>>Do people accuse your family of shirking their “communal responsibilities” by not supporting the schools?<<
No, this isn’t something we’ve personally been accused of when homeschooling (though we were once accused of this when we sent our kids to a different school than some in the community wanted us to), but I’ve heard the ‘al tifrosh min hatzibor’ argument put forth as if that phrase alone was enough reason to make anyone back down in shame. If I did have this discussion, I’d be quick to point out the false assertion that the schools alone comprise the community. There are many ways to be involved in the community other than the schools. Many people say a lot of things like this because they’ve never thought too deeply about what they’re saying. Would they tell that to someone who has never had children, or whose children are grown, or who is deeply involved in other aspects of klal work?
>>How do you keep your family plugged in and connected (to the frum community) when you have stepped outside of it in certain ways? <<
Most people feel like school is the only way to be connected to the community because their lives are so dominated by school that they aren’t aware of how many other paths are available. It won’t surprise you that I feel there are other better, or at the very least, equally valid, ways to be connected. You can support your community with your active involvement, passive presence, and finances. All are necessary and many overlap. Here are some things that come to mind:
Shul (synagogue) – though I don’t go to shul (unless it’s to meet my husband after davening), my older kids do. The boys go daily, the girls on Shabbos. In addition to services, there are also social events hosted by shuls where attendance is important.
Shiurim – for adults and older children. Our older kids have all attended shiurim in the community; ds went to a daily morning amud shiur for adult men in the beginning of this year (until the days got short and it was so dark in the morning that he started going to a later minyan because it didn’t feel safe to him walking alone), both girls have attended a weekly Pirkei Avos shiur given by our shul rav for the last couple of years for teen girls. There are Shabbos groups for younger kids and teen minyanim but I don’t support these; however, it is one way for your kids to feel involved.
Financially – donations to organizations in your community; there are many needs in our community except for the schools. Do you pay shul dues? Do you ever shop in stores/use services owned by others in the community?
Volunteering – I think this is the best way for kids to feel like they can help their communities. Our kids routinely help out in different ways at our shul, and periodically help other organizations. For example, my ds leins every Shabbos mincha for our shul, several of the other kids frequently help set up and clean up after shul shalosh seudos as well as at other events.
Hosting guests – Shabbos meals, sleeping arrangements, etc – what would a community be like if there was no hospitality?
Aside from these obvious ways are many more subtle ways to be an asset to your community – like giving helpful advice or support to someone while shmoozing in the supermarket. A community is made up of many individuals and the little things they do; every positive thing you do contributes even if it’s unseen and seemingly unappreciated.
What I’m about to say is something I feel very strongly about, and have found to play out in my own life. Steven Covey writes about the circle of influence and circle of concern. The circle of influence is what you actually can take action to improve (your behavior, your job, your family). The circle of concern are things that you care about but can’t do much about (like world politics, the devaluation of our currency, and the price of tea in China). The problem is most of us don’t make distinctions between the two and waste our precious time and life energy invested in the wrong areas. By focusing on your circle of influence – this begins with yourself and your family – your circle of influence will gradually become wider and expand to begin affecting your circle of concern. But if you focus first on the circle of concern, your personal power will become diminished and you won’t even be of much help to your immediate family. What this means is that neither you or your community will benefit if you help your community (circle of concern) before your family (circle of influence). So even if it seems like someone is being selfish because they’re focusing all of their attention on their family, in the end they will have been of much greater service than someone making the opposite choice.
>>once you step a little toe outside of the line, you already alienate yourself- to a certain extent- from the community. <<
There’s a difference between you actively distancing yourself from the community and others alienating you because you’re not ‘toeing the line’. At least for your own sake, be clear who is doing what.
>>i find it so hard to keep my kids respecting daas torah and frum people when those are the very people who say we are crazy for homeschooling- they have told my childrens’ friends that we must have problems and this filters back to my children. it’s pretty demoralizing and it is starting to make my kids really resent our neighbors and our community. because they have nothing to balance that out, they are starting to conclude that the frummer you are, the more narrow minded you are, and it is really really becoming a problem. so, do you encounter that at all? <<
I’d seriously consider moving if faced with this dilemma. I think your kids are religiously in danger and there’s a very real concern you’re all going to end up cynical, frustrated, and resentful when everyone around you is criticizing you for what you feel is a positive choice for your family. If you’re already at fault just by virtue of doing something different, and people won’t consider who you are and how you live before jumping to rash judgements, it will be hard not to feel defensive about your choices unless you can cultivate an attitude of finding the humor and letting what others say roll down your back. That’s not so easy to do.
If moving isn’t an option (and I realize that usually it isn’t), you’ll need to define for yourself and your kids what the Torah values that you believe in are and how that may differ from what others are doing. What actually is the Torah position and what is following the crowd? For example, one Torah value is giving charity. Here in our city, we have a community initiative to encourage people to give a high percentage of their charity dollars to the schools. However, the way giving manifests itself for some people isn’t the only way to give charity. Because my kids understand that the Torah value is tzedaka, they realize that everyone should choose what causes in the community they want to support, and we aren’t obligated to support this initiative even if many others do.
We constantly discuss hashkafa (Jewish philosophy and outlook) with our kids. We talk about the prevailing view, why people believe that, how different issues have evolved over the years (for example, women working to support kollel husbands, the yeshiva system, rebbeim as more important that parents, the working and learning balance, sending kids away to yeshiva at a young age, etc), and our position on an issue and why we came to that position. Dh is particularly good at showing the kids sources in seforim for our choices. So the kids don’t feel like we’re not frum because we homeschool, or have our babies born at home, or anything else that might not by typical, and if someone said something about it, our kids would dismiss them as being uneducated or close minded.
We talk about these things frequently, not in a lecturing way but in a shmoozy conversational way. The kids bring up something someone said, or something that bothers them, and we discuss it. Your kids need to know that you have a conscious and thoughtful approach to your yiddishkeit; if they see that, what others say might annoy them but won’t be a danger of being turned off to a Torah lifestyle.
I also think it’s important for you to help your kids find someone they can respect and look up to who is supportive of your family. It doesn’t have to be the rav of the community; even a family that your kids consider a good family is enough. It’s hard to feel you’re the only ones making this choice and the world is against you; when you know there are others who are supportive of you, even if the numbers aren’t big, it makes a difference.
Avivah
What a well-written piece. As always, lots to think about and to be inspired by. Thank you Avivah.
Wow, I really need to read the Covey book, sounds very much up my alley. How do you go about finding a mentor-type of family?
So may I ask, do you not support the Jewish school systems at all (monetarily, volunteering, mentoring, etc) and if not, why?
In our family we happily homeschool and we feel comfortable telling others about our “unusual” choices (even though inevitably we end up defending our lifestyle almost every time), however we also realize 99% of the klal just isn’t going to pull their kids/themselves from the system and so therefore we support Jewish schools so hopefully they can be a place where they can survive/thrive/grow. I feel when people have pulled the “al tifrosh…” argument on us, we can confidently say, we do support the schools but as they are it is not a choice for us.
Shoshana – thanks for letting me know you found it valuable.
Dina – the book is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. As far as finding a family, keep your eyes open for people you respect who seem to have values that you share. You can always invite older or larger families over for Shabbos if you want to get to know them more or form a relationship with them.
Yael – I don’t think in terms of not wanting to support the schools; it’s more that I actively support other causes. I gave that as an example because I don’t want to give 51% of my tzedaka dollars to that cause; other things are priorities for me. I do send smaller donations to the schools, but they aren’t recipients of the bulk of our tzedaka dollars.
“There are Shabbos groups for younger kids and teen minyanim but I don’t support these; however, it is one way for your kids to feel involved. ”
How come? 🙂
Chava – this is a topic for a much longer post, one which I’ve been intending to write for months! Now that you’ve asked me directly I’ll have to get to it sooner rather than later. 🙂
Hi Avivah,
I enjoyed your post, as usual. Here’s another idea on getting involved in the community. You can host events and classes in your home. The kids can be involved in setting up, setting the table, etc. They enjoy those things, even though the classes are for grown ups. Sometimes other kids come with their mothers, and they get to play.
But here’s my bigger comment. I see what you’re saying about helping the community, with putting your family first. But there is also the issue of benefitting from belonging to a community. There is no question that by sending your kids to school you would get a lot more from belonging to your community. The same, sadly, applies to people who don’t have children, or to single people. They often feel left out, just because “everyone else” is so busy with school, carpool, and the like, that most conversations, events, volunteering, etc. revolves around that.
This is especially true for baalei teshuvah who are not part of a large extended family which is passing the tradition down to their children just by virtue of being there. Instead of feeling that we are standing on the shoulders of all previous generations, we feel like we are creating our own unique path, and only time will tell if we succeed.
The only solution that I see (and I’d love to hear what you think) is to create our own community, of families that are committed to Torah and Jewishly educated, and willing to make choices outside of the mainstream. And we definitely need to be connected to rabbis and teachers who support, or at least don’t look down at, our choices. This is what we are trying to create here, locally. But honestly — and that’s just my personal opinion — I would not choose to homeschool if I lived in a place where creating such a community was impossible.
I hear what you’re saying, Yehudis, and I can see how some people would feel that way but I feel differently. I don’t belong to my community any less because my kids learn at home. I really don’t feel left out or believe that we’d be more part of things if my kids went to school. I know too many people who send their kids to school who feel much less connected than we do to accept the assertion that by virtue of sending your kids to school, you’re automatically more connected. In fact, I think my kids feel more part of our community because we choose to be consciously and actively involved, rather than passively doing what everyone else is doing without thinking about it.
I don’t see the only solution as being to form a breakaway community for those who share your beliefs. It’s definitely valuable to have like minded friends who are supportive, but my experience is that I’ve been able to develop that within the mainstream community, and there’s a value of being inside a community and being able to advocate for different options. I probably wouldn’t want to be part of a community that identified themselves as being ‘alternative’
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Are you saying you wouldn’t homeschool if you lived in a place where there was absolutely no support for your alternative choices? How many places are there where there literally isn’t even one other person who is open to people doing things differently? I used to think my community was much more homegeneous than it actually is – over the years I’ve found a number of people who are following the mainstream path but see what I’m doing as the ideal and are very encouraging and supportive.
I don’t think we need to break away from the main community. It’s more of a community within a community. Just like there are different schools in town, and each is a kind of sub-community within the main community.
I guess I was thinking about the place that the quote in your post is describing, where she said that her kids are having trouble with respect for daas Torah and the frum community in general. If I lived in a place like that, I would either send to school or move (which somehow sounds better :)). But yes, I’ve also found that in a large enough community, there are people who are open to doing things differently. Especially with parenting. Most people talk about cribs and getting their babies to sleep through the night, but when I’m open about my choices, I find lots of mothers who quietly take their babies to their own beds and nurse them on demand at night. Most people think you’re crazy when you talk about homebirth, but there are a number that are supportive. Even with homeschooling, even though most people are sceptical, there are many who are supportive, and who ask many questions and wonder if that’s something they would want to do one day.