that started out with the mother-daughter tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. The father was present, but tended to take a peacekeeping role from the sidelines.

Although the conflict appeared to be over religious observance, the friction between parent and child was more about teen independence vs. parent control. The daughter, a ninth grader, was rebelling against what she felt were unfair restrictions on her clothes and activities, while her mother was insisting on parental authority, grounded in Torah obligation.

According to the mother, the conflict had spilled over to the daughter’s high school, where the administration had indicated they had doubts about whether to accept Gila back the following year. The girl was crushed – but also defiant. She insisted that the rules cramping her life were mostly “chumras,” which she was not obligated to keep. She accused her mother of not sticking up for her, of siding with the teachers who didn’t like her.

What complicated matters was that both Mr. and Mrs. Glazer, while devoted parents, lacked sufficient knowledge in Torah to lay down halachic guidelines for their children. As baalei teshuva who had never had the privilege of a yeshiva education, they found themselves at a disadvantage when it came to asserting their authority on matters that touched on halacha. Their children’s knowledge clearly surpassed their own. Often a kind of role reversal took place, where the children disputed or corrected their parents, a humbling and painful situation for the parents.

While their love for Yiddishkeit permeated their home, made even more vibrant by the sacrifices each had made in reclaiming their heritage, a by-product of that love was an anxiety about creating a perfect Torah home for their children. Mrs. Glazer’s devotion to instilling Torah values in her family had a driven quality to it.

Privately, she had confided her distress over her children’s “lackadaisical” attitude toward mitzvos. Why didn’t they daven properly? Why didn’t they show any interest in their father’s dvar Torah? One of the children, a 10-year old boy, on occasion refused to come to the Shabbos table altogether, even for Kiddush. They never knew whether to force him to come, or forbid him to come in the future, as punishment. Why didn’t her children realize the Shabbos table was a privilege, not a burden?

The oldest child, Gila, was a lightning rod for her mother’s anxiety. Their once close relationship had turned stormy. Almost every attempt at communication between mother and daughter led to outbursts of anger and recrimination.

To keep open the lines of communication, I suggested a role-playing exercise that might bypass toxic emotions, enabling important understandings to get across. Mrs. Glazer had had a pivotal meeting with her daughter’s principal the day before. I had since spoken to the principal myself and was apprised of what had transpired. I asked if we might replay that conversation for Gila.

I took the principal’s role and Mrs. Glazer replayed her own end of the conversation. The meeting was re-enacted impromptu, more or less as follows:

“Mrs. Glazer, I asked you to come down because Gila’s behavior has raised some concerns that really must be resolved. You’re aware of the issues I’m referring to?”

“I don’t really feel I have the picture.”

“Well, it’s like this. Gila is a wonderful girl and a good student, but the teachers feel that in certain ways, she has not allowed herself to be molded in the derech of our school. I’m referring to certain aspects of her appearance, as well as to her conversation – comments and remarks she has made.”

“Do you mean …chutzpah?

“No, no. There’s no problem with derech eretz. It’s… well – take her appearance. She wears the school uniform but somehow, she always manages to look conspicuous. She’ll have a flashy chain-belt at the waist or some kind of flashy accessories. The 4-inch platform shoes… the long hair in her face. It’s a whole look that is not the type of look we want for our girls.”

“Have you discussed it with her?

“Yes, but frankly, we feel we haven’t gotten through. She changes this or that detail, but the overall effect has not really changed. She seems to relish being different. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I… suppose so.”

“And the comments that come out of her! I mean, concerning current events and issues that are out of bounds as far as we’re concerned. Not that there’s anything halachically wrong with it, but it’s certainly not the kind of education parents send their daughters here for.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“One day it was about a weird cult in China that’s in the news. Gila knew about the strange beliefs of this cult and this kind of talk was going around the class. Then there was something about cloning a human being! Where does she get this information, Mrs. Glazer? I assume this is not table talk in your home –”

“I can’t say we don’t discuss such things, but generally not in front of the children.”

“Does she have access to newspapers, magazines?”

