How I Lost My Daughter to Religious Fundamentalism

[DGayle]

http://kveller.com/how-i-lost-my-daught ... mentalism/

This is so sad.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

That was crushing! Her daughter sounds like a very selfish person.

[lawfulevil]

Such a sad article. I had a friend in college who joined something like this and went from observant (Conservative) to ultra-Orthodox in pretty short order. I can't imagine how terrible that must be as that person's parent.

[Soulhuntress]

Two words for Jenny: Spoiled brat. And mom needs therapy and to not enable her daughter and her behavior. The brat breaking dad's toes would have been a dealbreaker for my family.

Note to self: thank parents for raising me to think and not implicitly trust authority. And for not enabling me to act the fool. And for ministers and their wives who encouraged me to respect and have a healthyish relationship with my parents. And for my relaxed agnostic dad walking me down the aisle of a church that was totally outside his belief system with pride and joy.

[Koala]

I am not a cryer, but I teared up reading that. I can't imagine the desperation her mother must have felt, watching her slip into such a dark place and being helpless to save her. :cry:

[ariel9]

That sounds awful how are parents supposed to know a class that seems to be related to the university turns one into a cult member. Also it seemed like her parents should have asked her what made her want to become more orthodox as she began to make changes. It's a very sad story overall.

[Jana814]

As a Jewish (non-religious) person. This article was kind of sad. We have 2 family aquences who kids (1 from each family) who have become religious. I really wonder what started this girl to a religious path like that.

[Jana814]

I am not a cryer, but I teared up reading that. I can't imagine the desperation her mother must have felt, watching her slip into such a dark place and being helpless to save her. :cry:

[browncoatslytherin]

that is so heartbreaking :(

eta: it kind of gives you pause to think about non-fundie family members of fundies we follow. zsu's family, j'chelle's family, and quite a few others. i wonder how they feel about where their children ended up, how they felt when they saw them slipping into more fundamental attitudes and belief systems. the fact that this is definitely not an isolated story, but a story shared amongst many. that's what really breaks my heart.

[Daenerys]

I feel very sorry for the mother but she is a TOTAL enabler. If she'd cut her daughter off financially, and not bought her things that endorsed her conversion, things could have turned out very differently. I wonder if she would have left to go to Israel knowing that she couldn't come back and live in her parents' home rent-free with an allowance and a car provided?

[Jana814]

that is so heartbreaking :(

eta: it kind of gives you pause to think about non-fundie family members of fundies we follow. zsu's family, j'chelle's family, and quite a few others. i wonder how they feel about where their children ended up, how they felt when they saw them slipping into more fundamental attitudes and belief systems. the fact that this is definitely not an isolated story, but a story shared amongst many. that's what really breaks my heart.

[Koala]

I feel very sorry for the mother but she is a TOTAL enabler. If she'd cut her daughter off financially, and not bought her things that endorsed her conversion, things could have turned out very differently. I wonder if she would have left to go to Israel knowing that she couldn't come back and live in her parents' home rent-free with an allowance and a car provided?

[BrownieMomma]

That is so very heartbreaking and it really strikes close to home for me because she and her daughter were so close during high school and college. I have a 14yo freshman and she is the delight of my life. We have a wonderful relationship, so unlike what I had thought might happen when she reached these years. I was not close to my mother like this.

My heart curls with grief to think my daughter and I could also come to this kind of distance.

It has to be heartbreaking anytime to see your child slide off in a different direction that ultimately ends your family relationship. This article makes me think of kids on drugs, LBGT kids from families that don't support it, and even spouses who blame the third party when the relationship ends due to the presence of the third party.

One thing I would like to know is if the daughter's life was going so well, how did she fall into the clutches of this rabbi and/or this movement? Maybe the daughter did not feel content or significant?

I would like to think that in this case, as this daughter is now the mother of a daughter, that in time she will come to a better understanding of how her choices as a young adult hurt her parents and reach out to make amends about it.

It's hard for me to believe that people who embrace such legalistic lifestyles are truly happy in their souls.

[browncoatslytherin]

I feel very sorry for the mother but she is a TOTAL enabler. If she'd cut her daughter off financially, and not bought her things that endorsed her conversion, things could have turned out very differently. I wonder if she would have left to go to Israel knowing that she couldn't come back and live in her parents' home rent-free with an allowance and a car provided?

[browncoatslytherin]

One thing I would like to know is if the daughter's life was going so well, how did she fall into the clutches of this rabbi and/or this movement? Maybe the daughter did not feel content or significant?

[MamaJunebug]

I enjoy reading Kveller but try as I might, I never do grok the benefits folks perceive from highly structured lives. Mayim Bialik's Modern Orthodox way of life, alone, perplexes me. FWIW. Off to read the story in the OP.

[Firiel]

Am I the only one who senses there might be more to the story than the poor victim mother might be telling us?

I'm ultra-sensitive to this stuff, so I may be wrong. But I'm getting a bit of a Pennington Point vibe...

[browncoatslytherin]

Am I the only one who senses there might be more to the story than the poor victim mother might be telling us?

