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great topic! start a separate thread so everyone can contribute and discuss, without derailing this thread.
I notice in several posts now you have commented upon (and questioned) how other people learn, so maybe a thread on learning Torah is something everyone can discuss. For the Divine Presence rests upon us when Jews share words of Torah.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 09-09-2015 at 01:37 PM..
So here is an update on my son. I did not attend the wedding and I know it was the right thing to do. I thought I would feel terrible about it missing the wedding but I did not. I felt incredible relief and peace. It's been almost a year since they got married and it is apparent that I did the right thing.
Some interesting related notes. Whenever I had considered going to the wedding once he became engaged I felt sick to my stomach. Literally like I was going to be ill. It turns out every person who attended the wedding from the groom's side got sick on that trip. All of them.
The person who became most ill however was my son. Within minutes of being married (literally it was less than 3 minutes) he physically collapsed to the floor and had to be rushed to the hospital. He was hospitalized and was told it was a serious infection that had been worsening for days and without immediate medical attention he would have died.
There were nearly 800 people at the wedding including 40+ Catholic priests. Even though for months and years leading up to the wedding he was told it's not a problem he is not Catholic she is ok marrying not just a non Catholic but a Jew as well, as soon as he landed in India he texted me saying they want him to agree to something so they can do a different kind of ceremony and get a "better blessing". We looked it up together on line and what they were telling him to do was become baptized and be converted.
I said it felt like a bait and switch because his understanding all along was that he would not be asked to convert. I said its ok to delay the wedding since they at the last minute were asking of him something that really is a big deal. I asked him if he felt pressured and was it from her or the family. He said yes he felt pressured but that it was his decision to make.
He decided to go ahead and get married but not do the baptism conversion. He said it was a big decision and he needed to research it further before making what is an important decision. He said "If I do it this quickly without knowing what it is I'm doing there is no integrity." I thought that was wonderful. So they had the "not as good" ceremony.
We only talk about any of this if he brings it up. He was near tears at one call out of the blue. He said what if I agree to convert does that mean I forfeit being Jewish forever? What if I want to study with a rabbi someday? I don't want to give that up.
I was curious to see if the pressure to convert would continue once they got back to USA and it has. He is attending weekly classes. He has also asked me to recommend Jewish books and what was the name of the book the rabbi recommended. (He had one visit one time a year earlier with a rabbi because I wanted him to lay tefillin at least once in his life and I wanted a photo of him in tefillin) He asked for the rabbis email so he could contact him for book recommendations.
I gave a.pidyon to the rabbi who I have met only once but he is the one my son had connected with and once I gave it, it felt like it was more for me than for my son. It makes me happy to do the mitzvah of pidyon.
Anyway thank you everyone for listening. Every Jew is precious and I see my son's Jewish neshama strong and bright. Gamzu l'tova.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 02-14-2017 at 07:51 AM..
I have a list of questions to ask in the heavenly academies for when I get to the other side. I am very curious to find out what was going on when he collapsed and was close to death at getting married. Also I am going to ask about all those Catholics trying to steal his soul. (They even got a letter from the pope and kept showing it to my son.)
Do other people keep this type of list? I have done it for decades even before I knew I was jewish.
Travelling to India - 1 has to get a lot of flu shots and stuff due to all the diseases that you will be exposed. Supposedly India has no sewers, living there is somewhat unsanitary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
we tend to have more in common with our grandparents than our parents, in our family anyway.
It might be like this too. My dad married and divorced 6 times. He is White and the last 5 wives were Asian, including my mom. But his mother was religious Catholic. But her mom married 11 times, so my Catholic grandma was "ashamed" of her mom for being so promiscuos.
Me - I'm not religious at all, but I'm a virgin at 28, still never had a girlfriend. ;O
....There were nearly 800 people at the wedding including 40+ Catholic priests. Even though for months and years leading up to the wedding he was told it's not a problem he is not Catholic she is ok marrying not just a non Catholic but a Jew as well, as soon as he landed in India he texted me saying they want him to agree to something so they can do a different kind of ceremony and get a "better blessing". We looked it up together on line and what they were telling him to do was become baptized and be converted.
