agonyaunt | I didn't mean to find two letters on the same theme, but I guess I did and now here we are

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I didn't mean to find two letters on the same theme, but I guess I did and now here we are

1. Dear Care and Feeding,

My son passed away in a car accident eight months ago, leaving my daughter-in-law, who I’ll call Nancy, with my grandchildren, who are 3-year-old twins. They lived in a big city, and they always flew home for Christmas, even before they were married. I’m very worried about Nancy and my grandchildren. Nancy works a very busy job and seems overwhelmed. She refused to fly here for Christmas this year, even though it’s barely a 3-hour flight and she visited her family for her Jewish holidays in another state, and she only reluctantly offered for me to stay with them when I insisted I wanted to see my grandchildren for the holidays. When I arrived, the house was a mess, and she seemed frazzled and couldn’t socialize very much. The kids seemed miserable and were throwing tantrums, and she seemed too tired to adequately take care of them for the week I was there.

Things have been frosty ever since she refused to let my grandsons be baptized, so I didn’t want to criticize her and make things worse, but the situation seems untenable at this point. I gently suggested getting a housecleaner, and she said that she couldn’t afford it, even though I’m sure that my son’s life insurance must have left her with a hefty sum. I also suggested it might be good for her to get a less busy job that pays more. She’s an attorney for a non-profit, and it would be more lucrative and less stressful for her to get a more traditional lawyer job. She got angry when I suggested it, and I don’t understand why she won’t make these kinds of changes to make her life easier. I also suggested that she could move in with me, and I’d pay all the relocation expenses. I have lots of space, since your buck goes further in the Midwest, and there’s a church down the street that has free daycare for the boys. I could even watch them on my time off. She told me bluntly that she thought I should get a hotel, and I acquiesced since she seemed so upset. I just don’t understand what I’m supposed to do or how to help! She won’t answer my calls now, and it’s been over a week and a half since I’ve facetimed with my grandsons.

—I Just Want to Help

Dear Want to Help,

It’s not surprising that Nancy isn’t doing well less than a year after suddenly losing her husband. She’s parenting two young children alone, something she hadn’t planned to do; her kids are also grieving; her hands are full and her life is no doubt unrecognizable to her. Now, it may well be that she and/or the kids are struggling—it would be a shock to me if any of them were super happy or thriving right now (although I will add that everyone’s house gets messy sometimes, and every 3-year-old throws tantrums; these things don’t make Nancy an unfit parent!). I really hope that she has other people looking out for her and offering actual support. But even if she does need more help than she’s currently getting, your choices have made it all but impossible for her to want or accept your version of “help.” No one grieving the sudden loss of their husband has the energy or resources to deal with constant judgment.

I know you’re also grieving, so please know I’m not trying to be cruel by pointing this out. Your words and actions now will likely have an impact on how motivated your daughter-in-law is to continue this relationship. You say that it was strained even before your son’s death, because you didn’t respect their choice—and it was their choice, to make together—not to have their children baptized as Christian. It seems like you still haven’t gotten over this, by the way, given that you seem to resent her for visiting her family (who probably are a genuine and much needed source of support for her!) for “her Jewish holidays” (truly, yikes) and are pushing your local church-based daycare at her. Your relationship is only going to suffer if you keep pressuring her about visiting; pointing out everything you think she’s doing wrong; complaining that it’s been a week and a half since you FaceTimed (that’s not a long time!); telling her to change jobs and move and leave behind the home she shared with your son; and generally ignoring her boundaries. Nancy is an adult. She is responsible for her career, her household, deciding where to live, and the raising of her children. It’s not your place to tell her what to do. If the two of you had a closer relationship, perhaps you could be of mutual help and support to each other as you grieve, but it sounds like that’s not an option right now—largely because of how you’ve treated her.

You’ve suffered a terrible loss, and so has Nancy. She and your grandchildren are in for a really hard time, at least for a while—and it’s a time no one is advised to make major life changes if they can help it. A job change and relocation won’t bring their husband/father back, or allow them to escape their grief. I honestly can’t help but wonder if all this fixation on them is mainly about providing you with a distraction from your own pain. Instead of obsessing over what you see as Nancy’s faults, would it not make more sense to focus on your own needs and feelings as you mourn your son?

