Pyper: Yes.
This sounds heartbreakingly calculated, don’t you think? I mean, with 8 children, it seems awfully likely that at least some of your adult children will make decisions that conflict with your faith. It strikes me as unlikely that any amount of parental pressure will be able to change the behavior of autonomous adults. Are you prepared to deal with that?
As a side note, and not necessarily directed at you, I wish more religious parents would understand that being nice to their “wayward” children does not imply an endorsement of lifestyle. It’s that kind of thinking that permanently ruptures parent-child bonds and destroys relationships.
This is good. I like this a lot better than the first part.
So…if you have a son that has homosexual proclivities, the Talmud recommends he become a Mohel or a urologist?
Erdosain:
I don’t see how that follows. A family of children from the same parents isn’t a random sampling, in which you’d say “one out of every X is likely to…” I know plenty of large families who do not have anyone who has abandoned the Torah. But even if one or more should make decisions to deviate from our faith, those decisions will at least be made with an awareness of the likelihood of our disagreement. They will have done so knowing what we believe and that we raised them - and continue to deal with them, once raised - with the sincere intentions of wanting the best for them.
Heck, it’s hard enough for parental pressure to change the behavior of KIDS! Are we specifically prepared for religious conflict with our grown children? Considering the efforts we make to avoid such a thing before it even starts, I’d say no. But I like to think we are well enough versed in human behavior and conflict resolution in general that we can handle issues properly as they arise.
Well, in spirit, if not in word.
MsWhatsit may not check in, but I felt I had to comment on this.
“Loves you, but” is true of ANY parenting relationship, even the most lenient one.
If my kid committed a crime, I’d still “just plain” love him - but my behavior would probably change. Your behavior HAS to adapt to the child’s actions. Failing to do so: well, that would be truly HORRIBLE parenting.
Do I care about the issues that this was a response to? No, of course I don’t. My spouse and I both married outside our family’s faiths. Our parents still loved us. I would say the relationship was damaged - at least on my side - but I always knew they loved me despite their disappointment.
And CMKeller certainly would still love such a child, even if it was a grief-making thing, and it would be wrong of him NOT to try to encourage the child back into the fold.
I live in a suburb with a large Ultra-Orthodox population. On several occasions I have seen underweight kids eating from a dumpster behind a restaurant. They never look poor, just underfed.
I love you, but I won’t allow you to deal drugs from your bedroom.
I love you, but I won’t pay your college tuition if you skip three classes a week.
I love you, but I won’t attend your wedding if you marry your sex slave you purchased from Vietnam.
I love you, but I won’t lie to protect you from the legal consequences of your actions.
I love you, but I won’t buy a dog for you to butcher for fun in the backyard.
I love you, but I won’t approve of your choice to do X because I genuinely believe Y is better and you should expect some reduction in material support or access to family gatherings.
I love you, but that damn message board has got to go!
I love you, but it’s perfectly normal and often healthy for people to understand that actions have consequences, including consequences of reduced respect or support from those who love you.
Enjoy,
Steven
Well, I think the issue at hand isn’t “spiritual vs not” it’s who is footing the bill. Nobody sees a problem when the family foots the bill on their own (as yours does); in fact many would celebrate your accomplishment. Issues arise when the seculars are the predominant taxpayers and whole families of 8 or 10 people don’t work for a living.
Oops I’m sorry - I’ve heard and use myself the terms “secular” and “Reform” fairly interchangeably in my neck of the US.
That is just heartbreaking. We (the general we) always think of hunger as affecting those who are poor but I guess that’s not the case at all.
:eek:
I’m not very comforted by that statement…
lindsaybluth:
Yes, but underlying the whole issue is whether one considers full-time Torah scholarship to be a valuable pursuit, worthy of state support. If (like the Haredim) you consider G-d’s grace to be essential to the survival of the state, and Torah study to be an important factor in achieving said grace, then you would not complain about the money, because you’re getting value for it. If (like the secular Zionists) you don’t see it that way, then it might have been worth a little money for a little while to make the religious crackpots play along with your program (as the early-State Zionist establishment thought), but the longer it continues and the more of them there are, the less likely you are to be sanguine about the money (as modern secular Israelis are).
It’s like when Dexter’s dad helped channel his urges by letting him kill dogs, and then taught him to only murder people who deserve it.
… still not comforted.
What, if anything, are you going to tell your kids about what just happened to Leiby Kletzky in Boro Park? I am assuming you have heard about this.
Would you let Dexter circumcise your kid?
chizzuk:
I sure have - what a horrible thing, I can’t imagine what his parents must be going through right now.
What to tell my kids? In what sense, theologically? There’s really no answer for something like this any different from other tragedy - running the world is something far beyond our meager understanding. It’s not necessarily the most satisfying answer, but, as the book of Job proves, that’s ultimately what it comes down to.
If your 15 year old came to you tomorrow and told you he was gay, would you ever consider enrolling him in one of those “pray away the gay” camps? Would you stop him from bringing over male friends to visit anymore?
Have you truly, seriously, actually considered the fact that, IF one of your kids happens to be gay, your negative attitude toward gayness would make him 4 times more likely to kill himself than if you were more supportive?
rachellellogram:
That’s a Christian sort of institution, isn’t it? Honestly, I do not know what resources Jewish experts in the subject recommend to deal with such an issue. Unless and until such an issue is forced upon me, I don’t plan to work out the specifics of a response.
I doubt it.
My intention is to raise my children in a manner such that their lives are joyful enough that one single point of disagreement with their parents is not enough to drive them to suicide.
All the above are genuine answers to the questions as you have phrased them, but honestly, you are making way too much of sex and sexuality. I know that out there in the great wide world, teenagers such as my three oldest children are bubbling over with hormones and exploring variant pleasure possibilities and stuff, but seriously, in a community where there is a general aura of religious modesty, where there is no casual dating or dancing or any sort of social pressure to be part of a couple, this kind of situation does not arise amongst teenagers. You may think I’m being naive, but I can assure you that I’m not. The sort of sexually-driven teenage dramatics that plague the sort of people you’re talking about are not just a rarity amongst Orthodox Jews, but an extreme rarity.
Do you mean that being gay is a “teenage dramatics” thing? Or am I misunderstanding you there? :dubious:
“… sort of people?”
Anyway, my turn.
Do you believe that humans have overpopulated the planet? Put another way, do you believe that if everyone had eight children, that this would be a good (or at least, neutral) thing for humanity?
purplehorseshoe:
I mean a teenager who has already explored his sexual desires to the point where he’s decided he’s gay, and does not have the emotional maturity to realize that it should not drive him to suicide. Unless I misunderstood the question posed by rachellellogram, she was referring to the suicide rate amongst gay TEENAGERS, not amongst gay people in general. I’m familiar with Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign - it’s meant as encouragement for TEENAGERS who do not have the emotional maturity to handle such conflicts, but the assumption is that once they reach adulthood, the danger of suicide is past.
No, I don’t think humans have overpopulated the planet. The “Population Bomb” is a generations-old scare which turned out to be a dud, because we’re better, as a species, at meeting challenges than the doomsayers give us credit for. I imagine that a worldwide ratio of 8 children per pair of parents would be a bit tougher to sustain than the current rate is, but I have no doubt that if it were the norm, humanity would find a way to handle it.
You guys need a new Mohel. The current one is taking WAY too much off the top.
But seriously, you are a smart guy, but I honestly don’t know what to make of the above statement. Are you saying that the Orthodox community is so tightly controlled and insular that teenagers aren’t obsessed with sex? That they don’t even understand that homosexuality is a possibility? Yes, I’d call that naive.
Why not? He seems like such a nice young man.