They were decidedly not feminists.

They were decidedly not feminists. They were individualists, weaning Americans off the family unit.

Mary Tyler Moore was a sitcom that aired from 1970-1977 and featured the fictional character Mary Richards who was associate producer of a television station, Lou Grant was her boss, Murray, a co-worker.

Lou Grant was in place of the father figure, Murray in place of a husband figure, there was the host of the "happy homemaker" show who would show up and annoy - she was in place of the annoying mother in law, anchor man Ted Baxter, the immature child.

They functioned as sort of a family with sitcom types of stories in which they are both at home and at work in these ongoing relationships that normally take place within the family.

It was a project of weaning Americans off the family unit, with the implication that you too can get your family needs in the office.

 Marlo Thomas as the main character in "That Girl", a 1960's sitcom, had this non-boyfriend boyfriend character named Donald, so she was an independent woman, except that Donald was somehow at her side.

I do not believe that Gloria Steinam, politician after all, has ever supported women in coping with tough situations that life sometimes throws at you. We will probably discover someday that she wrote little of what she published, that she was a photogenic front face for the so-called feminist movement, a movement which was not good for women as it did not help women with what women do, and that is rear family and gain satisfaction and security both financial and social, from being in a strong marriage, and raising functional children who feel nurtured.

If you are always asserting yourself and prioritizing yourself, like individualists encourage, you will not have the tools to cope in trying circumstances. 

Individualists like Steinam and Thomas were not setting examples of how to cope well when family commitments pull at a woman, nope, quite the opposite. They were part of a movement to wean Americans off the family. They were decidedly not feminists, because what they promoted, that is, individualism, is not good for women, and you know what, it's not good for men either.

Be there for the lost liberal

 We were the privileged and enlightened, and we were going to wage social revolutions - upon others, and not upon us.

Kids in Boston should be bussed, but that would be unthinkable for us Brookline kids. If asked why, we would not even be able to answer. We were blocked in a sense, and this came to a head a times, but as we had no intellectual tools to comprehend how our own paradigms were betraying us, we ended up in a sort of fog intellectually.

The solution - do not chide! Be there for the lost liberal. Here are some examples:

Anna's roommate, freshman year at Harvard, hit her, swore at her, and locked her out of their room. Anna complained to the administration, and said she needed to change rooms. The roommate's parents countered that if such a move is made, they will claim racism against black people.

The Harvard administration did nothing. Anna's grades declined, she took the second semester off.

The response in my circle - it was as if lightning had struck, like some incomprehensible event happened and Anna would take a semester off for some strange reason that no one could put their finger on.

Nobody said, "no! This is abuse! Call us racist if you want, we will stand for the truth!"

Nope, everyone was overwhelmed, they fogged out intellectually, with no one realizing that the accusation of racism can at times be one hundred percent false.

Julie was date-raped. Then she blamed "rape culture", but she had voluntarily engaged in sex play with a college student that she had only met that day. He went too far, and she was awake all night staring at the ceiling until the next morning she only realized what had happened. But she could not conclude, "maybe it is better not to engage in sex play with strangers in the first place."

Nope, there was something huge and overwhelming to blame - rape culture.

Liberals fog out when they have a chance to take a stand or take responsibility.

They disappear intellectually. 

The solution - do not chide them, be there for them! They cannot get a perspective on the paradigm they were brainwashed with. Help them out of it, liberal by liberal, just say, "I will help you find a lawyer who will advocate for your daughter", or, "Julie, from now on, no late night parties, no affection until commitment."

It works, I have done it! Because of my encouragement: one woman took a break from promiscuous sex for one semester, two women confronted their boyfriends and said, "time to marry or break up", one woman promised she would not bring her boyfriend home to sleep over for her teenage daughter's sake.

Do not chide, just be there, it really works.

Here is something more people should do: "move in with me during your pregnancy and for a couple of months afterwards, then you can decide if you would like to give up for adoption or keep the baby."

Do not chide, instead, be there for them, because they are lost in an intellectual web and cannot escape all that easily.

Dating - or exploitation?

 Mom was a bit naive, and after dad died, she could not just conjure up abstinent and devoted men to marry her and raise her two small kids.

"Alex criticizes my weight as an excuse not to make a commitment."

Mom actually said that, yet she kept dating him. He owned a yacht, worked in finance, was a Harvard graduate, oh he took mom out to supper and gave her a pair of earrings, they went to Jamaica for a few days and to New York city for a weekend, and in return, she gave him affection and a bit of family time with us, my brother and I were teens by then and he had never married.

But he would bring up her weight - but he was sleeping with her! It did not bother him that much after all.

He died of a sudden heart attack, after a five year relationship, he had not changed his will or bequeathed her anything. So my single mom kept struggling.

Non of her enlightened liberal friends ever said anything like, "should you not make a commitment? Are your finances stable?" Nothing.

Fast forward, I had embraced orthodox Judaism, was married with kids and living a fifteen minute drive away from mom.

She started dating Charlie. I said, "I will not have my children exposed to "granny and her boyfriend"". She was annoyed, but then she started turning to me with the same issues she had with Alex, "He is saying we are spending too much time together, he is becoming critical of me..." I retorted, "you are giving him everything he needs, why should he make a commitment?. She responded, "you know you are right", and within a couple months they were married in a joint Protestant-Catholic wedding. They had it in a hall so I as an orthodox Jew could attend comfortably. It was nice to hear the Lord's Prayer again.

After they were married, Charlie never complained that they were spending too much time together.

Premarital relations are anti-thetical to basic human needs. Lack of commitment makes women feel used and men fearful of commitment. 

But my success in reaching mom was only because I was there for her at her weak moment.

No amount of preaching moved her before that.

The solution - preaching does not work. Be there for people and when the time is right, God will put the right words in your mouth, saving others from misconduct, and even poverty, as marriage makes you more financially stable to boot.

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.

Part Anglo, part Jewish

 Anglo -

You will visit relatives and acquaintances and be expected to socialize politely, eat with your napkin in your lap, sit up straight at the table, chew with your mouth closed, and be a "conversationalist".

Jewish -

You spend most of your time with people you already know.