Making Families a Priority
Leah Vincent2013OpinionFamilyOff the DerechThe Frum WorldAdapted from a speech delivered on April 24, 2013 to an intimate group of supporters of the OTD community.
There are many important issues facing those who leave the ultra-Orthodox world. But it seems to me that of all of them, the most pressing one is what we euphemistically call “family issues.”
Some of you may have children, and surely you want the best for them. You want your children to be educated in the best institutions. You want them to build fulfilling careers, and to have successful relationships.
Close your eyes for one moment, and imagine your spouse, your parents, your neighbors, and your rabbi, all coming together to remove your children from your care, simply because you want these very basic good things for your children.
That is what is happening today to many of our friends.
First, let’s understand something about these families:
Most ultra-Orthodox Jews are pressured into marriages at 18, 19, or 20. Some of my friends were allowed only a single, ten-minute meeting with their groom- or bride-to-be before their parents announced them engaged. Once married, the pressure to have children is immediate and continuous, and these young men and women move almost instantly from sheltered childhoods to the responsibilities of parenthood.
Imagine now that you are a young ultra-Orthodox man or woman, married for several years, perhaps with a child or two, and you have an awakening. You have matured, you’re now more thoughtful and more aware of the world, and you realize that you no longer want to live an ultra-Orthodox life.
Furthermore, perhaps you no longer want that life for your children. You don’t want your son to have 12-hour school days of Talmud study, with no math or science or art or literature. You don’t want him to have to withstand the physical and emotional abuse common in many Charedi boys schools.
You don’t want your daughter taught that her life is to be defined only by motherhood. You don’t want her to be constantly scolded for a skirt that is an inch too short or a stocking not thick enough.
You want your sons and daughters to have the opportunities and ambitions that you yourself were denied.
But when you have that awakening and seek to follow through on it, it might come at a very great cost. If your spouse is not supportive—as is most commonly the case—your marriage will likely end. And then not only will you likely lose all say in how your children are raised, you will probably also lose custody and in some cases you may lose all contact with your children.
We see this time and again. The response of the ultra-Orthodox community is like a well-oiled machine. An entire communal apparatus is very quickly set in motion to support the spouse who remains within ultra-Orthodoxy and to keep away the one who has left—be it a mother or a father. Large sums of money are raised for legal funds and whatever else the ultra-Orthodox spouse needs in order to win sole legal and physical custody. Rabbis, friends, and even your own family members will testify in court that you, the parent who has left, is beset with a host of imagined physical and psychological ailments that render you an unfit parent.
When a child’s soul is at stake, the Orthodox community feels that not only is there is no prohibition against lying about the person who leaves, it is a mitzvah to do everything in their power to tear children away from a parent who has strayed.
And you, the parent? You probably have just lost your job in an Orthodox company, you probably have had little education so far, and your entire support network has just fallen apart. Who will now represent you against the high profile lawyer the community has hired against you? Who will defend you against the relentless harassment and intimidation that is sure to come? And who will be there to make sure you do not lose that connection to your precious children?
The courts? I’m sure everyone here is aware of the tremendous political power of the Orthodox community, which, you can be sure, has tremendous influence on courtroom environments. The community also relies on American values of tolerance and multiculturalism to bolster its case. Even the most progressive judges are often blinded by a romanticized notion of the ultra-Orthodox way of life. Yes, that is the heartbreaking irony; multiculturalism and religious tolerance touted by a community that has zero tolerance for any way of life other than its own.
This process is excruciating for women—mothers whose entire lives have been devoted to birthing and raising their children—who now risk having their babies taken from them by the powerful men who control the ultra-Orthodox community.
But do not imagine that it is not also excruciating for men, men who may be struggling to assert their rights as fathers in a culture that does not always encourage close relationships between fathers and children; men who might not instantly generate a judge’s sympathy the way a mother might, but who have also devoted their lives to raising those children, to providing for their material, financial and emotional needs, and who have just as much right to maintain a relationship with their children as the religious parent does.
In many of these cases, beaten by the relentless bullying of the other side, weighed down by financial pressures, worn down from the overwhelming stresses of trying to rebuild their own lives while fighting to hold onto their children, our friends have lost custody of their children. Some are grudgingly granted visitation rights–sometimes no more than once a month, or in some cases only a handful of times a year. Often, before scheduled visitation times, our friends are told: “the kids don’t want to see you,” or “the kids are sick,” or “they’re busy,” “they have other plans.” Often, when these men and women do get to meet with their children, these visits are “supervised” by an ultra-Orthodox person, there to ensure that nothing is said to influence the children. You can imagine how humiliating such arrangements are and also how they prevent meaningful relationships from developing during that one precious hour a month.