I understand that you believe you want to help, and I do think it’s worth trying to repair your relationship with Nancy, if you both find that you’re ready for that one day. You can begin, perhaps, by apologizing—with no excuses or qualifications, no turning the blame on her, and no more unsolicited advice. Refrain from calling and telling her what you think she’s doing wrong, or guilting her for visiting her own family (she needs and deserves their support right now). Give her the space she needs, and recognize that your future access to your grandchildren partially hinges on whether you can show their mother the basic respect she deserves.

Link

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2. Dear Care and Feeding,

Last month, my husband and I had the exact same fight we’ve been having for 10 years. How much Christmas can we celebrate? My husband was raised reform Jewish. Before we were married, he asked if I would convert. I did. We went to conversion classes together and there was even one class dedicated to whether or not you should still celebrate Christmas, and the rabbi said it was fine. Most of the other students in the class were going to do just that. This was the one class my husband missed!

I’d like to put an end to this decade-long fight. I wasn’t raised religious, but we did celebrate Christmas, which was always one of my favorite times of year. Now we have two children who we are raising Jewish for the most part, though neither one of us would consider ourselves religious. We go to the temple on the high holidays, light the candles on Hanukkah, and do a half-assed seder on Passover. That’s the extent of our Jewishness, which seems fine with my husband. He actually complains every time we go to temple. However, when Christmas comes around, he won’t let us have a tree. (He’ll allow a fake eucalyptus tree that lights up and that we decorate with a dreidel and Star of David ornaments.) We are not allowed to have stockings over the fireplace or pretend there is a Santa Claus.

Every year, we get together with my family on Christmas Eve, and then my father comes to spend the night, and we open Christmas presents in the morning with the kids. My husband doesn’t love this, but he relented years ago, and I was happy he did so. This year, my father suggested he bring a ham over to make on Christmas Day. I said sure, not really thinking anything of it. My husband is in no way observant and eats his fair share of pig without thinking twice. But when I mentioned the Christmas ham, he said it made him “very uncomfortable.” This just beyond pissed me off. I’m not sure he even realizes how he sounds, but could you imagine if the tables were turned and we were going to my father’s for Hanukkah and said we were bringing over latkes and my father said that made him “very uncomfortable”? I don’t understand his hatred for Christmas and I’m pretty much fed up with tiptoeing around him every December. I’m sure this has a lot to do with his parents, who probably weren’t happy that he married a shiksa. He doesn’t have a great relationship with them to begin with and has always been made to feel second best to his brother, who is the golden child (and married a Jewish woman). My feeling on the subject is that we should celebrate and lean into these holidays equally. I go all out for Hanukkah and would like to do the same for Christmas as well. I have many friends who do that and it always makes me jealous and resentful. Wondering if you have any advice to solve this issue.

—Jew for Christmas

Dear Christmas,

But he didn’t marry a shiksa. He married a Jew. If you didn’t want to convert to Judaism, you shouldn’t have. Reform Judaism has a considerably more liberal approach to conversion than Conservative Judaism does (Orthodox Judaism does not allow it), but even so, the expectation is that one is sincere in their convictions. It is certainly true that many Jews in interfaith marriages, in which neither spouse is particularly (or at all) religious, find a way to celebrate Christmas. In my house, we indeed celebrated all holidays—Hanukkah (with a menorah my daughter and I lit each of the eight nights), Christmas (with a tree, a festive meal, and presents), Passover (with a non-half-assed seder), Easter (with my husband and daughter dyeing eggs, our hiding them in the backyard, and her searching for them—plus a basketful of goodies); my Southern Baptist husband even built a sukkot every autumn of our daughter’s childhood. I recently read a charming essay by the novelist Leigh McMullan Abramson about navigating the holidays when one parent is Jewish and the other isn’t, published right around the time you and your husband started fighting over Christmas.

