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New to Lina and the whole "conversion" thing...


wildflower

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Somewhat OT, but I went to open my fridge, and the light bulb didn't go on. My first thought went to removing fridge light bulbs for Shabbat, and Shabbat modes on elevators.

And *that* was when I knew I'd been on FJ too long today.

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Lissar, that was A. Mazing. I was fuzzy on some of the details, so the summary helped! My favorite part was:

They held hands and caressed one another and went to Olive Garden.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
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I never knew that she got all into natural healing. So her garlic paste didn't work as well as neosporin? LOL And that was a great summary, Lissar! Having not really paid attention to her until recently, I learned some things. She flips flops between beliefs like crazy. It will be interesting to see what she comes up with next.

Since they could barely make it two weeks without touching before rushing a wedding, who else thinks that they won't be able to go 12-14 days without touching each other each month? Especially now that they are having sex.

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Sometimes I really worry that Lina is literally mentally unbalanced, because I don't understand how someone who seems like a relatively smart person can be SUCH a flip-flopper and SUCH an extremist all the time.

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I don't get the impression that others do that Lina's parents are so mainstream. They sent her to a Christian school before the public high school, and some of her early (before she became Messianic) posts made it sound like she was trying to get back toward the religious practice she experienced at that school. Also, she's written that her parents screened guys who wanted to court her and implied that they said "no" to some guys before they said "yes" to TT. She also has at least one aunt who is into the whole Messianic thing too--so that is something in her family not something she found herself on the Internet--although she obviously did a lot of research herself on different blogs and ran with the idea.

I don't know if I'd say her parents are "mainstream" per se, but they're probably your run of the mill evangelicals. They did send her and her little sisters to public high school. My parents sent me and my brother to a Jewish day school through elementary and some of middle school, but it wasn't because they had a problem with public school. They encouraged her to go college and were proud when she said she wanted to be a doctor. Clearly religion is important to them, but they definitely are not fundie.

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They seem mainstream compared to Vision Forum, but I think they had fundie elements. When you read Lina's descriptions of conversations with her parents, many of their objections were not that she was being too fundie, but that she was going against her dad's viewpoint on Christian liberty. Her dad forbade her to wear any haircoverings outside the home--even wide headbands or bandanas--because that wasn't his interpretation of the NT. Many parents would just be like, "You want to wear a headband? We don't care what hair accessories you choose, that's your choice". Dad deciding for you whether you can put on a bandana is fundie in my book. They also forced her to attend their church with them even after her beliefs changed--no room for freedom of conscience there.

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Well, I suppose it depends on how you classify people. I suppose Lina's parents could be considered within the fundie lite spectrum (weren't they Catholics who converted to evangelical Christianity?) but it's obvious they were frustrated with Lina's antics and that as immigrants they were making some investment on their children's future. They practically forced her to take a few college classes, it's obvious they wanted her to get an education and a job. She wrote quite a lot on her conflicts with them before, I wonder where they stand now, for instance in relation to her marriage.

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They approved TT for courtship and then invited him over for dinner every night for a couple months. I think they really don't have a problem with him. Even after people brought his Taliban comments to their attention, they still let her marry him.

I think their insistence on education might not be about women's empowerment. Some people think their daughters either have to get an education and a job, or a husband to provide. And they are fine with either as long as she's "paid for". Lina eventually went with the latter and they might be perfectly happy with that.

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Sometimes I really worry that Lina is literally mentally unbalanced, because I don't understand how someone who seems like a relatively smart person can be SUCH a flip-flopper and SUCH an extremist all the time.

It's a trait, I have known other people like that. The unifying factor is just that WHATEVER they do, whatever their current cause is, they're "in it" 110%. They have to be the most, the best, the hardest line, the purest, whatever it is (and look down on those lesser), even while the "IT" changes monthly.

Granted, the people I'm thinking of definitely have a whiff of the "unbalanced" too, so you might be on to something... they're constantly burning bridges, too, so after a while they end up on the blacklist of just about every group and cause in town.

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They approved TT for courtship and then invited him over for dinner every night for a couple months. I think they really don't have a problem with him. Even after people brought his Taliban comments to their attention, they still let her marry him.

I think their insistence on education might not be about women's empowerment. Some people think their daughters either have to get an education and a job, or a husband to provide. And they are fine with either as long as she's "paid for". Lina eventually went with the latter and they might be perfectly happy with that.

My Spidey sense tell me, they just went along with it because they knew Lina would do what Lina wanted to do. I think inviting him to dinner was so they could get to know him. I think the providing approval of the courtship is Lina fantasy. Dad didn't say no, so he must mean yes. I think the parents realized she was at an age she could just take off with TT and never see them again if she/TT chose. She was legally a grown woman, what could they really do? I always got the feeling while they converted to Evangelical, they weren't true fundies just old fashioned and traditional Mexican. They remind me of my friend Marta's parents. Papi tried to keep his house in order, but what are you gonna do with American kids?

Riffles

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She has written that other guys approached her in the past, and her parents said no to some. So I don't think they just went along with whatever she was doing. They actually thought TT was better than the others.

