Imagine a person raises their child to believe that they are a Jedi. Every day, this person would spend hours “training” their child to one day unleash their Jedi powers. Imagine this person also gave their child an elaborate backstory about how they were part of a secret chosen group and were sent to this planet by the rebellion for a special mission to go back in time and defeat Darth Vader before he was born.
This person would be guilty of child abuse.
Every day I feel like this person. I am an atheist, but every night after a bedtime story or two, I sing Shema, Ha'malach hagoel, and Ani Maaman to my three children. At the Shabbos table, I talk about how Hashem watches over all of us and how special we are to be the chosen people. I am sending my children to schools that will mold my children to believe the tenants of Judaism unquestioningly. I get excited with my children for Pesach and Shavious. I daven in front of my children, showing them by example that Judaism is the correct way of life.
Why am I not guilty of child abuse for raising my children to believe a religion that, from my perspective, is false? Belief in Yiddishkeit comes with a high price. Frum Yidden are bound by thousands of laws governing how they dress, eat, talk, sleep, pray, procreate, and die. Suppose my attempt to influence my children is successful. In that case, they will never enjoy a Saturday at the beach, listen to Billie Eilish, or marvel at the beauty of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. They will spend countless hours learning books about laws that do not matter and talking to an entity that doesn’t exist. My children are young now, but I can picture the anger they will feel towards me if they ever discover the truth. I dread the day that they will ask me, “Abba, how could you lock me in the same prison that you spent five years escaping?”
This question consumed me. When I first decided that, no matter how much I wanted to hide from the truth, I no longer believed, my wife and I were at a crossroads. She had turned down many men when she was dating, stubbornly insisting on marrying a real Ben Torah. Yet, here I was, not a working guy, or a YU guy, or even a Kollel bum, but rather an atheist. We were living the perfect life, building a beautiful bayis ne’eman in a cozy apartment in the heart of Lakewood Ir HaTorah. I loved my wife and desperately did not want to hurt her, yet here I was, shattering her dreams in an ocean of pain. My life was also unraveling. I realized that my entire life was a lie. I was unfortunate enough to be afflicted with a worldview that, if exposed, would instantly cost me all my friendships, my job, and my social standing. I would become a pariah, shunned, and expelled from the community. I also loved my children more than I ever thought it was possible to love anything, and I knew that my actions now would permanently affect them.
People counseled my wife to leave me and take the children. I was also lured by the tantalizing freedom that comes with the chance to throw off three decades of indoctrination. But my wife and I both decided to stay together and make it work. Her take-it-or-I-am-leaving condition—I must remain in the closet, and we raise our children like a regular frum family. Agreeing to raise our children's frum was a bitter pill to swallow, but I needed to make a decision, and I agreed to my wife's ultimatum.
Nevertheless, despite my initial decision, I constantly second-guessed myself. I was always taught that it is wrong to do chesed on someone else's cheshbon, but was I prioritizing my marriage over my children's wellbeing? I voraciously read the stories of other people in mixed marriages on Facebook, hoping to find clarity. I read In Faith and In Doubt, as well as Hidden Heretics by Ayala Fader, hoping to find answers finally. But ultimately, I was always disappointed. People with more secular and accepting spouses seemed fine. Their spouse had no problem presenting the children with a “daddy believes X and mommy believe Y” worldview.
Contrary to the line that many frum rabbis and therapists shill, these children do not “grow up confused.” They grow up just fine, thank you very much; better even for having witnessed their parents' mutual respect despite their differing worldviews. On the other end of the spectrum, I read many stories of people in Chassidic communities navigating mixed marriages. The issue was that these couples seemed just as stuck as me. Ayala Fader poignantly describes the pain of many of the children brought up in these marriages. No one seemed to have found the ideal solution.
This may sound unsatisfying, but there is no clear “cookie-cutter” answer on how to navigate a mixed marriage. We are in a sucky situation facing divorce and potential parental alienation on one side, and a life of lies and deceit on the other. We all need to make a cost-benefit analysis for ourselves and our children--and pick the least harmful option. For me, these were the factors that I considered:
I am entitled to happiness – one of the greatest joys of going OTD is discovering that we only live once, and we are all entitled to maximize the joy, pleasure, and happiness in our existence. Our past does not define us, and, if we are not hurting others, we have complete freedom to reclaim our future and shape in whatever way we see fit. People can change and discover themselves, and other people's judgments of our journey are irrelevant. For me, this factor militated toward shedding my old life. I was free to eat what I wanted, dress how I wanted, listen to whatever music I wanted, and discover all the pleasures that I had been deprived of my entire life.
I had not betrayed my spouse by going OTD - Yes, my wife had married me with certain expectations, but I was not betraying her. We had both been duped into a narrative that we did not create. Marriage under these circumstances is not a blood oath that can never be revoked. Marriage is a commitment to give one's full effort to repair and maintain the relationship, but it is a voluntary arrangement amongst adults. If remaining in the marriage would cause either me or my spouse more long-term unhappiness than staying, than she and I were both free to leave.
My children deserved a good life – I owed my children an obligation to raise them in a manner that maximized their chances of growing up happy and well adjusted. This reality made my decision pretty clear. More than any other choice that I would ever make, remaining or dissolving my marriage would, by far, have the most significant impact on my children's happiness. My parents got divorced after 27 years of horribleness, and trust me, we were all happier afterward. But I am in a vastly different place than my parents. My wife and I are both relatively well-adjusted people, we do not fight often, we genuinely love each other, and (so far) seem capable of creating a stable and happy home. When viewed in its totality, my ability to provide my children a comfortable, finically secure, stable, two-parent home is such a significant factor that it outweighs the cost of raising them with a false belief system. Children that come from divorced families are three times more likely to contemplate suicide and are almost two times more likely to suffer from a mental disorder. I could give my children a great home to grow up in; it seemed crazy to give that up for what would ultimately become an ugly custody battle and endless fighting over the child's soul.
