"You don't really believe that stuff, do you?" asked Harvey, pointing at the Chumash that my husband had just quoted during a dvar Torah at the Shabbos table. Harvey was my new step father, a 64 year old man, who claimed he was raised an Orthodox Jew and had gone to yeshiva, and proud of the fact that he walked away from that lifestyle and never looked back.
Time kind of froze. I looked at Harvey. I looked at my young children sitting
there at the table and I was thankful that they were not sure what the grown ups were talking
about. I really was quite shocked, both by what Harvey had said, and by the complete distress he seemed to be in. He was literally shaking with rage.
"This is what the kids believe, Harvey, let's not ruin the evening," said my Mom, trying to cool things quickly between her husband and mine. It was almost too late, as my husband had risen from his seat, ready to throw Harvey out of the house.
"Don't worry. This is just typical yeshivish banter. I remember great arguments in yeshiva that would even come to fist fights. Isn't that right, Josh?" asked Harvey, looking smug.
This outburst happened after my husband had just read the parsha describing "The Blessings and The Curses," the blessings being what H will do for those who keep the Torah, and the curses describing what could happen to those who do not. At the moment that Harvey spoke those blasphemous words, I had this fleeting thought that he would not outlive my mother, as he had so threatened to do, in his hopes of selling all her jewelry before I got any because he said that all a frum jew wanted was to live off community charity, social welfare, and leech off their parents.
Six months later, when we heard that Harvey was dying of lung cancer, as a result of a lifelong habit of smoking, which he claimed he picked up in yeshiva, I didn't feel sad, more like vindicated that he was being punished for his apikorsis.
One day, as his end drew near, my mom called me with a request.
"Listen, Rachel, I know you haven't had a good relationship with Harvey, but remember how he said Shema for Grandma on her death bed, and even said Kaddish for her afterward? Well, he is nearing the end, and he can't speak with all those tubes in him, and I think he would really like for you to say Shema for him. I could just hold the phone up to his ear so he can listen to you. I will call you when it gets to that point."
His last hours came sooner than expected and I got the call from my mother at Harvey's bed side. I imagined him there, listening to my words, and this incredible rage welled up inside me toward him. I shakily said the first part of the Shema. But when I got to the part about "beware...lest you turn astray...then the wrath of H will blaze against you..." my anger poured out through each word which I emphasized to make them sound threatening and foreboding. This apikoris was dying and I had no rachmonis for him. I was glad to see him leave this world where he worked adamantly to destroy my relationship with my naive non-religious mother, mocking my chosen baalai tshuva lifestyle with such cruelty.
Several weeks after Harvey passed away, my mother came to visit.
"Rachel, I brought something for you, from Harvey."
"What do you mean? I can't imagine that he left me something?
"Actually, he wrote you a letter. I read it first, to make sure it was okay. It's about his life. About why he left yeshiva, and why he stopped being religious."
"I don't think I want to read anything he wrote," I said.
"It's addressed to you. Just take it. You may one day decide to read it. I must warn you though. It might be a bit of a trigger, after all that you went through with your father."
My mother was referring to my tormented life having been molested by my father, her husband, when I was a pre-teen. I had spent many years healing from that devastation, and along my journey had become a baalas tshuva, gotten married, had a handful of children, and was living a stable, contented life, active in my community and busy with my family.
I didn't think that a letter from Harvey the Apikoris was going to mean anything to me.
Dear Rachel,
I was recently given the death sentence of lung cancer, and I know I am going to die soon. The cancer may have spread to my brain already because I keep blacking out. So I must write this down before it is too late, because I want you to know my story.
I was raised just the way you are raising your family. I went to cheder and then yeshiva. I had Shabbat and the holidays and Yom Kippur. I said Shema every day. I wore a beenie on my head and went to synagogue.
When I was 15 years old, I was called into a rebbe's office. He was a big man, with a long black coat, and deep acne scars on his face. I wasn't sure what I had done, but was certain this was not a good thing. When I came into the room, he was sitting at his big desk, and he told me to come in and lock the door. He proceeded to do things to me of a sexual nature that I cannot write down. Of course, he told me never to tell, and I was so ashamed, that I would never have told anyway. Who could I have told? I was already orphaned by my father. My mother would not listen to such a thing about a rebbe, such a religious looking man. So I kept this dark secret to myself until this day.