“Not in my home.”

“Well, she’s getting this exposure from someplace. Aren’t you concerned?”

“Yes. But – are these the worst topics she’s brought up?”

“Aren’t they bad enough?

“Well – I –”

“Look, Mrs. Glazer, the very fact that we have to worry about what she’ll come up with next is a problem in itself! We have an obligation to our parents who expect our school to be an extension of their own hashkafos. That’s why they send their daughters to us.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Mrs. Friedman? That you plan to kick my daughter out because she talks about current events?”

“I said nothing about kicking her out. But, I want you to understand – we do have a problem here, and we can’t ignore it any longer. And as I tried to explain, it’s not one specific thing – it’s the whole picture.”

“‘The whole picture?’ But just before you told me that she’s a good student, never a problem with derech eretz, a wonderful girl. – Now it’s the whole person that’s a problem?”

“That’s not at all what I’m saying. Please don’t take this the wrong way. We really do like Gila. What we’re discussing here is the need for her to make some very definite changes. What I’m trying to find out is whether we can get Gila to blend in better with her classmates a) in outer appearance, and b) socially, in her interaction with them.”

“You want a total personality makeover?”

“Mrs. Glazer, try to understand –”

“But I don’t understand, Mrs. Friedman. I’m not saying my daughter is perfect. But the part of her you don’t like – her being different – is the part of her I’m proud of! Gila’s different because her parents are different. To us, being different is not a crime or a curse. It’s a necessity. The courage to be different is what made us able to fight our families and our society and make so many sacrifices to become frum!”

“Mrs. Glazer, please sit down – I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I can’t help it – I’m sorry for losing control like this. But I want you to try to understand what it’s like for my daughter. All her relatives and her cousins are frei. There’s never been a single family get-together when she hasn’t been faced with very difficult moments. Is she were less strong in her Yiddishkeit, if she didn’t ‘relish’ being different, to use your word, do you think she would have withstood the temptations? Think about the fact that it’s current events she’s talking to the girls about, not about dirty books or movies or some other garbage. You think she couldn’t get her hands on that stuff is she wanted to?

“So she wears flashy accessories. Do I like it? I don’t. Am I happy with her hairstyle? We have arguments about that, too. And we have plenty of other issues. But for once, I want you to understand that here is a girl who has had been tested in ways that most other girls in this school have never been. And here is a girl who has stood up to the test and made choices that her teachers should be proud of her for!”

Mrs. Glazer broke off, choked with emotion. There was total silence as Gila stared at her in astonishment. Then came one of those rare moments we yearn to see, when the power of love cuts through all the bitterness and disappointment. Gila reached out and gave her mother a hug. “Ma, I’m sorry,” she whispered. They hugged and cried a little together.

Through the discussion that came afterward, it turned out that Gila’s trouble at home was not spilling over into school as her mother had told me, but quite the reverse. The girl’s sense of having been branded a problem by her teachers and having her appearance and her every action scrutinized, was causing her to act out at home. Feeling disliked and miserable, with no one to advocate for her, she reacted by estranging herself emotionally and kicking up a fuss over religious issues – which was both a way of blaming her mother and a cry for help.

Once the Glazers were back on track with one another, they were able to work through important issues. Gila began to realize she might be happier in a school where there was more openness and more tolerance of diversity, and that switching schools was not a strike against her, but a healthy option.

We also discussed Gila’s feeling that her mother needed to be on top of her frumkeit. “I feel like you’re always measuring how much or how little I’m doing,” she told her mother. “Like if davening takes me 10 minutes, you think I skipped half of it. And what if I was in a hurry and did skip some things? It’s not the end of the world. I can’t always be perfect.”

In some ways, she said, she felt that her mother’s “perfectionism” mirrored the school’s rigidity. At a later session with just the parents, Mrs. Glazer admitted that her anxiety clouded her interactions with her children on matters of religious practice, and that her monitoring of them went overboard.

