Dear Mrs. Bluth,
I read the letter from the mother who lost her son to drugs. I understand her pain so well. My family and I are going through our own heartbreak concerning our son, albeit in a somewhat dissimilar way. We, too, lost a son, not to drugs but to assimilation and intermarriage. Same pain, different circumstances.
We are baalei teshuva who became religious when our youngest child was very little. We were Conservadox at the beginning, but over time we gravitated towards Orthodoxy. We instilled a love of Yiddishkeit in our children and always stressed the importance of staying within the fold and that intermarriage was unacceptable. Our elders were concentration camp survivors and our children understood how much their grandparents suffered because they were born Jews.
Things were “normal” in our home, until our middle son went to college. That is when our world was turned upside down.
He never called us – if we wanted to know how he was, we had to call him. He came home occasionally, and when he did was difficult to get along with, and was mostly hostile and abrasive. We knew he had a girlfriend and wondered why he never brought her home so that we could meet her. We asked him if she was Jewish and he insisted that, of course, she was; her family, he insisted, was Reform. We asked many times that he bring her home for a visit, but there was always a reason for why it wasn’t convenient.
We paid his rent, covered his tuition and provided him with a car – and all the while he was lying to us. When we asked him where he went for religious services, he answered without hesitation that he attended the local Chabad, and, of course, we believed him.
At some point he got a job and we decided to visit him. We stayed at a nearby hotel and he would always come to us, without his girlfriend, of course, although he knew how much we wanted to meet her. And that is when it finally dawned on me what was really going on. She wasn’t Jewish.
After that visit, we had very little contact, that is, until he called to tell us he had landed a great job and was getting married. He extended an invitation for us to come to the wedding, but made it clear that if we would be disruptive, then we weren’t welcome.
We told him that if he went through with the wedding he would be dead to us. That was the last time we heard from him. However, our two other children have made it clear that they would be attending the wedding.
Rachel, I am completely devastated and heartbroken. Our son is marrying a non-Jew and his siblings are going to celebrate with him. The wedding is on a Shabbos, but they said that they would walk there, so chillul Shabbos is not an issue. They feel that going is the only way to keep a relationship with him.
I am not sure where we went wrong. All these years we thought we had instilled firm Jewish values in all of our children, but obviously failed miserably. Please tell me what your thoughts are and what we can do.
Another mother who’s lost a child
Dear Mother,
I weep with you. To have been lied to all these years by a child whom you nurtured, cared for and trusted – it’s truly heartbreaking. And then to find out he’s marrying out, on Shabbos, and that your other children will be attending the wedding – there are no words of comfort to be offered. It makes no difference whether your children walk or ride to this “fiasco,” the mere act of attending tramples on the kedusha of Shabbos and makes them participants in a chillul Hashem!
As for lamenting over your parenting skills or lack thereof, it does little good to look back at this point; the past cannot be changed. However, for the sake of those readers who are not where you are as yet, I would say that it is not enough to be loving, nurturing parents, we must also be disciplinarians, educators and guidance counselors. It is not enough to send children to yeshivos, we must also become private investigators, sleuths and, oft times, spies. We need to know who their friends are and where they hang out after school. We are living in a dangerous world with many pitfalls, craters just waiting to swallow our children if they are left unattended.
Hindsight is 20/20. I would guess there were warning signs well before your son went away to college and got sucked into a whirlpool he was ill equipped to withstand. Lying came easily to him and believing him was easy for you – as long as you heard what you chose to believe was truth, there was no problem. Minor issues that are overlooked or ignored can grow into something bigger until that moment when the light bulb of reality goes on and the blinding truth becomes evident and beyond manageable. Sadly, the loss of your son took place many years ago, when it was made easy for him to wander away from his Jewish life.
What I can tell you now is that there is great comfort in tefillah and that you must draw on your emunah and bitachon. Ask the Almighty to give you strength to withstand your burden. And remember, until the day of the wedding, there is always a chance he may change his mind. Daven for that as well.
May the time come when you see true Yiddish nachas from all of your children.