As soon as I could find a chance to leave yeshiva, I did, and I never looked back.
Seeing your family was very upsetting to me and reminded me of what happened. You think the life you are leading is an utopia, and I think it is a lie. A person can still be a good Jew and not have to isolate from the world. I can see how you give your complete respect and total trust over to these fanatics that are really just trying to brainwash you. You think they are so holy with their long black coats, but I know the truth. They are no better than you or I. In fact some are much worse.
I am not against G-d, only against religious people that not only harbor such vile perverts, but actually give them honor, and allow such a person to be in charge of children.
And another thing, while your children are young, you may control their lives completely and force that beenie on their heads. But I just want you to know that my yeshiva buddies and I would run to McDonald's every chance we could to get a cheeseburger. So don't fool yourself about this life. Your kids are too young now to complain, but one day they will likely rebel against all these restrictions, just as I did. Especially if they (G-d forbid) witness the hypocrisy in the way I was forced to by that rebbe. I just hope that you will come to your senses before anything like that ever happens to your kids.
Signed, Harvey
My first thoughts were, this man was like a holocaust survivor, only of a holocaust that people don't talk about. They say regarding holocaust survivors, any survivor coming out of the holocaust with their emunah in tact is a miracle. The same can be said for a survivor of child sexual abuse.
Harvey had a lot of anger that he didn't work through, obviously. Maybe if he had worked on this issue he would have been less of an apikorsis, and instead, aimed his anger at the those who truly deserve it, the pedophile, and those who he seemed to think would cover it up.
His letter gave me pause to ask myself these questions: Am I guilty of blindly trusting the rabbaim? Am I ignorantly believing that the rebbes and charedim are safe and normal and trustworthy?
Many years later I would look back and honestly, painfully, answer these questions.
Dear Harvey,
I recall that after your death I got very very sick with a virus that made me feel like I was dying, and in my pain I was able to do tshuva about how cruelly I had felt and acted toward you on your death bed. When I was feeling better, I begged my husband to say kaddish for you and I lit a yartzeit candle and continue to do that on your yearly yartzeit.
But I still maintained a sense of bitterness toward you which has now been completely eradicated from my heart. Harvey, I am sorry. The way you expressed your pain came out so difficult to hear, but I have to admit that I sensed something important behind that pain at my Shobbos table, but chose to ignore it and rise up in righteous indignation instead. I wish I could do that chapter of my life over again and give you another chance.
You were right in warning me. My perfect utopian charedi life has failed me. My boys, my sweet innocent beautiful boys, have both been victims of child molestation in my charedi community. They are teenagers now. My oldest boy took off his tsitsis, grew his hair out, and has a girlfriend (which I am thankful for in a bittersweet sort of way, that she is a she and not a he). My youngest boy, always a very spiritual person, has kept his faith, but is not charedi.
You were right, that I did trust blindly. I did naively believe that all charedim were safe, trustworthy, good people. I chose this lifestyle because I believed that tznius was the answer to perversity. And it was, for my daughters. They were raised in a safe and secure manner, in a segregated all girls school with only women teachers. Knowing what I know now, the fact that they were never molested is a miracle (and possibly a result of my extreme overprotectiveness) because there are charedi women and girls who molest, and charedi males that attack charedi girls.
I just never imagined that my sons could be in danger. I am painfully, devastatingly, horrified that there is such perversity in our seemingly holy society. But more than that, the response to this issue by my community was not what I expected, and broke my heart. In both my boys' cases, and in other cases in the community that I later found out about, there had been cover ups and minimizations and parents were verbally attacked for their so-called bad parenting and their upset feelings. People, including a Kehilla Rav, had known about the pedophile that got to one of my sons. No one called police, no one warned potential victims, no one chased the pedophile away from children, even though he was often seen with children in his car. Instead, people asked, who gave the psak to talk about this or to name the perp. Parents who knew for a fact that their children were victimized refused to go to the police, and those who asked a psak were told by local rabbonim that they should not report.
My community let me down, betrayed my trust. I lost my faith in both charedim and rabbonim.
And now I too am off the derech.
Rachel
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