Dad, I Forgive You

I’m reading the book The Father Factor and I want to do an exercise from it. Dad, I forgive you for not getting the help you need for your own stuff. You therefore couldn’t help transmitting to the rest of us your anguish and anxiety. You had parents who neglected you and therefore you were never able to be affectionate. I have no doubt that you loved me and I have no doubt that you did the best you could and you always aimed for upright behavior, but you’re uncomfortable with emotion and you’re fundamentally ill at ease with yourself and with others. You avoid emotion as much as you can and that has left me struggling with how to deal with emotion. You’re not demonstrative and affectionate. You’re not comfortable saying, I love you, unless you’re on a stage in front of people. Your inability to deal with emotion and to let people around you know that you love them left me feeling worthless. I’ve battled all of my life with a deep feeling of worthlessness. Much of the time, I feel like a horrible person. I forgive you for infecting me with your high levels of anxiety. I forgive you for not seeking the help you need. Jesus is not enough. Your own life proves that. Dad, I forgive you for putting your career ahead of my well-being and best interests. Dad, I forgive you for needing to be the center of attention everywhere we went. Dad, I forgive you for your insatiable need to stir up controversy so that you could have people talking about you. This constant tension in the home and everywhere you went was not in our best interests, but you were in the grip of your own emotional addictions and you were not willing to seek help. Dad, I forgive you for having a total block at learning anything from me. Dad, I forgive you for your inability to have a normal conversation. Your primary interest is in giving instruction rather than emotional connection. Dad, I forgive you for your inability to share much with me about your life beyond the pro forma. Dad, I forgive you for having a need for control so great that you would try to distort the reality around us by denying what was really happening in our home so that we could keep up appearances. Dad, I forgive you for speaking for me so often and not allowing me to say what I feel and to own my own reality. If I feel, you had to speak up and let everyone know I was ok, even if I was in great pain and wanting to speak for myself. Anything else is a minor detail.

The Power Of Orthodox Judaism

William B. Helmreich writes: In 1964 the eminent sociologist Marshall Sklare declared Orthodoxy to be irrelevant. His view was that Conservative Judaism was the wave of the future in America. How wrong he was. Orthodoxy has become a powerful force in American Jewish life. And its power center is New York City, where, according to the latest census figures, the Orthodox comprise 40 percent of the Jewish population. At the same time, 60 percent of Jews living in the city are either nominally affiliated or have no religious identification with Judaism. A few months ago I chanced upon a remarkable book by Philip Fishman, A Sukkah Is Burning: Remembering Williamsburg’s Hasidic Community. It is a rich and detailed account of life in that Brooklyn neighborhood during the 1950s. The chassidim who came during this post-Holocaust period found an entrenched Modern Orthodox community with a different approach to Orthodoxy and, predictably, tensions ensued. Fishman, who is Modern Orthodox, was part of that community and attended Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, a school that became a flagship institution for a third community – strictly Orthodox or, if you will, yeshivish Jews. During this period the Orthodox community was weak. The Modern Orthodox were a small group and the survivors who made up much of the immigrant Orthodox were burdened with rebuilding their own lives. In that sense it’s not surprising that no one could foresee the movement’s future. How did it happen? How did a community seemingly marked for oblivion revive and thrive? The answers lie in an understanding of the internal dynamics of Orthodoxy and a comprehension of developments in the larger society.