I wonder what ever happened to Gitty Grunwald and her child custody battle with her Satmar ex-husband? I hope she and her family are doing well and have been reunited. I’ve heard it said that once you are married with kids, a person doesn’t have the right to decide not to be frum anymore. Anyone who makes that decision, by default, is choosing to give up custody of their children. That person entered into a binding agreement to be religious and raise their children religious when they married. They broke that contact by leaving the community.
If only life were that simple. Many people get married so young, that they haven’t had the chance to fully form their outlook on life yet. Many people, after years adult life, realize that they aren’t the same person at 28 than they were at 18. There’s no deception involved. They simply evolved in a different direction than their spouse and community. Certainly, such a switch and break is initially jarring and painful for all involved. However, one thing that will never change, frum or not, the parent who chooses to leave the community will always be a parent. While the parenting relationship will necessarily adapt and change to the new circumstances, assuming the parent is safe, loving and committed, contact with their children should always be maintained.
You Don’t Need to be Orthodox to be a Good Parent
Many of you have probably already read the article in New York Magazine about Gitty Grunwald. Gitty lived in the the Satmar community of Kiryas Joel (KJ), got married young to a Satmar Chasid, had a baby, and decided the frum lifestyle was not for her. She divorced her husband and left the community with her daughter. Apparently, the community discovered her whereabouts and took her daughter back to her ex-husband and the Satmar community. Gitty is currently fighting a custody battle over her daughter and things currently look bleak.
I have read quite a few blog posts on the subject. While many feel that Gitty was victimized by the strict community she was raised in, others feel that her ex-husband had the right to take their child back to a safe environment and away from the bad influences of Gitty’s new lifestyle. Most people agree that for Gitty to gain custody and for her child’s sake, the only good outcome is if Gitty goes back on the derech – becomes an observant Jew again. Even if this means becoming Modern Orthodox vs her former Hareidi lifestyle – something is better than nothing.
Gitty’s story is a dream for any Orthodox elder that wants to warn of the dangers of going off the derech. Gitty did a total 180 from the religious life she grew up living to the goth/stoner persona she has now adopted. While I agree that in this particular case, it sounds like Gitty needs to get her own life in order before taking back the parenting reigns, I disagree with the attitude in the frum community about the capabilities of non-frum parents to transmit values and middos to their children.
While others who once lived a secular life might have a different story, I did not experience any of the stereotypes that situations like Gitty’s inspire in the frum velt. I have seen token stories like Gitty’s serve as a warning to those in the Orthodox community as to what will happen to a person if they leave an observant lifestyle. A life of drinking, drugs, and depraved sexual activity are waiting in the wings for one who leaves the safety of the Orthodox world.
To believe anything different is to question the very reason that frum people live the way they do. If one can lead a good and wholesome life without formally observing the mitzvot – why are we all restricting ourselves? If one can lead a righteous life without all the technicalities and be rewarded both on earth and in Shamayim, than we’ve all been duped! It’s simply too unfair to even consider such a possibility.
Aside from the few scandalous local stories that float around every community, there are people who quietly leave the frum world all the time. However, they don’t leave all of their common sense and values behind. They continue to be decent people and live clean lives.
My own family, while they had a very strong sense of Jewish identity and married Jewish spouses (save for one cousin), did not observe many of the daily mitzvot, partly out of ignorance and partly as a conscious decision to live in the modern world without old world restrictions.
The elder generation of my family instilled values that were considered old fashioned in our generation. My grandmother never turned down a meshuluch who came to her door or sent a letter, she stressed the importance of education – but didn’t believe one should make themselves sick over their studies (she hated when I pulled an all-nighter), she believed in marrying within our faith, in home cooked meals, in being compassionate, in celebrating yom tovim, lighting Shabbos candles, in treating others how you would want to be treated, in being respectful towards others in order to receive respect, in speaking quietly, in turning the other cheek to avoid a machlokas among family and friends.
My grandfather believed in hard work, in maintaining family ties (I would type out his dictated letters to family all over the country), in supporting your family – and that meant extended family too, in learning a trade, in communal prayer and being part of a shul, in owning your own home, in saving money, in not carrying debt, in playing with children, in saying I love you, and never failing to give his granddaughters a hug and kiss on the keppeleh every time we saw him.
I became observant to reclaim a heritage I felt I was losing. I believed my future children would lose their heritage even more if I remained secular. However, my upbringing was the springboard for my interest in Yiddishkeit. My upbringing didn’t teach me how to translate biblical Hebrew, or make Hamotzei, or daven Shacharis, but it taught me the big picture of how, ideally, a Jew should live.
Being observant and being a good person, unfortunately, can be two different things. The ideal is to mesh observance with menschlekeit in one Yid, and watch how the two qualities enhance each other to create a beautiful life.