Certainly, we can respect the fact that one parent of these children has chosen to remain within their ultra-Orthodox community, and that parent, too, has parental rights. But choosing a self-determined life should not be a crime punishable by the loss of one’s children. At the very least, parents should be expected to compromise, to find ways that allow both parents to impart their values to their children. At the very least, both parents should have a right to maintain meaningful relationships with their children.
There are currently hundreds, maybe even thousands within the ultra-Orthodox community, men and women, who want nothing more than to live self-determined lives, but who are unable to do so because the risk of losing their children is too great.
And there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of heroic men and women who choose to leave despite the risks, who take on the fight, alone, with very little support and almost no resources, determined to make better lives for themselves and their children.
I am an outsider on this issue. Having left ultra-Orthodoxy as a teenager, I did not go through this experience myself. But when I began to meet the men and women whose lives were filled with the unimaginable sorrow of losing their children, whose hearts were broken from the injustice and from the trauma of that experience, I knew that I had to do something to help. Having lost my own parents for my choice to live a self-determined life, I could not turn my back on my friends’ children, who were now being ripped from their parents because of religious differences.
Two years ago, I set out to compile “The Family Issues Handbook,” a collection of the most essential information for those going through this very difficult process. The handbook was recently published by Footsteps, and this is an important very small first step. But we need to do a lot more. We need a legal team that can work closely with counselors, we need liaisons to the legal community, we need to raise awareness and to educate lawyers and therapists, we need to do whatever is necessary to ensure that those who choose to live self-determined lives are not punished for it by losing their children.
Those who support the people who leave do sacred work. You support heroes. Your compassion, your attention, your dedication is changing people’s lives. You plant a stake for justice and goodness in the world, and my heart is full of gratitude to know that my friends and I are not alone.
Please, as you continue this important work, I beg you to think about the men and women in these heart-wrenching situations, and consider making their cause a priority.
There are many pressing issues that our community need to address, but it is now time to focus on this one. If we don’t act now, we further neglect an issue that has been put aside for far too long.
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Click here to download the “Family Issues Handbook,” compiled by the author and recently published by Footsteps. For further assistance, or to get involved, please contact Footsteps at 212-253-0890 x5, or email them at info@footstepsorg.org.
29 Responses
The site counted 30 responses; 29 survive in the archived copies.
Excellent essay.
You might want to mention unchainedatlast.org.
So true. Every word of it! God only knows how many people would have left were it not for the fear of losing any chance at influencing their kids, or worse yet, losing any relationship with their kids. Our cultish religion has reached such a farcical state that the only way they can survive is by brute force. Similarities to the “Iron Curtain” anyone?
A much a I want to be sympathetic, I must say: nothing good will come out of this! There are beliefs and lifestyles that are just incompatible, and no matter how much you try it, they are not going to coexist. Either win custody or give up on your kids altogether. Start a new life.
Or stay inside and make the best of it.
I believe that there are two issues that you are discussing here.
One is OTD parents losing the ability to have a connection with their children. That, surely, is a cruelty toward and abuse of both the OTD parent and the child.
The second is the ability of the OTD parent to make a decision about the child’s future. I think that is a different question. When a parent has made a life change and then wants to be able to make a similar change for their child, that might be a cruelty to the child and an abuse of the frum parent. At the end of the day, the OTD parent is the one who changed the rules in the middle of the game. Causing disruption to the child’s life and causing distress to the frum parent shouldn’t necessarily be a right.
And while an OTD parent may see the outside world and its values as wholly positive, that’s actually a pretty naive view. There are many happy and successful people inside the frum world and many unsuccessful, distressed people outside. Don’t expect a frum parent to relinquish his or her ability to hold your child to the path that you originally chose.
I believe there are legal differences between these two issues, as well, in custody cases.
@/Yossi
Really. You don’t believe that drivel you just spew.
Please like this page to fight for the kids of one OTD parent who lost it in Monsey. thanks https://www.facebook.com/Savekellyskids
Yossi,
While it may or may not be the parent’s right to make a change in their lifestyle midstream; does that make it right to take the kids away from them?
Maybe that parent shouldn’t expect to be able to change the course of the childrens’ education and upbringing, but to keep them away altogether?
There’s no moral argument to support this behavior.
Shragi:
I agree entirely. I was just trying to point out that those are two separate issues, which Leah V.’s article puts together.