Your situation is different. And I’m puzzled by what you report your rabbi said, because I’ve never heard of a rabbi saying that it was “fine” for a Jewish family to celebrate Christmas. I have to assume that you’re misremembering—or that you misheard or misunderstood—what was said. Some reform rabbis, it’s true, have given their blessings to interfaith families celebrating Christmas. Perhaps this was what the rabbi teaching your conversion classes was talking about.

But more to the point: This is something you and your husband should have talked about before you married and had children. Since you didn’t, I’ll take a moment to educate you now:

We Jews, who grew up surrounded—bombarded—with a holiday that wasn’t, isn’t, our own, can be very sensitive to having Christmas (to having Christianity itself) forced on us. That some of us who are not religious, who think of ourselves as cultural and ethnic Jews, marry non-Jews and come to embrace multiple cultures and traditions doesn’t mean that all of us do. The fact that your husband asked you to convert (something it never occurred to me to ask my husband to do—nor did it cross his mind to ask me to renounce Judaism and convert to Christianity) should have told you how he felt. My guess is that you’re still fighting over Christmas trees and Santa because you weren’t straightforward and clear with each other from the start. You might as well have it out now. You’ll have to come clean: You converted without understanding what it meant, and he assumed you fully understood what he meant when he asked you to, and didn’t take the time to tell you. Perhaps he didn’t even know, before children entered the picture. Perhaps you didn’t know, until you had kids, how much you’d miss Christmas. Now he feels betrayed and you feel he’s depriving you and your kids of something important.

I’m not sure you can resolve this on your own, or if it can be resolved at all. But I recommend counseling. This is a problem that is bigger than a Christmas Day ham.

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LW1 is terrible and deserves to die alone, which is exactly what will happen if they don't back off their DIL, like, yesterday.

LW2... listen, I have no opinion on whether or how they should commemorate Christmas in their household but they really should have discussed exactly which holidays they'd celebrate and to what extent before they had kids. They're now reaping the cost of pushing that conversation off, but whatever the rabbi said in class that day I doubt LW's husband really thought that LW would be so deadset on doing everything - not just the tree and presents but also the literally real story of santa and the stockings and the ham... or that she'd spend every year trying to sneak a little more Christmas into their winter.

I can't figure out how LW 2 could be married to a Jewish man and not know the score. Poor dude

She's acting like the fact that he isn't very religiously observant means he doesn't care. But obviously he does care or he would not have asked her to convert for him!

LW2 has the vibe of converting to Judaism being the equivalent of joining a Lutheran church instead of Methodist. And she's treating it like an interfaith relationship still!

I was a "both sets of holidays" kid but that was something my parents agreed on jointly, no "pretend to be Jewish and sneak more and more Christmas in". And the whole "Jewish guy uncomfortable with Christmas ham is totes the same as Christian guy uncomfortable with latkes" feels like "feeding meat to a vegetarian is totes the same as feeding vegetarian food to an omnivore" but with bonus antisemitism.

Christmas is so ubiquitous in our culture that it's easy for Christian-raised people to be oblivious to the awkwardness for people of other faiths, like a fish being oblivious to a bird not being able to breathe underwater, but huge yikes. It's fine for a non-Christian to decide they're okay with doing the less-religious aspects of Christmas, but very not ok for someone else to impose.

LW, there's an easy way to resolve the decade-long fight: respect your husband and the religion you *converted* into, and stop pushing.

And the whole "Jewish guy uncomfortable with Christmas ham is totes the same as Christian guy uncomfortable with latkes" feels like "feeding meat to a vegetarian is totes the same as feeding vegetarian food to an omnivore" but with bonus antisemitism.

Because there's absolutely no difference in LW's mind between eating bacon cheeseburgers because they're yummy and eating ham because it's Christmas. And if she doesn't see the difference then he shouldn't either, apparently.

If LW1 is so worried about the state of the house and Nancy's stress, she could offer to pay for a housekeeper! Not demand that Nancy uproot her entire life and subject herself to the LW's gimlet eye. And that's BEFORE we get into the resentment the LW is clearly holding onto about the kids not being baptized and Nancy prioritizing her own holidays over the LW's (a 3-hour plane flight with 2 three-year-olds is a BIG ASK, my dude).

