July 20, 2024
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parashat Balak
Don’t Cut Off Your Own to Spite Your Fate
July 20, 2024 — 14 Tammuz 5784
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
There’s a story that lurks in our family lore. I don’t remember anyone ever telling it outright. But it was there. Fuzzy around the edges. Bleeding into every day.
When my grandfather was very young, his father died tragically. He went duck hunting, got pneumonia, and, without antibiotics, the infection quickly took his life. My great-grandmother was not only broken-hearted, but also understandably terrified about her future. It was 1927. Women didn’t work outside the home except under serious duress. There were no federally funded social safety nets (FDR’s New Deal including aid for dependent children wouldn’t come for another eight years). Without her husband, my great-grandmother had no idea how she and her young son would survive.
My grandfather remembered her anger, her fury that no one stepped up to help her in the ways that she needed, following her husband’s sudden passing. She was so upset that she cut off contact with her family.
My great-grandmother became a schoolteacher. She was disciplined and determined and raised my grandfather successfully on her meager salary, even managing to save enough for her own retirement. Her dire straits were temporary, but the rift with her family became permanent. My grandfather grew up without connections to his extended family. And when my mom and her siblings were born, they too missed out on relationships with extended family members.
This week, the New York Times published a chilling article about a rising trend of elective estrangement that has been building in this country since COVID. Whereas previously individuals might have cut off contact with family out of anger or pain as a last resort, recently “mental health influencers” have been promoting the possibility of liberating oneself from family as a step towards personal growth and healing, sometimes without any attempt to resolve the pain or conflict driving the estrangement in the first place.
The stories in the article are harrowing. For example, Jess began remembering painful childhood memories in her early twenties in therapy. She had some therapists who encouraged her to process these memories with her family, to try to heal the pain that she was experiencing and preserve the relationships. But then she found one of the leaders of the “no contact” movement on social media, a licensed social worker here in Massachusetts named Patrick Teahan. His charismatic and compelling persona coupled with his professional credentials convinced her that her best option was to cut off contact completely. That was no panacea. It was super painful. Afterwards, she felt “utterly alone.” She says, “I would love to be able to pick up the phone and call my mom.” Instead, every time she thinks about reconnecting, she watches another one of Patrick’s videos.
Her mother, Dianne, is devastated. She sobbed through a conversation with reporter, Ellen Barry, sharing that “it’s kind of like a grieving process, but I don’t understand how she died or why she died. I just don’t understand what happened.”
Dianne is not alone. The article documented case after case, support group after support group. Some children are cutting off contact from parents who are legitimately abusive and unwilling or unable to resolve conflict, while others are cutting parents off for much more trivial reasons. Brian Briscoe, a therapist from Dallas, Texas, shared that his daughter cut off contact with him because she said that he favored her brother and that it was hard to get his attention. He thought he was a caring and present father, he went to every one of her performances growing up and always prided himself on his communication skills, but none of that matters now. He says that receiving the no-contact letter and the subsequent estrangement has been the most heartbreaking loss of his life, even more hurtful than the death of his father or the loss of his marriage. And there’s literally nothing he can do about it.
If you look closely at each of these stories, there is one simple truth. At the heart of each broken relationship is a young person who is hurting. Whereas previous generations were taught to swallow their pain, this generation grew up more willing to acknowledge and articulate their suffering. However, instead of using this knowledge to become more resilient, having learned about the deleterious effects of unresolved trauma on mental health, the increased awareness has driven a trend to expand the definition of what constitutes trauma and to excise anything and everything from our that could possibly be triggering.
On college campuses, that means that more than 51% of college professors say that they include trigger warnings in their courses so that students will never be caught off guard. They give warnings for violence, sexism, ageism, ableism, Antisemitism, the list goes on and on. Implicit in these warnings is the idea that you shouldn’t have to engage with traumatic ideas, but if you do, you should do so with remove and caution. And, the more students hear trigger warnings about disturbing content, the more they believe that if they feel reactive towards something, it must be a trigger and thus a source of trauma. But research has shown that trigger warnings actually increase the stress response to disturbing information, rather than helping people to cope with it. In other words, the more we identify trauma and try to avoid it, the more trauma we experience.
And there is an even darker shadow to this trend. With each estrangement, young people increasingly limit their sphere. Rather than becoming more resilient and healthy, by setting out to avoid any challenge that could escalate to trauma, young people are unwittingly closing themselves off from the possibility of growth and transformation.
Our tradition has a very different understanding about what is possible. In the Torah, God speaks to us as children of Israel—b’nei Israel. That name comes from a pivotal moment. Our ancestor, Jacob, is struggling with his own family dynamics. He has stolen the birthright and his mother, Rebecca, tells him that the best solution is for him to run away. On the road, he meets an adversary who wrestles with him all night long. Despite sustaining injury, Jacob fights and fights and fights until the breaking of dawn when he demands a blessing from his opponent. The blessing he receives is the name Israel, because the angel explains, he has wrestled with the Divine.
We take on Jacob’s name because we are a people who understand the power of wrestling. We belong to a tradition that believes in preserving and engaging a multiplicity of perspectives. We belong to a tradition that believes in the power of teshuva, the power of each and every person to do the work of interpersonal repair and healing. We belong to a tradition that believes in the possibility of Tikkun Olam, in the possibility of healing the brokenness which exists in the world.
Which brings me back to my family. My great-grandmother cut off ties with everyone in anger and pain. That meant that her family never got the chance to show up for her. They could never make things right. And she left this world angry for wrongs that happened when she was young.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. In college, I somewhat randomly ended up at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and began regularly attending services at the Orthodox synagogue on West End Avenue. One day at kiddush, I met someone named Moshe who shared my great-grandmother’s last name. In my heart, I kept wondering—is it possible that we’re related? Could he be part of the family I never knew? In that moment, I didn’t have the courage to ask or to share my family heritage.
Over the years, we developed a friendship. He was passionate about Jewish learning and told me often about this incredible pluralistic learning institute in Jerusalem called Pardes. He loves it so much that he sponsors a scholarship for Vanderbilt students so that they can attend.
Because of this friendship, and because of the generosity of that scholarship, I ended up in Jerusalem after graduation, studying at Pardes and was invited over for Thanksgiving Shabbat dinner at Moshe’s home. I finally worked up the courage to ask—do you think we might be related. Moshe pulled down a genealogical history of our family that a distant relative had prepared and sure enough, we are cousins. Generations after the rift in our family, we have reconnected and that relationship has enriched our lives immeasurably.
The story of our lives is always unfolding. Whenever there is challenge or pain, we have the opportunity to grow and evolve. Though it may seem like estrangement is the best answer, we all have to remember what should be an old adage—don’t cut off your own to spite your fate.