I don’t think that a dialogue about the children’s future is out of place, either. I’ve just heard a number of cases where the OTD spouse, often before divorce, is pushing too hard to change either the children’s or the frum spouse’s behavior. Several marriages might have continued to work, in fact, had they not done so.
I’m certainly not arguing that the frum spouse can’t be the guilty one on that account. I just think that it’s wise for the OTD spouse to realize that changing yourself doesn’t necessarily require changing everyone else, and that might in fact be a bad idea.
To be clear about my perspective, I’m the OTD spouse in such a marriage.
Yossi,
I get it.
In fact, when I read the article I thought it shouldn’t have even framed it in terms of the OTD spouse wanting to give their children a different future than what they had, because at the end of the article it becomes clear that the fights are more basic than that; it’s simply about having a basic, human amount of custody.
Leah V.
“You don’t want him to have to withstand the physical and emotional abuse common in many Charedi boys schools.”
There are good schools and bad schools. It is responsibility of parent to find good school and get the hell out of bad one. This applies to yeshiva, as well as public school.
I am just trying to illustrate that you need to be honest with yourself and not mislead others. This article of yours sounds like you are trying to make political (or real?) capital from the OTD issue. In this you would be no better than rabbis who exploit community for their own benefit.
A. L., this isn’t possible in all frum communities. Do you know of, for example, any Chassidishe cheyder in which there is zero physical or emotional abuse? And if you are part of those communities, where else are you going to send your kid? And everything in these communities are so tied in together that where you send your kid effects social standing.
So, yes, all of these things are “choices” in the sense that you will not be arrested and thrown in jail if you choose to “get the hell out,” but the way in which these things are intricately entwined with family, friends, community – make these choices very hard indeed.
Shragi,
This article positively reeks of the desire to profit from OTD issue. “Oh, you poor unfortunate souls, you don’t know what to do, let me help you, let me think for you, talk on your behalf, etc., etc.” Don’t you see the pattern? Haven’t you heard this before?
Most OTDs haven’t known anything different in their lives, so they would be susceptible to exploitation. I think they better get on their own feet. They don’t want another “rabbi” in their life.
A.L.,
What’s your solution to this unfortunate state of affairs? Footsteps should not have made the guide for people in this situation? No articles should be written on the topic? While the frum spouse has an entire infrastructure in place to ensure that s/he gets everything s/he possibly could out of the OTD parent, the OTD parent should “get on their own feet”?
Yossi, many people who want to leave the community and face this predicament were married off when they were young and had babies right away. I would hardly call that a choice. Few “chose” to be frum and then left.
Shragi,
First of all, not all problems have solutions, just as not every illness has a cure. I believe that this is one of those. You can’t always make everyone happy. So what would be a good approach? It seems that the “solution” that’s offered is to make everyone unhappy.
As painful as this sounds, it might be better for an OTD to cut off all ties (yes, including children!), and start a completely new life. Acting like this, an OTD becomes a free person (isn’t that what they want?) and acquires new power.
Another way would be to run away with the kids and fight for custody.
Most importantly, the main thrust should not be dealing with the problem AFTER THE FACT. People who feel ready to act need advice BEFORE THEY MAKE THEIR MOVE. This is what Footsteps should be concentrating on.
And, of course, there shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all solutions.
Shragi,
First of all, not all problems have solutions, just as not every illness has a cure. I believe that this is one of those. You can’t always make everyone happy. So what would be a good approach? It seems that the “solution” that’s offered is to make everyone unhappy.
As painful as this sounds, it might be better for an OTD to cut off all ties (yes, including children!), and start a completely new life. Acting like this, an OTD becomes a free person (isn’t that what they want?) and acquires new power.
Another way would be to run away with the kids and fight for custody.
>As painful as this sounds, it might be better for an OTD to cut off all ties (yes, including children!), and start a completely new life.
Not painful to you. You are prime “fuck you” material, you know that?
A.L.,
I was under the impression that you had solutions in mind; apparently you don’t. This conversation was a waste of time. Goodbye.
wonderful piece…let us also not forget that they dont even give you the ‘out’ of leaving peacefully…i knew the battle that would lie ahead, recognized that my ex was a wonderful mother and made the decision to just leave and not ‘rock the boat,’ as they desire…and of course, at any chance they get, whether in person at some religious debate or in the comments section when i opine on something, they make sure to mention what a terrible person i am who didnt even fight for his kids
What a chillul Hashem to publish this artcle. How does one think it is okay to speak freely against the orthodox community yes we have our problems and for your information Rabbi Wallenstein Director of Ohr Nava helps many young adults who are struggling with these issues before they get married. He even created Gal Time for young girls to have fun ard recreation. Every summer he organizes in the catskills free bowling and pizza for teenages.When one wants out of a marriage and doesnt want to be religous they better think pretty hard how they are messing up their kids because they want to walk away from it. It is not always about you!!
coachmentor,
1. It’s a chillul hashem to talk about this subject in public.
It’s nice that you admit that this is shameful behavior on the part of the Orthodox community, that’s a good starting point.
