Ostracism and the Collaborating Daughters

It is a real tragedy that Esti Weinstein felt that she had no choice but to take her own life. Several English sources wrote that Weinstein, “a 50 year old mother of seven was estranged from six of her children following her divorce and departure from the Gerrer (Gur) Hasidic community.”

However, the word “estranged” doesn’t begin to describe the reality of a mother who has been ostracized not only by her community, but by her own adult daughters.

Ostracism is a powerful and devastating weapon, and throughout history societies and their leaders have used it to put pressure on those who did not follow the rules. I feel that ostracism is actually a form of betrayal, since it treats the other as though he/she no longer exists

Outside the Haredi community, ostracism could be seen mainly among children in schools. Children who experienced it testify that it is far worse than physical abuse, since, with the latter, at least you know that you are being seen.

But actually it could also happen to anyone. I know the meaning of being ostracized since,  for the last 7 years, I have observed it from a close distance.  It often takes a trauma, such as death or divorce to break up a family. In the case of someone close to me, it was the death of his wife..

This topic is not discussed much in public, people are reluctant to acknowledge that their families are not perfect. Moreover, there is always the fear that if you admit being mistreated by your own family, it reflects badly on you. In a way, it is a variation on the silence of the victim.

Being ostracized doesn’t only affect the present -- not being part of your children and grandchildren's life, but it taints the memories of the past as well. The question "what did I ever do to deserve such a fate?" is always in the air. Parents who are being ostracized by their children find it painful to look at old photos or to see happy families and other people's grandchildren.

This cruel punishment could ruin the future as well. In her letter Esti Weinstein wrote that she had hoped that her estrangement from her daughters was temporary and that with time they would come around. It means that for the last years she spent every day of her life waiting and hoping for her daughters to change their mind. That miracle did not happen, and when she finally realized that nothing was going to change she could not face the pain awaiting for her in the future.

Esti Weinstein chose to kill herself, and she wrote in her last note: "in this town I gave birth to my daughters, and in this town I die because of my daughters."  Most ostracized or estranged parents do not resort to such extreme measures. However it doesn’t mean that they don't suffer. Some learn to live with the pain, others become so desperate that they give up on their new life, and their chance for happiness, in the hope of regaining the approval of their adult children. Just the other day, I heard about a man in a support group for widows and widowers, who ended a happy relationship with a fellow widow because his children threatened to ostracize him. This is how powerful this weapon is.

The fifth commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you,” is the first, among the 10, that addresses inter-personal relationships, specifically the relationship between children and their parents.

This important commandment doesn't require that adult children approve of their parents’ life choices but that they honor them. Esti Weinstein sanctimonious daughters failed their test in basic Bible comprehension. It is their fault that their mother is dead.

Let it be warning to all adult children who are callous and disrespectful to their parents.

 The essay appeared in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ostracism-and-the-collaborating-daughters/

Listen To Facebook: Don’t Forget To Call Your Parents Today

For billions of users Facebook is a reflection of what they wish their world to be. Some see it as a mere meeting place with friends, others use it as a  a tool  to promote different ideas and beliefs. But for those in need of guidance, Facebook can serve as a source of instant universal truths, with endless quotes and proverbs, from philosophers to religious leaders, about all aspects of life.

I saw one of those aphorisms this morning on my Facebook page. It focuses on sharing special moments with our parents now, since later they will not be here. The late songwriter Ehud Manor (1941-2005) once said that with the loss of his parents he also lost the opportunity to brag. It is so true, bragging to your parents about your success is not bragging at all, it could almost be considered honoring your father and your mother.

This is my essay about the challenges in fulfilling this commandment.

Please kkeep reading in the Times of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/listen-to-facebook-dont-forget-to-call-your-parents-today/

Kindergarten Children Under A Magnifying Glass

Yesterday Ha’aretz reposted on Facebook  a popular article with the intriguing name: "Parents do not pity their Kindergarten children." This title is an ironic allusion to the famous poem by Yehuda Amichai: "God pities the Kindergarten children."

