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Can A Religious Jew Find
Peace In Secular Home?

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

Features Editor

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12

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1990

young woman writes
in her diary of the
beauty of Shabbat.
She gave up the television
and the telephone and the
lights, "and it was like God
was rewarding me. I was
overcome with serenity and
filled with peace."
The young woman's
mother is overcome with
anxiety and filled with pain.
Her newly religious
daughter is no longer inter-
ested in eating in her
parents' home. It's not
kosher. She won't come for
the holidays. Religion, the
mother believes, is tearing
the family apart.
The tension created when
an individual raised in a
secular, Reform or Conser-
vative home becomes more
religiously observant was
the topic of a program held
last week at Machon
L'Torah. "Guess Who's Not
Coming To Dinner?" was
created by Lisa Ferstenfeld,
Marcia Ferstenfeld and Gail
Shiffman Hennes, all of
whom have been effected by
this experience.
The program began with a
series of vignettes about the
conflicts that can arise as a
family member becomes
observant. Often the topic of
conversation was food.

One non-observant
character reassured her
daughter, who recently
began keeping kosher, "You
know I never serve ice cream
after steak" and told her
they could "bless the kitchen
together."
Another bemoaned the
difficulty of understanding
which heksher, mark of
kashrut, was acceptable.
"This heksher is good, that
one is bad. Nothing I do is
good enough."
To watch as her bright,
educated daughter became
part of what she viewed as a
world less than hospitable to
women was agonizing for
one character.
"My grandmother has
returned to haunt me," she
said.
She remembered as a girl
watching men with long
beards being served by
women, children clinging to
their skirts, who rarely left
the kitchen. She recalled
men ignoring her "simply
because I was a woman."
More disturbing than a
daughter choosing a lifestyle

her mother finds distasteful
or a son refusing to eat in his
father's non-kosher home is
the denial of parental values
the child's decision to
become religiously obser-
vant seems to symbolize, the
program's narrator said.
"He's rejecting everything
I believe in!" a character in
one vignette said of his new-
ly observant son. "He's
throwing my values away!"
Another character turned
to her daughter: You won't
eat my food and you won't
come to my house on
Shabbat. That means my
values are inadequate. And
you say it's not me you're re-
jecting?
But the newly observant
are not denying parental
values, only expressing
them in a different way, the
narrator said.
Characters playing
children of non-observant
families also felt under at-
tack. Since becoming
religious, they frequently
heard accusations of "Why
are you like this?" and
"Why do you have to have
separate seating?" from
family members.
Her grandmother always
wanted a nice, Jewish boy
for her, one character said.
But she could not stop star-
ing at the kippah of her
granddaughter's new
boyfriend. Obviously she did
not want someone too
Jewish, her granddaughter
lamented.
Following the vignettes, a
number of participants said
the conversations they heard
during the performance
were familiar.
"My father said, 'Is this
what your religion is all
about? Breaking up the
family?' when I told him I
couldn't eat in his house on
the first night of Pesach,"
one man said. He eventually
made peace by agreeing to
spend time with his family
on holidays like Chanukah,
when celebrations would not
have to focus on food and
driving would not be an
issue.
The mother of a newly
observant woman said she
will feel the pain for many
years from her daughter's
decision not to spend
Shabbat at her parents'
home.
"We always had Shabbat,"
she said. "All of a sudden my
Shabbat wasn't good
enough." She resolved the
issue by agreeing to come to