I said it felt like a bait and switch because his understanding all along was that he would not be asked to convert. I said its ok to delay the wedding since they at the last minute were asking of him something that really is a big deal. I asked him if he felt pressured and was it from her or the family. He said yes he felt pressured but that it was his decision to make.
He decided to go ahead and get married but not do the baptism conversion. He said it was a big decision and he needed to research it further before making what is an important decision. He said "If I do it this quickly without knowing what it is I'm doing there is no integrity." I thought that was wonderful. So they had the "not as good" ceremony.
We only talk about any of this if he brings it up. He was near tears at one call out of the blue. He said what if I agree to convert does that mean I forfeit being Jewish forever? What if I want to study with a rabbi someday? I don't want to give that up.
I was curious to see if the pressure to convert would continue once they got back to USA and it has. He is attending weekly classes. He has also asked me to recommend Jewish books and what was the name of the book the rabbi recommended. (He had one visit one time a year earlier with a rabbi because I wanted him to lay tefillin at least once in his life and I wanted a photo of him in tefillin) He asked for the rabbis email so he could contact him for book recommendations.
I gave a.pidyon to the rabbi who I have met only once but he is the one my son had connected with and once I gave it, it felt like it was more for me than for my son. It makes me happy to do the mitzvah of pidyon.
Anyway thank you everyone for listening. Every Jew is precious and I see my son's Jewish neshama strong and bright. Gamzu l'tova.
I am seventy-nine years old and was raised in a very Catholic family. I have not been a Catholic for more than fifty years.
It was my father's family that was Catholic, and my mother chose to convert as she had no attachment to her own family's religion and wanted to ingratiate herself to her husband's family. Through the years and generations I have seen other non-Catholics marry into the family. Some have been asked if they would convert, others never were. Once they gave their decision, that was it.
I think your son is encountering the zealotry of converts, and that it is the family and the culture that are motivating the pressure. I saw this once with a Jewish convert to Catholicism in Brooklyn where he kept badgering a dying friend who was an ex-Catholic to come back into the church. He was a nuisance to the sick man and his family. But that's converts for you in my estimation.
By the way, just to clarify - the is only one and one only type of marriage in the R.C. church. What used to be done was that if both partners were Catholice the ceremony took place with the couple standing inside the altar sanctuary of the church. If one partner was non-Catholic the couple stood at the edge of the sanctuary and not in it. This custom has been abandoned in many places. But as for marriage, there is only one kind of marriage in the R.C., the "better blessing" stuff is the goobledegook of the credulous. Most U.S. or European Catholics would have snickered behind the priest's back at that - in a convert subculture of any religion I have seen, they are fall for all the most abject bushwah that is pushed on them. The marriage would have been the same if there was NO "blessing" other than the ceremony itself - that's basic Roman Catholic doctrine.
Perhaps in the U.S., but out of an ethnic subculture milieu he will simply be left alone.
So here is an update on my son. I did not attend the wedding and I know it was the right thing to do. I thought I would feel terrible about it missing the wedding but I did not. I felt incredible relief and peace. It's been almost a year since they got married and it is apparent that I did the right thing.
Some interesting related notes. Whenever I had considered going to the wedding once he became engaged I felt sick to my stomach. Literally like I was going to be ill. It turns out every person who attended the wedding from the groom's side got sick on that trip. All of them.
The person who became most ill however was my son. Within minutes of being married (literally it was less than 3 minutes) he physically collapsed to the floor and had to be rushed to the hospital. He was hospitalized and was told it was a serious infection that had been worsening for days and without immediate medical attention he would have died.
There were nearly 800 people at the wedding including 40+ Catholic priests. Even though for months and years leading up to the wedding he was told it's not a problem he is not Catholic she is ok marrying not just a non Catholic but a Jew as well, as soon as he landed in India he texted me saying they want him to agree to something so they can do a different kind of ceremony and get a "better blessing". We looked it up together on line and what they were telling him to do was become baptized and be converted.