I'm ultra-sensitive to this stuff, so I may be wrong. But I'm getting a bit of a Pennington Point vibe...

[NachosFlandersStyle]

Oh, that's heartbreaking. I hate the religious line about how non-believers must have sad and empty lives; it's so dehumanizing. How terrible must it be to hear that from your own daughter?

I wonder if there's an element of mental illness involved. That stuff usually emerges in the late teens-early twenties. I had a good friend who became a very strident traditionalist catholic while we were in college. After a few years of simple obnoxiousness her mental state deteriorated more and she ended up getting treatment for some underlying psychiatric problems. Of course I don't mean to suggest that being religious means you aren't of sound mind. But a very sudden and severe change in personality in your early twenties should set off a lot of alarms.

[sparkles]

per the article, they didn't have a problem with her converting to orthodox...but they didn't know she was converting to the orthodoxy that she did. if they'd fully known what their daughter was getting into, perhaps they would have tried to head her off. the vibe i got from it was that she kind of kept the more radical aspects of it quiet around her parents until it was basically too late. and at that point, what are you going to do? your child is deeply entrenched in something that you didn't even realize they were getting into, or getting into at the level that they were.** cutting her off would mean she would completely cut them out as well, and i think it scared them because they didn't want to completely lose their daughter.

**i use the general "you" in these two sentences, not directed at anyone in particular, just to be clear

[church_of_dog]

it's hard for me to believe, too. maybe there really are people out there who need the extreme "stability" brought by following a bunch of rules, but me being me, it's hard for me to picture, because i'm pretty much the opposite of that. i like to do what i like to do and i don't want to have to be forced to stop and think and consider the little rules and regulations and shit like that. man, fuck it, if i wanna do it, i do it! lol so, knowing that i'm like that, i kind of have to keep in mind that other people are different, and some may even find solace in it, though i don't believe that all that follow fundie lifestyles do genuinely have that solace. jmo.

[MamaJunebug]

Read the whole thing - woulda coulda shouldas ran thru my mind but my biggest takeaway was from a nearby article posted soon after the Diaz-Madden celebrity wedding, when Benji's Jewishness was not known

The author was ready to be happy for the couple and for Cammie's possible conversion, but not without this:

"if Diaz isn’t converting and Madden isn’t secretly an observant Jew, this might be indicative of a not-so-cool Hollywood trend. Having a Jewish wedding because it’s cool or something different without being invested in the faith in some small measure is highly problematic"

2 things came to mind.

My kids' heritage includes Native American tribes. A few years ago, the Native community adopted the song, "I was country when country wasnt cool", subbing Native for Country. The original song came about in the 1970's, when movies like Urban Cowboy started a big trend in Western wear, line-dancing to country music, and crossovers by pop singers to country-western.

Natives felt their own cultures appropriated about the time of Dances With Wolves.

Though I'm not a member of either tribe - Native nor Jewish - I get the annoyance / indignation. But the Kveller writer's huffiness towards Maddens degree of Jewishness is - to my mind - the same side of the coin as the kiruv folks who brainwashed the daughter in the article OP linked to.

One of my Jewish friends does not begin to keep kosher but she had the chuppah and all. She's a high holy days services attender and that's about all. Is that observant enough? Amy Sherman-Palladino had the building of a chuppah by a Gentile for a non-religious wedding written into an early episode of Gilmore Girls. Does the columnist object? It's intriguing.

Who is to say???

I'm just rambling. We've seen similar emotional abductions of bright young people from well-off families in Christianity for decades. I'll take on the role of Kveller / Kvetcher columnist now and remind us all that when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

No real point to this little rant, except to say where there's still life, there's hope. Maybe the daughter in the Kveller story will wake up and reject her extremism. And maybe the Pennington Point daughter will stay clear-eyed.

[MamaJunebug]

Also, and I don't fault the mother for this at all, but it always intrigues me when a newbie cult member tells his or her family that they are interfering with his or her happiness. I know that everything is going very fast at that point, and that the parents are scrambling to make sense of it all, but wouldn't it be wonderful if they had the presence of mind to say, what about my happiness? Religious extremists certainly don't tend to think that those outside their circle deserve it, do they.

Also, good thought above about the possibility of mental illness. But hoo boy, don't try suggesting that to the cultie.

[salex]

Cult methods apparently haven't changed. Sounds like what went around in magazines when I was in College as our parents were worrying about the Moonies.

As far as asking "What about my happiness" to someone joining a cult-- they won't care. If you are not a cult member, you are either unenlightened, and not being happy may lead you to enlightenment, or you are evil/damned and thus unhappiness is what you deserve.

[moodygirl86]

I wonder if there's an element of mental illness involved. That stuff usually emerges in the late teens-early twenties. I had a good friend who became a very strident traditionalist catholic while we were in college. After a few years of simple obnoxiousness her mental state deteriorated more and she ended up getting treatment for some underlying psychiatric problems. Of course I don't mean to suggest that being religious means you aren't of sound mind. But a very sudden and severe change in personality in your early twenties should set off a lot of alarms.