Second Generation Orthodox

I always love going to Parnaz's parties. First of all the food is wonderful. Persian food at its best. But then there's also the immersion in a world that is so different from the one I live in every day. The new modern orthodox world. A world in which girls get married by age 19 (or 20 at the latest), where women my age, like my friend , already have grandkids but still look like teenagers, where 30 person dinner parties are the norm, where no one thinks I'm too young to have a 19 year old daughter...

But this evening's discussion was about that underlying threat - Uber-orthodoxy. Somewhat like the nouveau riche, the nouveau orthodox tend to go to extremes. To fall off the precipice linking them to the normal world. It's a second generation phenomena. The parents, raised in a secular or traditional household, go orthodox. Send their kids to Hillel and Shalhevet and YULA. Their kids then go ultra. And why is this a problem? Well, suddenly the exigencies of earning a living are too mundane for them. Suddenly nothing less than the Gaza strip will do as home for them. Suddenly their mother's home cooking is no longer kosher enough for them...

My parent's generation was the generation that broke with orthodoxy. They left the old country, and with it, they left the strictures and the bad memories they associated with religion. Some of my generation, unfamiliar with it, has gone back. But it's a slippery slope...

The only consolation I can offer is that, like most natural phenomena, this one, I believe, is a self-limiting one. You can only go so far into orthodoxy before your kids, or your grandkids, or your great grandkids rebel. Hopefully you can wait that long.