I said it felt like a bait and switch because his understanding all along was that he would not be asked to convert. I said its ok to delay the wedding since they at the last minute were asking of him something that really is a big deal. I asked him if he felt pressured and was it from her or the family. He said yes he felt pressured but that it was his decision to make.
He decided to go ahead and get married but not do the baptism conversion. He said it was a big decision and he needed to research it further before making what is an important decision. He said "If I do it this quickly without knowing what it is I'm doing there is no integrity." I thought that was wonderful. So they had the "not as good" ceremony.
We only talk about any of this if he brings it up. He was near tears at one call out of the blue. He said what if I agree to convert does that mean I forfeit being Jewish forever? What if I want to study with a rabbi someday? I don't want to give that up.
I was curious to see if the pressure to convert would continue once they got back to USA and it has. He is attending weekly classes. He has also asked me to recommend Jewish books and what was the name of the book the rabbi recommended. (He had one visit one time a year earlier with a rabbi because I wanted him to lay tefillin at least once in his life and I wanted a photo of him in tefillin) He asked for the rabbis email so he could contact him for book recommendations.
I gave a.pidyon to the rabbi who I have met only once but he is the one my son had connected with and once I gave it, it felt like it was more for me than for my son. It makes me happy to do the mitzvah of pidyon.
Anyway thank you everyone for listening. Every Jew is precious and I see my son's Jewish neshama strong and bright. Gamzu l'tova.
I am so sorry for what you have been through and also for the situation for your son as it seems that it has been a sticky one.
My sister married a non-Jew and my father refused to attend the wedding at the time. My sister was very angry and wanted to cut off all contact with our father at that time although I persuaded her not to.My sister felt insulted that her father did not honor her life choice/s. Also at the time I pointed out to my father that my sister's children would still be Jewish.
My sister's circumstances were quite different from your son's being that my sister got married in a reform style ceremony although my brother-in-law did not convert to Judaism. My brother-in-law came from a non-practicing Christian family and is mother (who likes to sew) offered to hand make a "Chuppa"/canopy for the wedding. Even though my brother-in-law never converted even observes with my sister the Jewish holidays and I have been told that he even fasts on Yom Kipper.
My sister did not get sick during or after the wedding and as far as I know nobody did. My father finally came around when my sister was the first to give him a grandson (after 2 granddaughters via my brother) by coming twice for a Brith Mila ceremony (the first one was just a naming ceremony due to a birth defect that had to be corrected using the foreskin when the child was approx. a year old).
I have a list of questions to ask in the heavenly academies for when I get to the other side. I am very curious to find out what was going on when he collapsed and was close to death at getting married. Also I am going to ask about all those Catholics trying to steal his soul. (They even got a letter from the pope and kept showing it to my son.)
Do other people keep this type of list? I have done it for decades even before I knew I was jewish.
I am curious as to what the letter from the pope said exactly. Or why and how these people even got it. It is interesting that they felt such an instrument would serve to impress or influence a non-Catholic person.
I had a woman from India in my (Episcopal) theological study group last year. She was raised Catholic, but converted to Anglicanism (of which the Episcopal Church is part) when she married a man from the Church of South India. She has lived in the USA for 25 years, as does her elderly Catholic priest uncle. He visits her once a year, and she enjoys his visits, but she says at the end of each visit, he never fails to remind her and her husband that they are going to hell for not being Catholic.
Christianity in India predated Roman Catholicism. When the Portuguese Catholic missionaries arrived, they were harsher on the non-Catholic Christians than they were on the Hindus they encountered. It seems from your story and that of my Anglican Indian acquaintance that the legacy of the history of strict Catholicism in India carries down to this day.
Oh yes, I have a list of questions also.
It sound as if literally trusting your gut feeling was justified.
He visits her once a year, and she enjoys his visits, but she says at the end of each visit, he never fails to remind her and her husband that they are going to hell for not being Catholic.
And he's not going to hell for idolatry and cannibalism?
And he's not going to hell for idolatry and cannibalism?
Hahaha, apparently he doesn't think so!
These things are what happens when people believe THEIR religion is the "right" one for everyone.
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