Now, is it a chillul hashem to behave this way, or does the chillul hashem belong to the people who are doing something about it?
Also, is it a chillul hashem to talk about people who are doing things that hashem wants them to do? Or do you think hashem doesn’t want them to do it? If the latter; why is it a chillul hashem? I’d say at the worst it’s simply talking about reshoim, no?
2. Rabbi Wallerstein created a program to help kids struggling with issues before they get married.
That’s wonderful. What’s you point?
3. When one wants out of a marriage they better think about how they’re going to mess up their kids, it’s not always about you.
100%. That goes for anyone looking to get out of a marriage; including the frum spouse who, more often than not, is the one trying to get out of the marriage. Again, what’s your point?
The sheer stupidity in coachmentor’s comment makes me think it’s just a troll. Even a frum person can’t possibly be that idiotic. Thoughts?
Wonderful essay.
It is interesting to note that the charedi community dedicates a large amount of resources for “kiruv” but what about someone that needs help getting away from a stifling community?
Do you think they are afraid of looking down at their own shoes? Pandora?
My heart goes out to anyone who has left and lost their children. Boy am I relieved I got out before marriage.
This article was such an eye opener. I did not go “OTD.” I’m still shomer shabbos and keep kosher, etc., just more modern and outgoing that my crazy ex but when I went through a divorce, my wife went to the local Agudah rav who recommended a shyster lawyer well known in the divorce bar for exploiting his clients and dragging things out, using the kids as weapons. When I went to a local child psychologist to get some advice on how to repair my relationship with the kids, she asked me who the lawyer was, her reply was “oh boy, I bet Rabbi X was involved–I’m sorry.” I was accused of being a “free-thinker” and after two years, my kids are still being poisoned against me, won’t spend the night in my house, all because I’m too “modernish” I have novels in the house, listen to “goyishe” music, etc. The whole time this has been happening, I thought it was all a big mistake–how could any religion justify splitting a father from his children over hashgafa differences–no allegations of abuse or anything–now I see that this is a systematic and normal throughout the haredi world–disgusting.
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The Chassidic “OTD” crowd should consider stepping into say a modern orthodox life style. There are a number of synagogues that you can affiliate with in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and NJ. It might make it harder for the courts to take the kids away. You are still Orthodox; maybe, not the same strain, but it gives you options, and you would still be able to pursue secular education without all of the issues of your former community.
Try modern orthodoxy. I know the charedim tell you that this isn’t the real Judaism but it’s no less valid than charedism. MO has its own gadolim, it’s own scholars. It covers all the halachic and philosophic bases. I’m sure that many who leave observance altogether just needed to be modern. Perhaps even the corrupt judges wouldn’t be able to dispute that.
You wanna talk about the kiruv they invest in, as someone mentioned? The more accurate term is brainwashing. And being completely new to the religion, we BTs are quite vulnerable to charlatans of every sort. Most of the kiruv is done by the charedim and it’s frightening. I know many people who got suckered into atrocious marital situations and lost their kids.
There but for the grace of god go I. This heartbreaking article reminds me of how lucky I was to leave frumkeit after a failed engagement, and not a failed marriage, or after having children. Now, years later, as a mom of 3 in a happy marriage with my Catholic husband, I cannot fathom my daughters being raised in the Orthodox lifestyle of my youth. It is a nightmare that still taunts me, a “what if” that chills to the bone: What if I hadn’t left? What if my girls went through the Charedi school-system only to get married at 18, serve a husband, have many kids and never experience their true personal potential: emotional, physical and spiritual. My eldest loves to sing and dance. She wants to be a ballerina and a doctor (good luck :-)), my middle is an athlete, I can see her one day being seriously competitive in a sport, my little one loves to climb. My husband and I will bring her top-roping with us as soon as she fits in a harness…We tell our girls that anything is possible. I can’t wait to show them the amazing world out there. What if I had to leave them behind? I think I would lose my will to live. I will be contacting footsteps to find ways to support those poor parents who are dealing with the unthinkable.