I can't talk about LW2 because it makes me so upset.

conuly, would you mind adding a content warning in the cut?

I can't talk about LW2 because it makes me so upset. [personal profile] conuly, would you mind adding a content warning in the cut?

Certainly! Though I'm not sure how to phrase it. "Not so stealthy antisemitism"?

Thank you. Yeah, that would work, at least I'd have been braced for *something* vile!

That's interesting, I was full of rage at LW1 for anti-semitism, more than LW2.

LW1 is also an antisemitic asshole, to be clear! But I think she'd be an asshole even if her daughter in law weren't Jewish (although it undoubtedly plays into it). LW2 is just 100% antisemitic all the way down.

Sympathy and solidarity. I am also finding letter 2 really hard to cope with, both the letter and the answer.

She refused to fly here for Christmas this year, even though it’s barely a 3-hour flight and she visited her family for her Jewish holidays in another state

Among many flapping red flags in this letter, I notice she elides how long the trip to the family "in another state" is. As someone who lives near a state line, I am very aware that it could mean "a twenty minute drive."

Even if it was an equivalent or longer trip, it's her own parents and her own holidays. If she can only choose one trip to make (and come on, making a long trip alone with two three year olds once has got to be hell, much less twice in close succession), then that is the obvious choice. It would be the obvious choice even if she had a great relationship with her MIL, but the LW admitted they don't have a good relationship.

it’s barely a 3-hour flight

AHAHAHAHA. “Barely a three-hour flight.” Way to ignore the effort involved in packing for oneself and two toddlers, getting two toddlers ready for the trip to the airport, the time taken getting to the airport, having to wrangle two toddlers and associated luggage by yourself through the airport check-in lines and through security, keeping two toddlers calm in the pre-boarding area until it’s time to board, dealing with any delays (which occur in roughly 50% of flights now), managing the kids through a three-hour flight after they’re already fed up with hours of waiting beforehand, then getting them through the airport on the other side and getting one’s luggage. SERIOUSLY, LW can go jump into a brick wall with her “barely a three-hour flight”.

Also Covid. A lot of people still aren't flying. That might not happen to be her reason, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was part of it.

God, I wish that was my experience. The last three times I’ve been forced into plane travel (six flights total) for work or emergency reasons since the mask mandates were lifted mid-last-year, I’ve been the only person I’ve seen with a mask on. Nobody seems to give a shit about Covid where I live or in the places where I’ve traveled to (US/Canada).

Add in that it requires three plane tickets, and the cost of gas to see family DIL actually wants to see starts looking a whole lot better.

Yep. Honestly, someone could have paid for the tickets and we could live in a Covid-free world and there is still nothing that would have made me want to do a multi-hour flight with two toddlers. I’ve done flights with one toddler and one small child and that was plenty rough enough. And add in the fact that at the end of it there would be spending time with someone I don’t enjoy being around? Nope. There’s no way I’d be going through all that shit to spend time with someone who’s going to judge me and be shitty toward me.

That too. I have flown with two small children and another adult. Two toddlers and just me, no fucking way.

Many people who convert to Judaism have Christian parents. Is it ok to accept their invitation to Christmas dinner? Ok to exchange Christmas presents with them? Conversion classes all address this sort of question. It's part of the question of how do you abjure your former religion while staying connected to the family that raised you in that religion?

But, yeah. LW2 does not seem to be thinking like a convert. They seem to think they're a Christian in an interfaith marriage. It makes things awkward for their husband, who appears to be a non-observant Jew who thinks he married a non-observant Jew.

Admittedly I am having a hard time reading them in good faith, but I REALLY DOUBT the rabbi leading that conversion class said what she asserts they said. It just ....doesn't smell right. I can absolutely see a rabbi talking about how interfaith couples can handle Christmas trees, or even saying something like, if having something living and beautiful in your home is important to you, you can work with your spouse to find a way to incorporate a tradition that's meaningful. But a blanket "Christmas trees are A-OK!"? I vote she heard what she wanted to hear.

And even if the rabbi did actually say that, LW's husband is under no obligation to follow that decree.

