Dirty Laundry?

[Originally published Sept 2008]

To paraphrase Naomi Ragen, it isn’t that people don’t want their “dirty laundry washed in public” as much as they would like to maintain the impression their laundry never gets dirty in the first place. New York magazine’s treatment of the the ex-Satmar woman fighting for custody of her daughter is one such case. 

 I identify as an Orthodox Jew, though my practices and outlooks do not resemble my more stringent, black-clad co-religionists who might as a result question my commitment to Orthodoxy. But no matter. When people ask me how religious I am, I usually say the One who can answer that hasn’t told me; maybe He’ll tell you if you ask Him. 

Would it be better for the child to be raised by the less (or non-) observant parent? Should that not be the more salient factor in deciding the custody issue? While the upbringing could be considered a factor in any divorce proceeding, in these types of proceedings they are the predominant if not the only deciding factor. 

And that might be the actual necessity of bringing cases like these to public attention, for two reasons: 

 One, sometimes the ostensible stringency of the religious environment isn’t ipso-facto what’s best for the child, as these people believe. As a therapist friend of mine who worked with “at-risk” religious youth told a parent complaining about the level of religiosity at a treatment center: “Your kid’ll be more religious. Your kid also may die.” 

 Two, sealed communities have to be made to realize that hermetic insularity is really no longer an option; they call attention to themselves by their insular nature, and as result will be subject to all kids of scrutiny, warranted or otherwise, precisely because they expect us to believe that they are the true Light unto the Nations. 

Don’t leave the Light on for us if you don’t want us to see what’s going on.