Among other issues, the article criticizes the new demand that children will know how to read while they are still in Kindergarten. I agree with the criticism, but can testify, from my personal experience, that it is not a new trend. This is an essay that I wrote about over parenting:

When another mother told me that I had to make sure that my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter knew how to read before she started kindergarten that fall, I knew that I was in trouble. She explained that in the event that she didn’t read she would be put in the lowest ability group, and that would be the end. I was sure no mother in her right mind would risk ruining her daughter’s future and teaching her to read seemed like a small price to pay. But that was only the beginning:

Please keep reading in the Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/kindergarten-children-under-a-magnifying-glass/

The Case Of The Missing Assignment Or Too Much Information

Last week I heard on NPR that in some elementary schools in the US parents are notified by email if their child fails to submit even one assignment.  In high schools parents get on-going notices of all the different deadlines regarding their children’s college applications, so that they could make sure their children do not to miss them.

It is true that the school has all that data on hand and it is very easy to share it with the parents. Also teachers and schools are judged by their students’ performance and they are very willing to recruit the parents to help improve it.  It could even  be  possible that  the parents themselves request, or put pressure on the school to give them all that information.

Please keep reading in The Times Of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-case-of-the-missing-assignment-or-too-much-information/

The Fall From Grace of Age 30 And Josef K

  MAR.22.2013 

Josef K, the protagonist of Franz Kafka's The Trial was 30-year-old when he was arrested.  My professor, who taught us the novel as part of the course “the Existentialist Novel” in the mid-1970s, told us that Kafka probably chose this age because 30 symbolized stability and respectability. “People in their 30s” he argued “have already reached the pinnacle of their career.”  We, his students, all in our early 20s, accepted this is as a fact, for us, thirty was almost old age.

Ever since that day I have watched age 30 gradually falling from grace. It started with my own private biography. When my husband turned 30 his position in life was very far from being stable. He has just finished his PhD and was on his way to get his first teaching job. Three years later when I turned 30, I already had 2 very young girls, but my career has not even started.  In comparison to K.’s position (before his arrest of course) our family was very far behind.

Please keep reading in The Times Of Israel
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-fall-from-grace-of-age-30-and-josef-k/

Whose Money Is It Really?

 AUG.25.2013

The last time my father saw his parents and his brother Emanuel was in 1934,  when he was 21 years old. My father had worked for a Jewish firm  in Berlin, and when the firm was transferred to Palestine he moved with them. Immigration to British Mandate Palestine was banned, but some Jewish businesses were granted a certificate, and this is how my father was saved from the Nazis. My father’s younger brother Ignaz miraculously survived the war and multiple concentration camps, and settled in Germany. In 1956, twenty-two years after they had last seen each other, my father boarded a ship to go visit him.

In the fifties, Israel and West Germany signed a reparation agreement, and my father was granted compensation for the property that he had lost. At that time they were big demonstrations against signing the agreement, and my father too did not want to take any money. My mother, who immigrated to Israel in 1935 from Romania with her parents and enjoyed the support of a loving family, told him: “you can’t refuse the money, it is not for you but for your children,” so my father agreed.

My mother believed that as my father was deprived of his inheritance and the support of his parents, the money from the reparations could at least compensate for the financial loss. My mother, usually a mild and understated woman, was adamant about accepting the reparation money. Thanks to that money my brother was able to get expensive cello lessons, I got my teeth straightened, and we were able to buy an apartment. Only twenty years later did my parents  take their first trip together, when they were already in their fifties.

When my parents died they left me a small inheritance, which was more than I had expected. While I am grateful for their love and concern, I am also sad that they did not take more trips and vacations while they were still young enough to enjoy them. But I also find that in a curious way, my mother's advice and example is always there to remind me not to be too relaxed with [my?] money.

  

P.S 

Some time ago I read with my students an article by Jeff D. Opdyke  (Family Money: "Whose Inheritance Is It Anway?" Financial Times  8.10.2004); it dealt with the question of inheritance, how much money should  parents leave their children. The writer, a young man, noticed that several friends of his were worried that their parents were spending  all "their” inheritance money.  He asked his own father how he felt about that issue. The father said that he believed that if children behaved decently toward their parents it was their responsibility to leave the children some of what they themselves had received as an inheritance. I asked my students to write their opinion about this issue, unlike the friends of the Financial Times’  writer, many responded that they they wanted their parents to enjoy their  money.