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I am stepping into the shallow end of the pool here for a moment. Lina is a gorgeous, gorgeous young woman. TT is rather, er, homely and full of the crazy. Surely she didn't think she had to settle? There had to be many, many fundy or fundy-lite men that were tripping over themselves to date/court her...

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For those wondering about Lina's mental health, I'm pretty sure she suffers from a fairly severe anxiety disorder. She's talked about it before, on the blog. Back when she was going fundie and not, you know, whackadoodle mishmash Yeshuish.

Speaking as someone who has brain cooties myself (unspecified mood disorder, depressive episodes, generalized anxiety disorder), I can see how fundamentalism is REALLY REALLY attractive for people with anxiety problems. Rules are very soothing. OCD is a manifestation of anxiety disorder, after all. Giving up ALL responsibility for making ANY decision to your manly family-leading spouse? Also very soothing, since decision-making is another huge source of anxiety. At my worst point, any decision - like what to have for lunch - seemed to have such major ramifications that it was literally paralyzing.

Up until the debut of Tony and the insistence that you CAN TOO be an Orthodox Jew and a Christian at the same time, I had a lot of sympathy for Lina.

Not so much now, though.

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She has written that other guys approached her in the past, and her parents said no to some. So I don't think they just went along with whatever she was doing. They actually thought TT was better than the others.

Well, dayum! That is scary.

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If a practicing ethnically jewish couple adopt a non-jewish baby does the child have to under go a conversion process when he/she is of age?

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I don't get the impression that others do that Lina's parents are so mainstream. They sent her to a Christian school before the public high school, and some of her early (before she became Messianic) posts made it sound like she was trying to get back toward the religious practice she experienced at that school. Also, she's written that her parents screened guys who wanted to court her and implied that they said "no" to some guys before they said "yes" to TT. She also has at least one aunt who is into the whole Messianic thing too--so that is something in her family not something she found herself on the Internet--although she obviously did a lot of research herself on different blogs and ran with the idea.

I think her parents were probably just as concerned as any parent of a teenager would be, about whom she was dating. I remember my parents saying "no way" to a couple guys I'd introduced them to in high school...it had nothing to do with religion though, and had everything to do with the fact that the guys were just idiots.

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I agree it's normal for parents to be concerned but the fact that TT made the cut while other guys didn't tells you something about what they're looking for. If they had never said "no" to guys who wanted to court her, you could make the argument that they were just going along with whatever she wants, despite their reservations. But in fact, they did feel they could say no, and they said yes to TT. To me, that implies that they are okay with him and that doesn't make them seem particularly mainstream, in my opinion.

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It's possible that she was under 18 when they vetoed the others. Now, they have no legal right to veto anyone, and Lina is just going to do as she pleases, so why bother?

Also, I would be wary of taking her word for it when she is planning to spend the next several years lying to an entire religious community.

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That her parents like TT has been confirmed by people who came on here and said they know her. I don't know if they're really as close to her as they say, of course. Personally, I'm inclined to believe it because if they objected to him, I think she would be complaining night and day about how they're thwarting her desire to be a good wife to her true love or whatever. When she had other disagreements with them, she did not keep that private at all.

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If a practicing ethnically jewish couple adopt a non-jewish baby does the child have to under go a conversion process when he/she is of age?

I believe that the baby is converted as an infant and then, when they are old enough to make a choice (i.e. by Jewish law when a girl is 12 and a boy is 13) they are given a choice about whether they wish to remain Jewish. I'm not entirely certain, though.

I do have two adopted cousins who have both become Bat Mitzvah, which means that they must be considered halchically Jewish (oh, and their family is Modern Orthodox, so it must be by pretty stringent standards), by whatever conversions they underwent as infants. But I don't know the details and it is definitely an interesting question.

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So I went back to the beginning of her blog, and wow what a change! At the beginning she was definitely evangelical Christian. It seems like things started changing sometime in mid 2010. She went from saying "I am definitely a Christian" to saying "I'm not a Christian but..." Anyway, just check out her first couple posts if you wanna see the drastic change.

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Up until the debut of Tony and the insistence that you CAN TOO be an Orthodox Jew and a Christian at the same time, I had a lot of sympathy for Lina. Not so much now, though.

This. At our first inaugural Melbourne Free Jinger Convocation last week, we were discussing the possibility that Lina's OCD or something. The anxiety issues aren't a secret, since she blogged about them pretty extensively a while back, and I can completely see someone with OCD tendencies latching onto fundamentalism in general and a very ritualistic religion like Judaism in particular. I think if Lina were Catholic, she'd be going to Mass three times a day, sprinkling holy water all over the place and generally suffering from a major case of scrupulosity. Or, y'know, she'd just be telling everyone she's Catholic, not bother to do RCIA and take communion anyway. Whatevs.

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I believe that the baby is converted as an infant and then, when they are old enough to make a choice (i.e. by Jewish law when a girl is 12 and a boy is 13) they are given a choice about whether they wish to remain Jewish. I'm not entirely certain, though.
This is what I've read, too - kids are converted as babies, but their conversion has a certain "out" in that the final requirement to completely seal the deal is, they have to declare that they wish to remain Jewish upon their bar/bat mitzvahs. Most kids raised that way will of course say yes, and life goes on.
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