It was a rainy day when the letter came. I remember coming home from school to an empty house. I remember looking for the day's mail because I was waiting for something in particular to arrive. After a quick glance around the kitchen, I spotted the pile of opened envelopes that someone had left on the table. I quickly sorted through the piles of bills, credit card offers and tzedaka brivlech until I found an envelope that looked to be a personal letter. I didn't notice that the letter was addressed to my mother and not to me, until I started reading it, but by that time it was too late to put it down as the opening paragraph caught my attention and left me spell bound.
"I'm writing to you straight from my heart", the letter said, "and I hope these words will find their way into your heart".
It was from someone who addressed my mother as "my dear sister" and begged her to put the past behind them and be there for her in her time of joy. She was getting married the next month and wanted my mother to come to her wedding.
Ok, my mother has three sisters and all of them are married. Who would play such a sick joke? Or, was this my big break? My very own secret waiting to be discovered??
The next few days, I devoted myself fully to finding out "the secret". I begged, pleaded and cajoled. I blackmailed and bribed. I drove my aunts crazy with questions and went through all the picture albums in my grandparents' house. Something was burning within me and I needed to know.The more they refused to talk about it, the more I prodded. In the end , my persistence paid off and one aunt finally broke. She sat me down and swore me to secrecy.
"We had another sister" she said, "but she is not our sister anymore".
"Had?" my young self asked"what do you mean"?
"Had" she said, "she left when she was but a teen. We haven't had contact with her since."
My mind was racing. Left where? Where is she today? Who made the choice not to have contact?
At this point, she got uncomfortable and tried to shoot me down but I wasn't going to let her go .Reluctantly she told me the rest. At the age of 17, D was engaged to be married. She was, however, very unhappy about it and felt like she was being forced into marriage and forced into a life that she did not want to be a part of. And so, the night after the tnoyim, she packed a bag and left home. Her parents, my grandparents, never forgave her for shaming the family and forbade their other family members to look for her or contact her in any way. No one knows where she lived after leaving home, but after a while she tried contacting her sisters again but no one would have anything to do with her. Finding herself shunned and ostracized by all that were familiar to her, she set out to make a new life for herself and succeeded remarkably in becoming a highly successful career woman. After Judaism rejected her, she didn't try again and no one had heard from her all those years. Until the letter.
There is a part 3 to the story which I will tell in a separate post. But what do you guys think about disowning family members who have gone off the derech? Does it result in pushing them further away or does the threat of being disowned cause drifters to turn back? I know what I think, let me hear your opinions.
