From his Hospital Bed, Dad Suddenly Transformed into an Orthodox Jew

 From his hospital bed, Dad said to mom, "I want you to be remarried in three months."

Dad kept saying he would beat the CA, but at the very end he realized he would not.

Then he reverted to being an orthodox Jew. He told mom to remarry. In three months.

Three months is the minimum time that (actually) a divorced woman should remarry in Jewish law. This resolves paternity should she be pregnant from a previous marriage. The widow is advised to wait one year, but, it is the spirit that counts - dad was ordering mom to remarry. Not date. Not wait, not pursue a career, but remarry.

But they were free spirits when they met, my dad had two teenagers from his first marriage, my mom was getting over the hill in her parents' eyes, all of 25 years old and still not married! So they agreed that she could marry a Jew, after all, dad was the nicest Jew they had ever met (they had never met one).

He was 18 years older than mom and grandpa did demur that she may end up being a somewhat young widow, though she was widowed far earlier than grandpa expected.

The age was heady, and the interfaith marriage was part of a 1960's break from tradition and foray into an open-minded ecumenical utopia. My parents were hippies! But their parents had decidedly not been hippies. Conservative WASP and Chassidic Jew were their backgrounds. Times were changing, and the summer of love was afoot.

You can experiment with boundaries and free love when things are going very well financially, when you return home for holidays to your conservative WASP grandparents whose stately home and financial security were borne of hard work, absolute devotion in marriage, and sobriety. (My Jewish grandparents had passed away before I was born, as my dad had been older, but pictures of them showed them resplendent in head coverings, traditional attire and long sleeves, gathering at the Passover Seder before the festive meal, or at a wedding.)

Sober and chaste, my forebears on both sides built strong homes.

My parents were sober but the society was losing chastity fast. The mythology was that free sex would be good for people, no one would marry for sex, people would be unchained, free, autonomous, blah blah blah.

But when push came to shove, "I want you remarried in three months!"

It is not that easy to just climb back into a traditional framework that promotes abstinence until marriage once you have allowed yourself to be surrounded by mythologies that hold devotion in contempt!

Mom ended up selling herself cheap.  I saw her suffer emotionally from the relationships that skirted the edge of the basic human need of absolute devotion and commitment in marriage, finding that edge to be steel sharp and deeply wounding.

It was part of my long journey home. The longer I am in the orthodox Jewish community, and it has been 35 years now, the more amazed I am at the harmful mythologies I grew up with.

Sex outside marriage is not for the vulnerable, but few are able to admit that they are indeed vulnerable and have needs, because they bought into the modern relativist project of desensitization.

You cannot just conjure up lots of devoted and abstinent men who will marry you and help you raise your kids, because free sex is easier.

And free sex does not bring out the best in people. That is the subject of another essay, a piece I wish was not needed.

My dad is featured in a chapter in this book, but I will refrain from mentioning his name now, too painful:

 

 

Mom's New Boyfriend - and I Better Make a Good Impression

Sitting there with mom's new boyfriend. I was 10 years old when she dated John, 12 when she dated Gene, and 15 when she dated Alex.

No one in liberal Brookline Massachusetts, 1970's and 80's, thought to say to mom, "should your daughter really be there trying to make a good impression on your latest boyfriend?" Liberals make plenty of off-handed comments about other topics, but not about the subtleties of needed boundaries - called "TZNEE-iss" in Yiddish, "Tzni-OOT" in Hebrew.

So I had to make a good impression, I had to smile and chat - with a man, a man who may make all of mom's dreams come true, maybe they would marry and we would have a house and a yard again, social standing, a pension.

Dad's death, when I was seven years old and my brother five, meant the loss of a beloved father, husband, and community leader.

It also meant a serious change in our finances. 

We moved from house and yard to rent-controlled apartment. Our social standing altered, mom had to ingratiate herself into people's lives to get invited to Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas day, Hannukah celebrations, and Passover seders (blended-faith family here).

When I met the fundamentalist Christians at Middlebury College, late 1980's, although they do not have Law, they do have heart, and I would hear their boundary-conscious sub-texts in their decidedly different off-handed comments than the counter-intuitive comments that the liberal-left like to make: "in our church, a woman got remarried, and some thought she should not wear a white wedding dress but the pastor said if it makes her feel good, then it is fine." "Cheryl does not drink alcohol or dance, but at our church we can dance at weddings, after all, it is a sacred occasion, during daylight hours." "Christina is adopted and although her father relates to her in the love of Christ as a true daughter, one she became a teenager, he stopped hugging her. But this was not church policy."

They actually - um - thought about boundaries, about modesty.

Then I met the orthodox Jews. Bearing The Law, boundaries were everywhere. Men and women worlds apart - finally I could breathe.

I had found my way home.

And I started to realize that the position I had been in - let's go to a restaurant with John, with Gene, with Alex - was immodest for me. I should not have been there. It damaged my sense of boundaries, put me under pressure to ingratiate, and this pressure meant a diminishing sense of self because making-someone-like-me was more important than being in touch with my feelings of boundaries, of whether this is a good person to be around, of my sense of self. It diminished me, I said later to a counselor, "I feel like I have holes in my energy field", and we explored what I must mean by that, years later I connected the dots - I was not raised TZNEE-iss. 

TZNEE-iss is so much more than not having sex. It is simply strong, sane boundaries. It is strengthening your sense of self, your ability to figure out what feels right, not being put in situations that were not age-appropriate.

A single mom dating? No problem, just for the sake of your daughter's mental health, leave your daughter out of it. 

(Another topic - the exploitation that is inherent in the non-marital relationship: do not have sex if you are vulnerable. The sexual revolution was for elitists. Sex outside marriage harms the vulnerable. Heed this well, I am witness. My mom sold herself cheap.)

 

My father a"h is portrayed in a chapter in the following book, but I will refrain from mentioning dad's name for now, too painful:

The liberal-left uses social pressure, off-handed comments, to keep each other in line

 Liberal ideology distracts the mind.

Liberals have to keep reminding themselves what they think because the ideology they are surrounded by is counter-intuitive.

When liberals gather, they make off-handed comments about serious issues, the very off-handedness is an attempt at making what they are expressing seem self-evident.

If you appear to be moving towards the conservative or traditional, the heat goes up, and they turn on you what they subtly threaten each other with - social pressure to conform to liberal-left ideology.

The following concepts should not really be decided by off-handed comments in social situations, but by careful study:

"homosexuality is completely normal"

"interfaith marriage is just fine for children"

"anyone opposed to premarital relations is just repressed, middle class, and patriarchal"

Liberal-leftists use off-handed comments in social situations to make controversial ideas appear to be normal. 

They especially do this to others if those others appear to be making a shift to the right or to the traditional.

Fundamentalists believe that Truth exists without, it flows through you, and it matters little how you phrase things. They are not poised to pounce, to semantically trap. They also believe that the way they treat people matters.

I opened a window to them - I decided not to trap the fundamentalists semantically, I decided to really listen.

And I found a way out of mind-distracting semantically pouncing liberal-left ideology - first via the Christians, then via the Jews. Thank God.