I'm wondering if the rabbi said something like "some people choose to do XYZ" and/or "you won't get kicked out of Judaism for putting up lights" and LW just interpreted it as permission.

Convenient that the husband missing that session means he doesn't get a vote...

Yep. I do not believe the LW is a reliable narrator about this. And even if they were: her husband is clearly not okay with a tree!

And yet he compromised on a tree, which she seems to have taken as permission to keep pushing the envelope rather than a pretty big concession.

Or even that celebrating with tree, etc., at one's birth family's house is fine, and LW2 took that to be fine at her home too.

Who told the columnist that Orthodox Judaism doesn't accept conversion? That's a non-trivial error. Orthodox Jews may not accept the validity of non-Orthodox conversions, which is almost the opposite of what the columnist is saying here. On the other hand, it doesn't seem relevant to the letter writer's question/complaint: changing the relevant bit of the letter to "more liberal approach to conversion than Conservative and Orthodox Judaism do" doesn't change the advice.

I thought that was likely wrong myself, but against all the rest of it I didn't feel the urge to double check.

Thanks, I came here to say this.

Dear Care and Feeding:

Orthodox Judaism does not allow it

what in the actual fuck? That's ridiculously false.

Dear LW2:

You're wrong, celebrate christmas in your parents' house and don't demand your husband join you, what do you think converting meant? Also there's a big fucking difference between latkes and ham, and I think you didn't really do your conversion classes if you don't feel that way.

Tell your husband that you want more holidays in your life and you're happy with them being Jewish ones or Christmas, and if Christmas makes him uncomfortable then he can goddamn put up with family Purim and Simchat Torah.

Dear LW1:

Fuck all the way off. No, further than that. Just jump right into the sea, you anti-semitic piece of trash.

LW 1 seems like the type to try to go for grandparents' rights. Hope her daughter-in-law is in a state with good protections.

LW 2 is....something else, what the heck. I can imagine someone in LW's situation being really into a tree, and wanting to stay connected to her family of origin vis a vis presents and food traditions, but...wow, they needed to have this talk a long time ago, preferably before they got married.

LW 1: I can't help but notice that of all the forms of assistance you offered, none of them were money. A life insurance payment, even a large one, often barely covers the funeral and assorted expenses and debts directly related to the death, and meanwhile she's living on half the income she had before - if your DIL is saying she's struggling for money, believe her! And a gift of enough money to pay for a housekeeping service, with no strings attached, would be a start to apologizing for the way you've treated her. (Just a start, though.)

Oh but she would pay all the expenses if her DIL relocates to LIVE WITH HER.

Yeah, aside from her being ABJECTLY AWFUL, this stood out for me -- she feels free to criticize, but isn't offering to do anything concrete that would take some weight off her DIL's shoulders, without having to completely uproot her life.

(Frankly, she's lucky that the DIL is allowing contact at all. And I wouldn't trust the LW not to try to hire a proselytizing maid!!)

LW2 probably (mis) perceives of the modern celebration of Christmas as largely secular. This is common among people who were not raised to practice Christianity but are nevertheless of Christian background. It's easy to overlook religious origins and meaning when it is your own religious tradition you are dismissing, but it's a mistake to generalize that personal perspective to the way everyone experiences the holiday. LW2's husband is in a very different position.

I was trying to figure out how to stop waving my arms in fury long enough to say this. Well said.

Yeah, my daughter's father and I are Pagan, but I enjoy a lot of "secular Christmas" stuff (Santa when she was younger, stockings, tree, lights), with absolutely zero Jesus.

With that said, Jews have Christmas and Christianity shoved down their throats *constantly* (and conversion has been violently and murderously enforced over thousands of years), and her husband is obviously not okay with this, and being blissfully oblivious is *antisemitic*.

This absolutely should have been worked out before they got married and had kids, but since it wasn't, the LW needs to work this shit out, and she needs to be the one to compromise.

Conversion actually means something, even for people who are mostly secularly/culturally Jewish, and her husband had a reasonable expectation that she was going to take it as something that was genuinely important to him, aside from the fact that it's intended to be an authentic religious commitment.

I'm sorry that this is a struggle for her, but "I want a tree" doesn't outweigh "Christmas/Christianity can be massively traumatic for Jews, for very valid reasons."

