Finding peace in or out of orthodoxy

GILLIAN KLAWANSKY

Born in Israel, Kobie Cohen was never particularly observant. “I come from a home where there was no Shabbos, or Yom Tov,” he says. “My mother lit Shabbos candles, and when there was a function, we did the traditional things, but that was all.”

At 27, Kobie moved to South Africa with his girlfriend – now wife – Lisa, and together they slowly became more involved in Chabad. “It was a fluke that we became frum (devout),” he says. “I worked for a security company, and a shul had been robbed. I went there with my shorts and my cigarettes, and I put the alarm system in. While I was there, the rabbi encouraged me to lay tefillin, so I did. Then he kept pressing the panic button every day, so I went, and each time, he encouraged me to get more involved. Slowly, we became more observant. My wife and I decided to become frum together almost 21 years ago, and I’ve never looked back.”

Kobie ultimately resigned because his boss wouldn’t allow him time off for Shabbos and Yom Tov. “Rabbi Baumgarten – without whom I wouldn’t be who I am – then suggested I go on a mashgiach (kashrut supervisory) course, so I did. Now I’m at Moishe’s in the butchery, kashering meat and people’s kitchens,” he says. “I think about why Hashem took me thousands of kilometres from Israel to South Africa to become frum – not only to become kosher, but to help other people to keep kosher. It’s probably what my neshama (soul) was supposed to do. Sometimes you have to change your path in life to reveal what’s inside.”

“I was born in South Africa, and raised in Israel on a very secular kibbutz,” says Kobie’s wife, Lisa. She admits that adopting a religious lifestyle was an adjustment. “Covering my head and giving up my denims was quite an issue for me. Even today, I listen to the radio and I haven’t given up TV. Everything else came slowly. From becoming frum, I’ve gained a better quality of life to a certain extent. Maybe because I chose the life, I appreciate the values.

Lisa acknowledges a certain amount of friction with more secular family members, but says they’ve learned to adapt because family is so important. “Part of yiddishkeit is learning to accept people,” she says.

Also a ba’al teshuvah, Kerri Sacks had virtually no religious upbringing. “We had traditional Friday nights, but I knew absolutely nothing about yiddishkeit. Then in my mid-20s, I was going through a really hard time in my life, and there was no direction and meaning. I was introduced to keeping Shabbos by a friend. I thought it was amazing, and began keeping it too. Two years afterwards, I met my husband, who had also newly become shomrei (upholding tradition).”

Kerri says it took her a long time to find the right balance in her level of religiousness. “When you don’t know anything, you lose yourself a bit in the religion, but then you start finding yourself again.

“I strongly believe in giving my three kids a Jewish education, and encouraging them to learn Torah. I feel that if I had Torah, I would maybe have been stronger as a person, and I wouldn’t have been swept away by life or have made bad decisions. You never know though.”

Wendy Richard embraced a religious lifestyle slowly, and is now a rebbetzin. While she lost some friends as she became more religious, good friends and family stuck by her. “I always try to keep in mind that I’ve seen life from both sides, and not judge how others choose to live their lives.”

Like Kerry, Wendy says the biggest challenge in becoming frum was to find a balance between being religious and being obsessive. “Of course, Hashem wants us to do His mitzvot, but we should be serving him with joy. My biggest gains have been marrying my husband, building a family, and watching my children grow up with Torah values.”

For Michelle* a frum lifestyle was never the perfect fit. When she was a child, her father and stepmother became more religious, and she came to accept it. “I got married at 21, and my ex-husband also came from a frum family,” she says. “So, it was kosher, Shabbos, mikveh, and all of that, but I never wore a sheitel. After 21 years, he met someone from work and decided he was done with this whole marriage, religion, and family business, and moved out. I felt like I’d embraced the religious lifestyle for him, it wasn’t really something that I wanted myself. Judaism was never the focus of my life, it was the framework within which I lived my life.”

Becoming less religious was a gradual process, she says. “It took me a year to drive on Shabbos. I felt really guilty about that, but now I don’t blink. At first, I was worried that my family would see me, but later I moved away from the eiruv (halachic enclosure). Having kosher meat has stuck, and I still light candles on Friday night as it has meaning for me – but then I go and watch TV.”

Tammy* became very religious, but later moved away from the fold. “I grew up in a traditional home, but when I was a teenager, I got hectically involved in yiddishkeit. My parents had got divorced, and the sense of family and community was something I’d never experienced. It’s still something I admire. I went to sem (religious seminary) in Israel after school.”

She later married a man who was frum from birth. “I wore a sheitel, he wore a black hat,” she says. “I was very into it, but then unfortunately I got sick. I think people go one of two ways in these cases – they either get closer to religion or they don’t. I moved away, but there’s one thing I’m sure of. I’ve now got the closest connection to G-d that I’ve ever had because I’m doing things that mean something to me. I’m not doing things by rote.

“My husband is still frum, and we respect each other. He’s not fanatical. It was very gradual, so there was time to get into it.” Tammy says that while she has the support of her husband, their families, and their friends, there have been losses. “I don’t have any community standing by me now. When I left, I never even got a call to ask what was going on. I think that you’re put in a box when you’re religious, and you’ve got to conform to that box. I walked away from it, and it’s a two-way street, I guess.

“Now I focus on the right things – trying to be a mensch. I’ve got a daughter, and I’ll support her whether she wants to be frum or secular. I want to be able to be a role model for her in terms of [myself as a] person, not in terms of a religion.”

Joshua* grew up in a frum home, but gradually experienced problems with the lifestyle. “I was into being frum because that was all I knew, that’s how I grew up, and that’s who my friends were. I went with it.”

Yet slowly, he began to drift away from a religious lifestyle. “It wasn’t working for me. There was a lot of preaching about the amazing way of life, and what it gives to you, and I wasn’t seeing that. It felt like do this and that because it’s the right thing to do, and then your family and your marriage will be amazing, and you’ll get lots of money because you give lots of tzedakah (charity). [My] experience was to the contrary.

Joshua now has an observant wife, and has found a happy medium. “I’m a lot more at peace and happy with my religion. I’m comfortable with what I do. I’m not properly shomrei or kosher, but I’ll probably get back there eventually.”

*Names have been changed at the request of the interviewees to protect their families.