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: