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Pesha   Wednesday, August 11, 2010 - 10:39am

The story of a kid who defies his parents by becoming Jewishly observant hit a nerve with me. During my junior year in college, a friend became religious while at Hebrew University, and transferred to a Yeshiva for his 2nd semester to immerse himself in Jewish studies. After we graduated, I became friendly with his parents, who confided in me how disappointed they were with his becoming an observant Jew. "We rejected that," they said. "Anything but that." I remember thinking to myself whether they would have preferred his becoming a drug addict. But the dynamic was that of course the child had to embrace what the parents had rejected. And interestingly enough, in one of those "Doesn't life throw you a curve ball sometimes" episodes, this young man eventually shed his frumkeit, and for years after abused drugs, landing in emergency rooms for overdosing on one chemical or another. By that time I was out of touch with him, but I always wondered what his parents thought then about his year of living religiously. In light of his drug problem, did they regret not having supported his religious persona? Pondering that question could make an interesting novel...