That life insurance is necessary to pay the mortgage. If my husband dropped dead tomorrow, I wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage and everything else on my salary alone. That "hefty" sum would need to go into the bank so that I could pay bills every month, including college for my older kid.

right? my salary alone would cover -- the mortgage and grocery bills, but nothing else. not water, or electricity, or new clothes for growing kids, or gas for the car i use to GET to work. like....i'd still have to make cuts, with the life insurance? no way I'd keep everything we feel comfortable with on two salaries? but it's life insurance that would keep the lights on, literally.

INORITE!

I don't have a word for the expression my face, independent of any volition, assumed as I read this letter.

I hope they cut this bitch off cold. Get a restraining order.

Is LW2's letter actually a well-paced urban horror story crafted to prevent Jewish men from marrying non-Jewish women? Did LW2 play Candy Crush on her phone through every minute of the "conversion classes" she supposedly took? Were they online classes and she had them muted with her stories playing in another window? Is she actually, really, just... genuinely a stupid, not-very-intelligent, selfish person?

Does the Internet need to get busy and introduce LW1's DiL to LW2's husband?

(And what about... Naomi?)

Letter 2 is terrrrrrrrrrrrible. Terrible letter, terrible response (though not quite on the level of terrible of the original letter), and I am stuck in a loop of how people like this reinforce prejudices that directly make my family's life worse.

Like, I really, really want to be sympathetic to LW2, on the grounds that it is, in fact, hard to be a convert and balance your Jewish family of choice with your (in this case secular) Christian family of birth. It's hard to live in a context where the definition of being Jewish is "not celebrating Christmas" and you don't have much that's positive to connect to. And some Jewish communities are massive arse-faces to converts, and particularly are pointlessly vicious about converts continuing to keep some Christmas traditions. And it's possible her in-laws do in fact have some anti-convert prejudice But honestly she sounds like a really unpleasant person and I'm extremely frustrated with her.

I agree with others that it's highly unlikely the rabbi said it was fine to celebrate Christmas, I expect they said something way more nuanced, trying to address this problem (and it is a real problem) of converts being judged over it. But even if the rabbi did in fact give explicit permission for Jews to celebrate Christmas, LW should care some small amount about her husband's actual feelings. Not what hypothetical Jewish people can hypothetically get permission to do, but how much it's upsetting her husband.

It is extremely not ok for her to use the word sh*ksa. It's not ok for anyone to use that word, and it's not ok for C&F to echo it back to her – I really, really wish they'd called her out more strongly than saying, uh, it doesn't apply to you because you converted. It doesn't apply to anyone, it's a misogynist slur. It's perfectly fine to say "non-Jewish woman". It's pointlessly factually wrong for C&F to include that parenthetical about Orthodox Jews not accepting converts, but that's by-the-by.

Where I do somewhat agree with C&F is that it sounds like LW converted without understanding what it meant, and that's a big problem. She may have deliberately not paid attention because she didn't care, or she may not have had access to a good education with open, robust discussions like any convert should have the right to. I'm leaning towards the first explanation because I'm very annoyed with LW. But I have the privilege in Jewish circles of being born and brought up Jewish with a fully rounded Jewish education, so I don't want to be too judgemental.

But also, I face a lot of prejudice as a trainee rabbi with non-Jewish partners, and my partner faces prejudice about converting while still being committed to his Christian spouse and family, and people whining about how it's not faaaaaair that they can't eat Christmas ham or hang up stockings in their Jewish home are really not helping.

I sincerely hope letter 1 is a fake. That level of smug cluelessness and oblivious insistence that other people's difficulties are not difficulties - I know it exists, but surely when you wrote the letter you'd make some effort to disguise it?

I mean. Not that you *can* lay the Jewish context aside, but if you did, and just said, "LW #2 wants to Do A Thing that her husband is uncomfortable with, and won't accept his reasons for not wanting to do it," she's being a horrible partner. *Communicate and compromise*, lady.

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I didn't mean to find two letters on the same theme, but I guess I did and now here we are

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religious details about letter 2

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