Reply To: What should I was if I'm becoming orthodox

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oomis
Participant

I know it from friends who ARE frum, but their son became UBER-Yeshivish, for want of a better expression (really way beyond what most of us think of us Yeshivish), and it has really harmed the family dynamic because of his gaivehdik intolerance of what most people on this blog would consider to be normal behavior in a frum household. I would give an example, but there might be people on this site who know the family and would recognize my description of them.

The bottom line, you want to be more observant, that is so amazing. Just don’t change your relationship with your family in an obnoxious way. People who have been reading my posts for some years, know that I am married to a Baal Teshuvah, a very earnest, ehrliche, and fine man, who was that way BEFORE he ever became frum. That is largely due to his wonderful parents, O”H, who were loving, baalei chessed in every way, and could have taught ALL of us the proper way to act bein adam l’chaveiro. When my husband became frum, he did it little by little, taking on new halachos each time, learning what was proper and what was not. He never once dissed his family, and they took great pride in him becoming more religious, though they themselves were not. They made an extra effort when we came over (once a week with the kids) to have only kosher food and snacks in the house, plenty of unopened paper goods, and never questioned when we felt we could not eat something, i.e. my father-in-law bought a snack with a hechsher that we do not rely upon. But that is because we never made a big deal of it. We thanked him VERY much for going to the trouble of looking for things we could have, but also told him that we are only comfortable eating store products with an OU, OK, or Chof-K, but not the one he found with a different symbol. It makes a big difference, and great Kiddush Hashem, to show our non-religious family, co-workers, neighbors, that being frum doesn’t make us high and mighty. That is for Hashem to judge.