A Letter to My Radical, Leftist, Pro-Palestinian, LGBTQIA+, Polyamory and Polytheistic Adult Child

I’m trying to figure out how you came from me.

I’m an observant Jew, a convert, someone who believes that the Torah is truth and that truth is not relative—it just is. I fought hard through a trenchant agnosticism and secular humanism to get to that place, and I treasure what I’ve learned. I still fight for it, and the deeper my convictions become, the more I treasure them.

Enter the adult iteration of you, of the little girl I gave birth to. In addition to my being God’s partner in that gift of life, I tried to give you the best of everything I had.

Now you believe in anarchy, perhaps trending towards socialism; I believe in an imperfect but necessary capitalism.

You believe that the oppressed have the right to “resist by any means necessary;” I believe that we should work together to help the oppressed.

You believe that the oppressed have the right to “resist by any means necessary;” I believe that we should work together to help the oppressed.

You believe that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism; I believe that anti-Zionism, with very few exceptions, is the embodiment of antisemitism today.

You believe in having multiple partners; I believe in an exclusive relationship.

You believe in a multiplicity of gods; I believe there is only One.

I’m not an expert in government but I have come to understand that socialism generally devolves into authoritarianism, whereas capitalism encourages initiative and responsibility. It’s not a perfect system and there have been abuses of it, but the ways in which the alternatives have played out in history have not been pretty.

You believe that, given the “context,” those who are oppressed have the right to do anything to those they see as “oppressors” (including taking hostages and murdering, raping, torturing, mutilating, and burning civilian women and children); I believe that if you broaden the context, you would see the moral and factual inversions. You would see the Jewish people, victims of the longest-standing historical oppression of any people ever, the target of explicit genocidal intent, being blamed for the same (oppression and genocide) when they dare to stand up and defend themselves—this when the tragic oppression of Gazans has been ultimately caused by their neighboring Arab countries, the leaders and government the Gazans voted into power, and ultimately by themselves, in their decision to enable hatred by remaining ensconced in a victim role.

You believe that Zionism is inherently an ethno-supremacist, colonial endeavor, and that you are not prejudiced or discriminating against Jews in that belief. Yet where is the recognition that Israel is the only state in the Middle East which entitles its minorities to full citizenship? Where is the recognition of Jewish indigeneity, Jewish presence in the land of Israel far predating that of any of the other peoples who have migrated there?

Where is the outcry regarding the actual genocides and severe human rights abuses in other countries rather than the obsessive, myopic focus on Israel? When the one and only tiny Jewish state is the target of that type of demonization, it smacks of a virulent antisemitism, however cloaked in human rights discourse in an attempt to project legitimacy.

You believe in very few boundaries and preach tolerance, except when someone dares to disagree with you. You take inclusivity to its extreme ends, where it loses much of its meaning.

You believe in the right to be any gender you want, to be in any kind of relationship that you want, to believe in a multiplicity of powers and engage with them as if they are independent sources. You believe in very few boundaries and preach tolerance, except when someone dares to disagree with you. You take inclusivity to its extreme ends, where it loses much of its meaning. It’s not by accident that the words idolatry and adultery consist of the same consonants in the same order.

I believe in the right to self-determination, for countries as well as individuals. We were created with free will, but when you consistently put what you feel and want above any other authority, then you’ve elevated yourself to a new status—you are your own god, with all your other gods serving you.

You believe the antitheses of what I believe.

And while my focus here is on the differences in our beliefs, I am aware for both of us of a deep underlay of pain, with much more going on than what I am able to convey in this short space. I miss the little girl who would curl into my side. I miss the ease of just being in each other’s presence. I miss the implicit trust. I miss thinking the world of each other, of being considerate and supportive. I miss our deepest as well as our most mundane conversations. The pain of that disconnection is visceral and profound.

I miss you.

How could I give you truth when I didn’t have it myself? I had pieces of it, pale intimations of it, but I couldn’t offer clarity and the types of limits that only truth can provide. A quote attributed to the Kotzker Rebbe: “Everything in this world can be imitated except for the truth.”

You feel oppressed and identify with other oppressed people, regardless of how they would crucify you for your beliefs or lifestyle.

I think you feel small and vulnerable. I think you are deeply embedded in a community from which you draw your identity and a powerful sense of purpose and belonging. You feel oppressed and identify with other oppressed people, regardless of how they would crucify you for your beliefs or lifestyle. You feel entitled to treat others poorly if you disagree with what they believe. We disagree on so many issues but I know that you have a big heart. You did imbibe the value of kindness somewhere along the way, beginning in your early years. I even wonder whether your lack of limits and being overly inclusive comes from an intuitive sense—however dim and distorted—of the Oneness of the world. We share values at the highest level of abstraction, but we disagree utterly on their implementation.

And now, in your rigid mindset, you are conditioning our relationship on my accepting your point of view.

Given our interactions, there are two very different paths I could take. I could cut off all contact with you; not only have you been hostile and verbally assaultive at times, but the nature of our relationship has changed since I converted in your adulthood. Or I could just focus on loving you; I could just keep showering you with that love, as I share responsibility for bringing you into the world.

While each has its merits, I can’t get fully on board with either of these seemingly polar opposites. I’ve chosen an alternative: maintaining contact out of my love for you, while establishing boundaries to differentiate between your rational and irrational responses. But navigating your volatility, especially regarding Israel and Gaza, is like dancing through a mine field.

I wish that you could be open to the idea that we don’t know everything and that sometimes people who have been around longer might have some wisdom to share.

I wish—I pray—with all of my heart that you find your way home.

I wish you could experience the freedom and depth of connection borne of an exclusive commitment. I wish that you could understand that when you prioritize emotions, and reason from there, bias will be inherent in everything that follows.

I wish that you could approach life with a balance between kindness and boundaries, freedoms and limits, free speech stopping short of hate speech and respecting that line. I think if you could approach life with more flexibility and curiosity and not stayed locked inside what you see as your “safe space,” you would be healthier and happier.

I think I know something of how you came from me, but you also took so many turns on your own, even before your “education” in college, leading you to a place that I have to dig very deeply to recognize any familiar roots. But I believe they are there.

I want to hope. I wish—I pray—with all of my heart that you find your way home, back to who you truly are, a child entrusted to me and, more importantly, an exalted creation of God.

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