Belief in Yiddishkeit is very burdensome – sure, there are many tame versions of Yiddishkeit, but the version that my wife insisted that we raise our children in—yeshivish lite—is quite difficult. I am fortunate that my wife is not Chassidic or hardcore yeshivish, but all versions of yeshivish are quite extreme. My son will likely not receive a great English education. My daughters will grow up wanting to marry learners, not earners. They will be like the ani yodya li’shol at the Pesach seder, learning to take for granted all the sexism that comes built into the very warp and woof of frum culture. Every part of me wants them to be free of the endless burdens of halacha. I want to spare them the pain of being a single girl in shidduchim, or the angst of being a teenage boy with no outlets, or the statistical likelihood that they will put themselves into poverty to support a meaningless “Kollel life.” I want my son to be free to explore art or engineering or acting or environmentalism without being made to feel like a failure for not learning Torah all day. I want my children to have favorite tv shows and movies and video games. I want them to be free to explore the world and become whoever they want to become. I want them to have everything I couldn’t have because I was raised in a lie. But…
Belief in Yiddishkeit can create a lot of happiness – When my father died, I cried harder than my siblings. For me, my father was gone forever; his consciousness forever gone the moment he fell on the hospital floor and died. All that existed were my memories, the good, the bad, and the ugly. But Yiddishkeit gave my siblings the ultimate comfort – he was not gone, he is in heaven, perfectly content, and waiting for you.
I suffered truly spine-chilling emotional and physical abuse at the hands of some of my Rebbeim. My only comfort when I was hurt was that one day, there would be judgment. I might be helpless right now, but Kol ma’asecha bi’safer nichtavim (all one's deeds are recorded), and in the next world, I will be vindicated, and my oppressors would face the full wrath of divine justice.
Yiddishkeit also creates an instant and robust community. As long as you are part of the community, you will find that Jewish people are some of the kindest, most pleasant, gentle, and giving people on earth. Yiddishkeit also imbues one's life with meaning. Our actions have a purpose, and everything we do can have cosmic effects. Yiddishkeit teaches that one can fix even the worst mistake with teshuva and that even if one does not have the strength to love themselves, Hashem always loves them.
These are gifts that my belief in Yiddishkeit gave me. Yes, they were false hopes, my father is never coming back, and my abusers will never face justice. Life is a meaningless accident, and we do not have free will. But who cares? Non-believers have no hill to die on. Comfort often exists at the expense of truth. We often happily convince ourselves of all sorts of falsehoods to maintain our self-esteem and emotional equilibrium. While it is true that belief in Judaism comes at a steep price, it also comes with substantial benefits, real and imagined.
My wife also has a right to educate my children – as much as I am convinced that Judaism is false, my wife passionately believes that it is true. It would give me great happiness to teach my children my perspective on the universe, but my wife is also entitled to teach her mesorah. The problem is that because my wife's’ beliefs are absolute, they do not allow for two options; we must make a choice. We cannot teach the children atheism on Sunday, Judaism on Monday, and Sikhism on Tuesday. If parents have diffing views, but the opinions are elastic enough to admit their own subjectivity, then they can happily raise the children with the “daddy believes X, and mommy believes Y” approach. But extreme religious faith demands exclusivity. Teaching your children that “daddy believes X, but mommy's entire life is built around believing Y and anyone who believes X is a terrible sinner” will indeed hurt and confuse the children. One way or another, we needed to present a united and seamless front--and to keep my family intact and give my children a loving home, I picked the red pill.
The entire extended family is religious – even if I broke away, ready and insistent on teaching my children the real truth about Judaism, my chances of succeeding are not high. Like any good Bais Yaakov girl, my wife will do anything to keep the children frum. Additionally, I would be on my own, trying to inculcate my children with a worldview that my entire extended family would try to undermine. As they grow older, they would face all sorts of emotional pressure to conform to the mores and beliefs of the larger family. While my decision to raise my children frum makes me complicit in their indoctrination, I am not the only actor. Even if I could somehow get joint custody, my children would most likely end up frum. Yes, they will never experience a Saturday on the beach, but they are the victims of much larger historical forces that create and sustain organized religious belief systems. From my vantage point, it is better to let them live in such a lie and raise them as good upstanding people rather than sacrifice my children’s happiness in the name of truth.
Conclusion: Living in the closet is hard and lonely. When I spend time with my friends, I cannot help but feel like a fraud. Going over the parsha sheets with my children is a confusing and challenging experience. But I keep my silence. In a few years, my wife has agreed to transition to a more mellow, accepting, out-of-town yeshvish lifestyle. Ultimately, everyone needs to make their own determination. For me, the fact that I had a strong and stable marriage, combined with the fact that I am a pragmatist and do not feel a strong need to “be true to myself” at all costs, allowed me to maintain the façade of being a frum person to give my children a stable home. Did I make the right decision, or am I deluding myself? I do not know. One of the more terrifying aspects of going OTD is realizing that choices have consequences, and there is no “daas Torah” to hide behind. No one can point me towards an objectively right decision; all I can do is navigate my various biases and think through the varied factors and try to decide on a course of action. As Chazal say, ayn li’dayan ela ma she’aynov ro’is—a person can only act based on the evidence they have.