“I want to give my kids the chinuch I never got from my parents. All I want is for them to be frum. But I feel like I’m missing the right touch, because it’s so…it’s like pulling teeth. Getting them to daven and bentch… It’s a battle of wills.

“I remember the Shabbos tables of the families I was close to when I was becoming frum. I remember the enthusiasm, I remember it being fun. It’s different in our home. The spontaneity is missing… It’s like the main ingredient was left out of the recipe.”

“There’s spontaneity, all right,” her husband said dryly. “Ever see bedlam that’s not spontaneous?”

Mr. Glazer was critical of his wife’s methods of being mechanech the children. His approach was to set a good example and rely on the tendency of children to emulate their role models. He preferred to overlook behavior and religious lapses.

Mrs. Glazer felt her husband’s laid-back approach was too extreme, but agreed to take a closer look at her expectations of her family. Intellectually, she realized the error of holding them to an unrealistic standard, of using the “perfect” people and “perfect” lives of their frum role models as yardsticks to measure her family’s success or failure. She also began to understand how excessive pressure extinguished the joy children naturally experience in doing mitzvos, and tended to spark contrariness toward religious performance.

Over time, as she worked on becoming more flexible and letting go of anxiety about her children’s religious observance, she noticed that her daughter was more willing to accommodate her school in terms of its “unwritten” rules. Gila was beginning to see these rules not in religious terms but as the school’s particular dress and behavior code that she could adhere to without renouncing her uniqueness. Towards the end of the year, she was beginning to rethink her decision to transfer to another school as it meant leaving behind some very close friends.

Another issue that came to the fore at one of our later sessions was Mr. Glazer’s acknowledgement that he felt that his lack of Torah knowledge was hurting his relationship with his children, and that he had neglected his own learning for too long.

“It was always one thing or another that got in the way. One thing we didn’t take into account when we were first married is what happens when your son reaches bar-mitzva,” he said. “You look at him with such pride, you watch him get up in that new hat and say his pshetel and you have to hold back the tears. But there’s a sadness there because you can’t follow a word of it. You had to ask the rabbi to help him write it and practice it. And you wonder: Should you have dropped everything back then, and sat in a yeshiva and learned for a few years?

“If someone had only said to me then, ‘Dave, one day you’re going to turn around and find a beautiful young man who happens to be your own bar-mitzva boy, and what you’re going to want most in the whole world is to be able to sit down and learn Torah with him.’

“But who could have imagined such a thing then? We were just finding our way. Working without a blueprint. In some ways we still are.”

What the Glazers have in common with a great many fellow returnees is the incentive and capacity to make changes to enhance their spiritual and emotional lives, a degree of motivation which far surpasses the norm.

“While many people have great difficulty in relinquishing their opinions even when shown the truth, baalei teshuva have taken ‘graduate degrees’ in the field of intellectual and emotional honesty,” notes Rabbi Mordecai Swiatycki, a maggid shiur at Ohr Somayach, who also gives private counseling. “They are the real mevakshei emes, seekers of truth.”

For many seekers, the driving force behind their return to Torah was precisely this yearning for the truth, for the clarity between right and wrong. It is a force that brooks no compromise.

“The same courage that enabled them to break ties with the familiar and the safe, and to plunge into uncharted waters in search of truth, can sometimes lead to absolutism, where one sees almost every issue in black and white terms,” remarked Dr. Melech Press, chair of the psychology department of Touro College. “Part of becoming integrated into the mainstream frum community is learning about the complexities, the multi-faceted nature of halacha, and the alternative roads to pursuing what is right.”

“It also means realizing that Torah, while being technical, precise, even ‘scientific’ in its instructions for life, is nevertheless not at all rigid or dogmatic,” adds Mrs. Frager. “For newcomers to Yiddishkeit, understanding that subtle difference may take some time.”

At the same time, most who work with “returnees” agree that the greatest of all the dividends the frum community enjoys from having mevakshei emes in our midst, is their implicit challenge to all of us to do more than pay lip service to our love for Torah and its power to ennoble – but to demonstrate it authentically in our own lives.

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