Are We Bad Parents If We Don’t buy Your Product? Intimidating Marketing Techniques VIEW

Shortly after our daughter was born we received an invitation to dinner and a seminar on baby safety. Since we were graduate students at the time and hardly ever went to restaurants, and the safety of our baby was a new concern, thus we gladly accepted. While the free dinner and the safety aspects of the evening were emphasized in the invitation, information about the sponsor of the seminar-- Babee Tenda,   a company which at that time sold its products only through those seminars, was scarce.

 The seminar was held at a local restaurant; after a perfunctory dinner we sat down to listen to the seminar. This turned out to be  a demonstration, more of a sale pitch,  promoting  a multi-purpose product named Babee Tenda. This invention was uniquely designed to fulfil all the needs of the growing baby all the while keeping him/her safe. No wonder that at the end of the evening we signed up to buy the miracle product.

The Babee Tenda product was expensive,  and as graduate students we really couldn’t afford it, so why did we commit ourselves to buy it?

The answer is simple: we were  young, inexperienced and away from our family back in Israel –in short,  an easy prey for an aggressive marketing ploy, which is what that seemingly innocuous experience actually was.

Sitting through the"seminar,”I became icreasingly uneasy, at the time I didn’t have a way to interpret it because I had never experienced such a talk before. Later on when my husband and I shared what we felt it transpired that we both attributed that unease to the fact that we had been unprepared to guarantee the safety of our baby and felt guilty about it.  Thus as the safety of our precious baby was our outmost consideration, and we had been negligent in securing it, suddenly money was no object.

We later realized that this unfamiliar feeling of growing unease was actually stress which we felt as a result of the pressure from the sale representative. The whole atmosphere was one of urgency, we were never left alone to compare our impressions and there was no time for us to discuss our decision.

Somehow not allowing us to make our mind together all the while pushing us to decide then and there distanced us from one another and ultimately weakened us. In that microcosm each one of us thought that the other really wanted the product and did not wish to be the one jeopardizing our  baby’s safety.

After we signed the papers we finally went home; it was a huge relief as though we were set free. When we got home we shared the experience with our friends who stayed with our baby.  They were older, wiser and had much more experience, but still we were not prepared for their reaction, they looked at each other and burst out laughing. They told us that they got all their baby furniture for a fraction of the price,  and all that equipment met safety regulations. "Maybe Baby Tenda is the best in the market" they said "but you guys drive a used Ford, surely your baby doesn’t need a new Cadillac.”

The following day we cancelled the purchase, we were relieved to see how easy it was, this too was a new experience for us.

From that day on the name Babee Tenda became in our family a keyword for intimidating marketing techniques. And one more thing, we never attended free dinner seminars and other promotions.

Do We Indulge Or spoil Our Children? It Depends On The Language

Yesterday  a group of us sat around the table for Shabbat dinner. We didn't discuss world peace or the chance to finally bring it to the Middle East. The most burning issue was the high price of housing, which makes life in Israel hard, especially for young people.

This is not a new problem, when we were young my husband and I could not afford to  buy an apartment since, unlike the US,  it was not possible to put  only 10% or 20 % down payment and to borrow the rest from the bank.  We had to come up with most of the money upfront, so we rented.

The rule of thumb in rent, we were told, is that payment should not exceed one third of the monthly income: we were lucky to be able to keep it at that level. However,

Please keep on reading in the Times of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/do-we-indulge-or-spoil-our-children-it-depends-on-the-language/

The Ingenious Invention of "Like" Or The Revival of Bragging

I once heard the Israeli lyricist Ahud Manor (1941--2005) say on the radio that with the death of his parents came the sad realization that from that point onward he had no one to brag to. It was a sincere and sobering insight. Since in most cases our parents are eager to hear all about our success, sharing it with them in great detail, is not even considered bragging. We merely humor our parents, and if unfortunately we don't have any good news to report, it is our duty to think of something, even the smallest accomplishment, to brighten their day. 

But this happy arrangement  tragically ends once our parents are no longer with us. Unfortunately no one else in the world (not even our partners, siblings, best friends, or PhD advisers) is that invested in our success. Those who are close to us at best tolerate our bragging, but in the rest of the world it is regarded as bad form.

Please keep on reading in my Times Of Israel blog
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-ingenious-invention-of-like-or-the-revival-of-bragging/