New Jersey Jewish News
Princeton | Mercer | Bucks Counties Feature

Rimon group offers support for parents of newly Orthodox

by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

When she was growing up in her secular, totally assimilated family home, Passover seders would take “maybe 20 minutes,” said Azriela Jaffe.

“We dipped a few things, sang ‘Dayenu,’ and we were done,” Jaffe told the 16 men and women seated around a table at Rimon, the Mordecai T. Mezrich Center for Jewish Learning in East Windsor.

“The way my family does Passover is not suited to the way we do it,” the now strictly Orthodox woman said. “I can tell you, there are family members who would rather have root canal than come to our house for a seder. We start at 10 at night and go for three hours. In my family, if you can do Passover as a mixed observant family, God bless you.”

It was a blustery evening in mid-March at Rimon, and Jaffe, a resident of Highland Park and author of What Do You Mean, You Can’t Eat in My Home? A Guide to How Newly Observant Jews and Their Less Observant Relatives Can Still Get Along, was the featured side dish to a serving of P.O.R.K. — Parents of Religious Kids, a Rimon-sponsored support group for Jews who are struggling with the conflicts that can arise when a child becomes ba’al teshuva, or newly observant.

Those who attend the support group come from every denomination, according to Livia Mezrich, founder of Rimon, and they bring with them every kind of issue — children who will no longer eat in their parents’ homes, children who will no longer visit their homes because a television set might be on, or children who will not attend a family gathering because someone there might be wearing short sleeves.

The idea for P.O.R.K. began simmering about four years ago during a Shabbaton at her East Windsor home, said Mezrich. Two of her guests, psychologists Russell and Barbara Holstein of West Allenhurst, were discussing their conflicts with their daughter, who had become deeply involved in Orthodoxy. Tongue-in-cheek, they coined the acronym P.O.R.K.

“Two years later, when I opened up the center, I received a call from someone else whose daughter was becoming very Orthodox, and she was very concerned,” said Mezrich, who describes herself as Modern Orthodox. “We talked, and I started realizing that there was a need for an organization that deals with issues that arise out of children becoming more observant than their parents.”

Soon, Mezrich was hosting meetings of P.O.R.K. every other month, drawing concerned parents from towns throughout Mercer, southern Middlesex, and western Monmouth counties. The initiative has been supported by yearly grants from Yeshiva University. Rabbi Yosef Blau, a spiritual guidance counselor at YU, has addressed P.O.R.K. on several occasions.

“This crosses all lines. I expect it goes across the entire spectrum,” Mezrich said. “I feel like we’ve opened up an issue that’s been closed.”

That issue has roiled her family ever since her adult daughter became “frum,” or strictly observant, said Laurie Dinerstein-Kurs of East Windsor.

“I’m a diehard P.O.R.K. member,” said Dinerstein-Kurs, who serves as Mercer County’s Jewish community chaplain. “Everybody comes for a different reason. My reason is just to vent. I am faced with every issue that comes up here. The problems created by this are sometimes overwhelming.”

Particularly overwhelming are the conflicts that can damage the relationship between siblings, said Dinerstein-Kurs, who also has a grown son. “The issues that arise with siblings are monumental,” she said. “They’re no longer in the same world. They no longer have interests in common. They no longer have friends in common. Their children have nothing in common.”

For many people, said Russell Holstein, the issue often remains closed. “I think there are a lot of hurt people,” said the psychologist, who conducts a joint practice with his wife in Long Branch. “For them, it’s too painful to explore these issues. They struggle with it quietly.”

Speaking personally, Holstein added, he’s not sure that attending the meetings of P.O.R.K. has helped to solve anything. “It’s just support,” he said.

Right now, he said, it’s “very tough” to get his daughter, who has joined an Orthodox sect in Muncie, NY, to be part of the family. “To a great extent, she’s centered her life around these people,” he said. “When they adopt the entire Orthodox position, they seem to be choosing. The commandment to ‘honor thy mother and father’ gets all messed up with the first commandment. If your father and mother are not from the community in which they choose to live, you end up feeling less honor and more dishonor.”

But P.O.R.K. member Iris Cooper of West Windsor said that the support group helped her process many of the issues that arose when her daughter became affiliated with Chabad Lubavitch.

“It took awhile; it was a process,” said Cooper. “It helps to be part of a group, especially if someone has a child who is newly observant.”

Today, she said, she and her daughter treat each other with mutual respect. “She doesn’t try to convince me of her ways. She just helps to educate us on what works for them.” For example, Cooper said, she keeps separate dishes, a separate toaster oven, and a special shelf in the pantry where her grandchildren know they can find kosher snacks.

“My house is not kosher. I’m not observant,” she said. “But I make accommodations.”

Making accommodations is the name of the game when it comes to families with different levels of observance, according to Jaffe, who has written 12 books, including Two Jews Can Still Be a Mixed Marriage.

“My family has had to make many accommodations,” she said. “On a regular basis, we reaffirm to one another our commitment to be connected.”

For years now, Jaffe said, she has gone out of her way to call her family each week just before Shabbat. “I want them to feel reassured, because I’m going into the ‘no-phone’ zone,” she said. “There are so many small rituals you can do to stay connected. You don’t have to work out the big issues if you can keep communicating on the small ones.”

Still, she said, certain things remain painful, such as when she calls her family to wish them a “Happy Purim,” knowing full well that none of them celebrates the holiday. “It hurts,” she said. “In my fantasy, I have a family I can celebrate Purim with.”

She knows her parents have suffered greatly because of the decision she made to become strictly observant, Jaffe said. “Many, many tears have been shed over this.”

They have gotten past the stage of trying to change each other, she said. “But what we haven’t ever gotten past is the loneliness of my having made a decision to go in a direction in my life that my family doesn’t want to join me in,” she said. “And it’s really sad.”

For information about P.O.R.K., contact Mezrich or telephone 609-918-9750.

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