Frum or Façade?

Scott was always being told by this father “don’t go out without your hat. If you don’t want to do it for yourself at least do it for me.” Scott could never understand why it meant so much for his father to see him with a hat on if it didn’t mean that much to Scott himself. What was dad gaining by forcing his son to wear a black hat?

But it was more than just the hat. Scott grew up never feeling that he was enough for his father in any area. He wasn’t fast enough or smart enough or organized enough or ambitious enough. In fact all of the qualities that dad excelled in were the qualities that he found fault in and criticized in his children.

Scott’s dad emphasized many of the external aspects of Judaism and pushed them on his children, but he didn’t spend time sitting and getting to know them as individuals.  The “white shirt”, “polished shoes”, and freshly pressed “dark suit” took precedence, in Dad’s mind, over the inner emotional lives of his wife and children. Everything had to look fabulous.

It wasn’t that praying three times a day with a quorum of ten men was not important, it just seemed sort of empty to Scott. What was the point? He didn’t feel it and the more his father yelled at him to go the less he felt like going. Scott knew intellectually than these issues were important to his father and others, but he could never figure out why they were not important to him. Scott’s self-esteem suffered from not being compliant with his father’s expectations of him and he drifted even further away from Judaism.

Scott heard his father say: “I pray every morning at 6 am; and I’ve learned a page of Talmud a day for the last 20 years.” Scott thought to himself “Yea for you. I still think you’re a jerk” but he didn’t know why. Scott, like many kids who can’t put their fingers on what’s wrong with their parents, end up thinking there is something wrong with themselves.

In Scott’s mind it was obvious why he was the bum and not his father. He was the one who was cutting out of school and failing. His father never behaved that way. He was the one who was hanging out on the street and drinking all night. His father never behaved that way. He was the one who kept getting thrown out of yeshivas. His father certainly never behaved that way.

On the contrary, Scott’s father was a popular guy in their community and well-liked by Rabbis whom he gave charity to.

So who was Scott to blame beside himself?

The day that Scott stopped blaming himself started on the day when one of his brothers was working on his dad’s computer and found a whole bunch of pornographic pictures that his father had stored there. He didn’t dare say anything to his father, but when he told Scott, things started falling into place in Scott’s mind. He remembered that his father would sometimes stay up until 1 o’clock in the morning talking to a woman guest at their Friday night Shabbat dinner. He never understood why. Scott remembered seeing his father go over to the ladies’ section at parties and he never understand why he did that either. In fact he once asked his father why he went into the ladies’ section, and his father told him “I don’t see them as ladies.” As a child, what possible meaning could such an answer had to Scott? He had no idea what it meant.

But he does now…

Of course it was very painful and still is painful for Scott to know that his father has a problem with personal purity. But as Scott goes through Rabbi Arush’s book The Garden of Purity, he is starting to feel more normal than he ever did in his life. Scott has been able to make headway in getting his career, his marriage, and his parenting skills together by understanding that a man’s personal purity is the key to success in all of those areas.

When a man is lusting after women, says Rabbi Arush. It has an immediate detrimental effect on the souls of his wife and children. “It makes you feel even crazier when you don’t know why you are feeling so crazy,” said Scott. Unconsciously, Scott always knew that his father’s internal life didn’t match up to his external religious behavior and appearance but he never knew the full truth until now.

Knowing Scott, I’m sure that when his anger toward his father blows over, he will be looking to find the good qualities that his father surely has and from which he has surely benefited. He will have a more complete picture of his father and of himself. In the meantime, the combination of his brother’s revelation about the pictures and reading The Garden of Purity is making Scott into a different husband and father for sure.